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My little girl was but eighteen months old when she discovered that touching the tiny brown nubs on her chest felt nice. She did it repeatedly, all day, hands shoved up under her shirt to twiddle away as she carried out the business of being a toddler.
At home I largely ignored the practice unless she did it right in front of my face; for example, as I dressed her. “Those are your nipples,” I’d then point out. “Someday you can use them to help feed a baby.”
She’d been nursed and had seen other infants also drinking milk from their mothers’ breasts, so she accepted this information without much question. “Nip-pulls,” she’d parrot. “Feed baby.”
And then one day we were dressing for a play-date. “Drew is coming over,” I said, hitching shorts up beneath her round belly. “You get to play with Drew.”
Her hands went instantly to her bare chest. “Play with Drew?” I nodded. “I play with Drew,” she said. “I show Drew my nipples.”
I froze, her tiny shirt poised above her head. What should I tell her? Should I scold her for wanting to show off her anatomy? Caution her on the necessity of privacy? Ready myself to thwart any play-date efforts at nippular display?
In the end I did nothing. Drew’s mother and I talked while the babies played nearby; although I kept a wary ear on their babbling I hear no mention of nipples. It’s possible that she forgot. It’s equally possible that she whipped up her shirt and flashed the boy while I was fetching apple juice and crackers.
Would it have mattered? My daughter placed no more or less importance on her nipples than any other body part, whether toe, eyebrow or elbow. To her they were just a new discovery, as worthy of sharing as an ant strolling down the sidewalk or a new book to read.
There will be plenty of time in the future for body-based shame. I wasn’t going to be the one to set it in motion when she was barely past babyhood.
–Submitted by Anonymous
For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing by just letting it go. She’s 18 mos old and probably has a hard enough time grasping the general concept of “no,” add to it any of the other explanations that go along with keeping our bodies to ourselves is going to be too advanced for her toddler self.