Same Words book
Their Own Body
Body words, privacy, consent, necessary care and protective language.
View the book on Amazon ↗45 prepared situations
No word for it but "down there"Their Own Body · Words for the bodyThe anatomical names are the ones most families skip, and the reason is almost never the child.→Shouts the funny word for it in the supermarketTheir Own Body · Words for the bodySomewhere around three, body words turn out to be the funniest words available, and the discovery is genuine.→"Why is his different from mine?"Their Own Body · Words for the bodyThis is a question about categories, not about anatomy.→Everything comes off — with guests in the house, or at the parkTheir Own Body · Words for the bodyClothes are a rule that lives outside a small child's body rather than inside it.→Giggles or hides every time a body word comes upTheir Own Body · Words for the bodySome children meet these words with a shriek and a run for the sofa, and it looks like embarrassment arriving early.→An aunt reaches for a hug and they go stiffTheir Own Body · Who may touchA small child at a family gathering is surrounded by people who love them and whom they have met four times.→"Give Grandma a kiss" — and everyone is watchingTheir Own Body · Who may touchThis one is harder than it looks because there are two people to protect.→Tickling that went past funnyTheir Own Body · Who may touchLaughing while being tickled is a reflex, not an opinion.→"Stop" gets ignored in the middle of rough playTheir Own Body · Who may touchWrestling, chasing and piling on are how a lot of children this age make friends, and the research on early peer relationships is not against it.→Someone scoops them up without askingTheir Own Body · Who may touchBeing lifted off the ground by surprise is a total loss of position, applied to somebody who cannot see it coming and cannot get down.→Hugs children who are backing awayTheir Own Body · Who may touchSome children are affectionate at full volume, and it is genuinely meant.→The doctor needs to look, and they have just learned to say noTheir Own Body · When someone has toA child told all month that nobody touches their body without asking is now on a table where somebody is going to.→The shot, and whether to tell them it will hurtTheir Own Body · When someone has toThe temptation is to say it will not hurt, because the ten minutes before are unbearable to watch.→Washing them when they can nearly do it themselvesTheir Own Body · When someone has toThere is a stretch of about a year where a child can wash most of themselves and not quite all, and the parts they cannot manage are exactly the parts this book keeps saying belong to them.→Somebody at daycare wipes and changes themTheir Own Body · When someone has toYou have spent months on who may touch, and for eight hours a day the answer is a person you did not brief.→Held still for something that genuinely has to happenTheir Own Body · When someone has toOccasionally there is no version of this where the child agrees: a splinter, a car seat, a hand pulled back from a road.→Will not close the bathroom doorTheir Own Body · Private and not privatePrivacy is not a feeling a child arrives with.→Walks in on you in the bathroom or the bedroomTheir Own Body · Private and not privateSmall children follow.→Hands down their pants on the living room floorTheir Own Body · Private and not privateThis is one of the most common things young children do and one of the least often discussed, which leaves a lot of parents privately worried about something the research puts squarely in the ordinary column.→Public restrooms — who goes in, and who waits whereTheir Own Body · Private and not privateA public restroom collides with every rule you have built: a room about private parts, full of strangers, and your child may still need help in it.→The rules about doors are different at their cousin's houseTheir Own Body · Private and not privateFamilies run bodies differently.→You walk in on two of them playing doctorTheir Own Body · Private and not privateAlmost every parent meets this and almost none of them mention it to another parent, which leaves a very ordinary thing feeling like a private emergency.→A "no" that adults actually honorTheir Own Body · The words that protectA child works out how much their no is worth from the small things, not the serious ones.→Secrets and surprises are not the same thingTheir Own Body · The words that protectChildren love secrets, and there is nothing wrong with that.→"Don't tell your mom" — said by someone they likeTheir Own Body · The words that protectThe warning most of us were raised on points outward, at strangers and vans.→Who they can tell, named out loudTheir Own Body · The words that protect"Tell a grown-up you trust" is an instruction for somebody who can already sort adults into categories.→They tell you something three days after it happenedTheir Own Body · The words that protectLate and partial is the normal shape of a child telling you something difficult.→Rehearsing the sentence on an ordinary TuesdayTheir Own Body · The words that protectKnowing what to say and being able to say it are different things.→Puts both hands on a stranger's pregnant bellyTheir Own Body · Other people’s bodiesA round belly at exactly a preschooler's eye height, containing a baby they have been told about for weeks, is close to irresistible.→Grabs another child by the hair or the faceTheir Own Body · Other people’s bodiesBetween two and three, hands go to whatever is closest and most interesting, and another child's face is both.→Reaches for a wheelchair, a hearing aid, a service dogTheir Own Body · Other people’s bodiesA child who has just learned that hands go on toys and not on people meets a third category nobody warned them about: equipment that is attached to a person.→Another child hugs yours, and yours does not want itTheir Own Body · Other people’s bodiesThis book spends many pages on your child not doing things to other people.→Kisses the other children on the mouthTheir Own Body · Other people’s bodiesAround three and four, kissing arrives as a way of saying you like somebody, copied straight from home where it is welcome and uncomplicated.→Water: the pool, the bath, the shallow end of everythingTheir Own Body · Keeping the body safeA three-year-old at the edge of water cannot assess it.→Hot: the stove, the kettle, the cup you just put downTheir Own Body · Keeping the body safeMost burns to small children happen in kitchens and bathrooms, from liquids rather than flames, and usually from something an adult was holding a second earlier.→Runs at an unfamiliar dog with both arms outTheir Own Body · Keeping the body safeSmall children are bitten more than anyone else, mostly on the face and hands, and mostly by a dog somebody in the room knows.→Climbing higher than you can comfortably watchTheir Own Body · Keeping the body safeResearch on children's risky play keeps finding the same inconvenient thing: height, speed and rough-and-tumble are how children calibrate their own bodies, and children who are stopped early are not safer later.→You turn around in the store and they are goneTheir Own Body · Keeping the body safeThe first thing a lost child does is move, usually looking for you, usually in the wrong direction.→An unfamiliar adult asks them for helpTheir Own Body · Keeping the body safeChildren this age freeze in front of unfamiliar adults far more often than they run, and how long that freeze lasts varies enormously between children.→It does not stop when you redirect itTheir Own Body · When it’s more than a phaseNearly everything in this book fades with a calm place rule and a hand given something else to do.→They know something about bodies nobody taught themTheir Own Body · When it’s more than a phaseChildren collect information constantly and from everywhere — an older cousin, a screen left on, a playground conversation, a half-heard adult joke.→Suddenly frightened of one particular person or placeTheir Own Body · When it’s more than a phasePlenty of children are wary of unfamiliar adults, and some are wary of nearly all of them.→Toilet training goes backwards for no clear reasonTheir Own Body · When it’s more than a phaseRegression is common and it usually has a dull explanation sitting in plain sight: a new baby, a new room, an illness, a move, a change of daycare.→Soreness or marks you cannot account forTheir Own Body · When it’s more than a phaseSmall children collect bruises constantly, in places that make no sense, from events nobody witnessed.→Flinches away from ordinary, everyday touchTheir Own Body · When it’s more than a phaseSome children have pulled away from labels, hugs, hair-washing and sticky hands since they were babies, and always will.→