Is a child who touches himself necessarily masturbation? How do you make him understand that we can not do it in public? Is it unhealthy? On Tuesday, in Sans Rendez-vous, the program Santé d'Europe 1, the psychoanalyst and sexologist Catherine Blanc gave her analysis on the issue and talked about the first sexual sensations of children.
The question of Elsa, 38
"My 10-year-old boy spends his time touching his zizi, not realizing it, sometimes even when we're at the table, my husband tells me it's normal but I think it's unhealthy or all less indecent, it's still masturbation, what do you think? "
Catherine Blanc's answer
So before talking about her little boy, we must understand that if this mom finds it unhealthy, if it puts a lot of sexuality in this gesture, it evokes its problematic in front of his own sexuality and the sexuality of men. This is the idea she has of men, obsessed with sexuality and she already sees emerge in his little boy, which is the source of his anxiety. This begs the question of what this tells about his person's story.
Regarding the little boy, yes it's perfectly normal. This is also true of girls. That being said, their sex is less accessible. It is less disturbed by a slip or pants too tight. So already there is sometimes a need to put his zizi back in place. And then it's an appendage outside the body. Just as little girls can touch their hair, when they talk and play with their curls.
Is it masturbation?
Yes it's masturbation but not for an ultimate goal of excitement. It's pleasure, self-eroticism. We touch, trot, turn his zizi in all directions. And the child also discovers that in touching him, his sex stands. The idea of being a magician, to turn a flaccid sex into a rigid sex, the story pleases him a lot. It is natural that he does so, except that it is not suitable for being at the table.
Should she react if he continues to fiddle with him at the table? To scold him? Tell him to go to his room?
Already we are at table so he will not go to his room, he will eat first. We'll tell her to get her hands out of her panties and put her hands on the table. Besides, it's a matter of education, putting your hands on the table. As if historically anything below the table was a problem. The meal is a time when we share things together. We must be able to tell him that at table, we eat. If you start telling him "Go wash your hands", it is giving a dirty image of sexuality. So you just have to tell him he's at the table, that's not the time. But also that his zizi is great, that if it does him good, it's fine, but that it looks, it's a story of yourself, with yourself.
We must really tell him "your zizi is great"? And do not upset him?
I think we have to be authoritarian in the sense that we need a defined framework: we are at the table, we are together, we share things. Just as we are not in auto-eroticism on his cell, it is not on his zizi. On the other hand, pedagogy can be nothing more than authoritarianism, which always encounters the parental anxiety of our sexuality. The idea that our children are already sexually disturbs us deeply.
How do you teach him that you should not do it in front of people?
It must be made aware that there are others. When one is in an auto-eroticism, one does not see the others, they do not exist any more. This little boy is ten, he discovered the modesty that settles around six years. He has to take note that when he is with other people, this is not the time. It's important in two ways. Already we do not mix and we do not force people in public who do not want to be in there. And if the child is still in this preoccupation, we must find out what happened so that he thinks that it can be a means of communication. It may also be the alert of a child exposed to sexuality in an inappropriate setting.