Dear diary,
I think I interrupted a moment today. K was laying on his belly, rocking back and forth, hands under him in his groin area. The rest of the three- to seven-year-olds in class had already gone into choice time, playing with Legos and bubbles, but he was laying by himself. I kneeled to check in and quietly asked, “Hey K, are you ok?” He appeared intently focused. He nodded as he kept rocking intensely, his eyebrows pulled together like he was straining. I got the gist and stood up to give him the little bubble of privacy he could make for himself in a chaotic classroom.
Masturbation comes up as an almost daily topic at preschool. This surprises people who don’t regularly spend time with four- and five-year-olds, but for the young people I am lucky enough to work with, this fascination with bodies is very present. I get it. I was a body-focused kid too. My curiosity and shame partnered as I figured out what this unspoken but overwhelming focus on vaginas and penises and butts was in myself and my young classmates. Now, as a teacher, I feel a conflict, a gap, in how to support these young people in growing healthy relationships around their sexuality. All of us deserve to have fulfilling relationships with our own sexuality, and kids are no exception. All of us, including kids, deserve access to holistic, accurate, and inclusive information about our bodies and identities. Many of us, especially kids, have not been given space or information to learn about our sexuality in a way that embraces our genders, cultures, disabilities, traumas, and other pieces of ourselves that inform how we relate to sexuality.
I felt this silence intensely as a kid. I started masturbating in early elementary school. I would read and re-read steamy excerpts from middle grade fiction, feeling my body get hot and tingly. Then I would slam the book shut and hide it in the very back corner of my bookshelf, hidden behind my pile of dirty clothes. This was the same corner where I hid any brochures the doctor gave me about bodies. I wasn’t scared my parents would find them—they’d even given me some.
