Walking around naked at home can be fun, but is it a habit you can keep when you have a child? Our expert is formal: it depends above all on the age of the child.
When we become a parent, a world opens up to us, which comes with an infinity of questions that we had often never thought of before. Among them is that of showing oneself naked in front of one’s child.
And if the reasons behind the desire to appear in the simplest way in front of your child are multiple (habit, desire not to hide the body, etc.), the fact is that this can have consequences. Explanations from Dr. Fanny Jacq, psychiatrist and mental health director of qare.fr*.
For the specialist, the question “showing yourself naked or not in front of your child does not really arise before the child is 4 years old”. Until then, there is no problem, because if the child is able to tell the difference between being clothed or naked, he attaches no meaning or judgment to it. “The young child likes physical contact, even needs it for his development, and appreciates moments like skin to skin, bathing together, which seem completely normal to him”, explains the psychiatrist. Thus, he can clearly see that people are dressed in the street, but if someone was naked there, it wouldn’t shock him that much.
4 years old, the age when things start to change
“It’s usually around 4 years that the child begins to differentiate between genders and to slowly and unconsciously associate nudity with sexuality”, she says. Modesty obviously does not arrive on the day of his 4th birthday and can even show up later, but it is important to be attentive to your child’s reactions, for example if he tries to hide when showering, wants to dress alone, closes the bathroom door… This shows that his relationship to nudity is changing, even though he is not always able to verbalize it, and for the parents, it is the signal that you have to adapt your behavior to what the child accepts.
Read also: When should you talk about sexuality with your child, and how to approach it?
What are the risks if my child sees me naked?
Voluntarily appearing naked in front of your child can have consequences that we cannot measure. : “It can be seen as very intrusive by the child, who no longer wants to be seen naked and does not want to see others naked”, explains Dr. Jacq. “ By imposing something on him that he does not want and by entering into his intimacy, we run the risk of cause blockages and above all to completely blur what he knows in terms of respecting the privacy of the other. » This can not only increase his modesty, but also send him the message that his consent is not important and that when it comes to nudity, one can decide for others.
Moreover, and this is especially true if your child is not of the same gender as you, the fact of seeing you naked can arouse curiosity which may embarrass him, especially from 7-8 years old, age at which modesty is often well established and where he begins to understand the notions of sexual life (a universe that he will discover later and not with you).
Nudity and respect for others: limits to be established
If everyone is obviously free to do as they see fit, Dr. Jacq believes that it is important to respect the modesty of his child by showing less from the age of 4, without having extreme reactions: “If our child sees us naked by chance, because he goes into the bathroom when we’re there or he shows up in our room when we’re changing, we mustn’t dramatize the situation, at the risk of generating discomfort around nudity. »
The expert believes that it is necessary stay tuned for questions the child may have and that it is important to explain to him that there are places linked to nudity and intimacy (one can for example cite the school which is a place where one always goes fully clothed) and thatyou don’t have the right to impose your naked body on others without their consent. It is up to us to put these principles into practice on a daily basis, for example by letting our child shower alone when we know that he is capable of doing so. And if you are a fan of topless tanning, it is important to ask your child if he doesn’t mind seeing your chest and that others see it too, and adapt according to his answer.
* qare.fr is a medical teleconsultation platform accessible every day from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., which lists hundreds of psychiatrists and psychologists.
Beauty, Health/Wellness and Parenting Journalist
Maïlys is a writer specializing in the fields of beauty, health, well-being and parenthood. Mother of a little boy, she is also crazy about tennis and a little …