How Words Hurt Kids: What Happens When Slang Replaces Truth

Recently, I read something on Facebook that made me wince...

An aunt was helping her young niece in the shower. She reminded her to wash the whole body, including her vagina*. The niece responded, "where's my vagina?". The aunt pointed, asking "what do you call that?". The niece, following her gesture, said, "my lady parts."

Haha! We can all laugh about that, right?

But should we?

There are many reasons parents choose not to use the real names of body parts. Discussing sex or basic reproductive functions can feel daunting. Religion may also influence parenting choices. And no matter how we identify or what our current values are, we can never quite get away from how our parents raised us. Messages we learned as kids about the body influences our decisions today. "Boobs", "lady parts" and "hoo-hah" are pretend, slang. At some point, though, reality catches up with pretend and the effects are broader than you'd think.

While sometimes funny in the moment, slang is dangerous for kids.

Incorrect language can make kids look and feel stupid. Some of their peers know something that they don't. Those kids know what a vagina is and likely what it does. Knowledge is power; it's social cache, on and off the playground. Not being in the know can lead to feelings of insecurity and fear. These are not the feelings we want to cultivate, especially if we want to keep kids safe. Kids who are confident in their knowledge and trust their parents to protect and inform them are harder to coerce or groom.

Using slang also secretizes something. Slang is code that not everyone knows. "That's excluding!" my four year old would say. She's right. Secrets involve excluding some information from other people. She knows excluding doesn't feel good or safe. But she doesn't know that secrets shrinks people. Not only uncomfortable, a secret makes people smaller, and feel less capable than they are. Kids are especially susceptible to the dangers of secrets. They lack the agency of adults and often can't understand the potential impact behind secret keeping. Nothing about kids' bodies should be made secret. Privacy or "private areas" okay; secrets are not.

Ignorance and smallness are big deals but there's more. Slang reduces the body into something, less than, something not deserving of respect. If a girl uses the same slang ("boobs") that she sees someone else use to catcall or mock, she will associate her body with something less than.

Why give the body respect if we don't even use the correct names to describe it?

As a commodity, a thing, a woman's body is more easy to control. This is even more true of black women whose bodies are often fetishized in ways that white women's bodies are not.  Control looks like chopped parts in advertising. It looks like a multi-billion industry (and public health crisis) built on violence against women. It sounds like pregnant women being called "hosts" and presents as husbands being able to sue their wives for an abortion. Everyone loses when the female body is controlled and reduced.

"But my kiddo is in Kindergarten, surely this isn't an issue for her?"

Think again.

"More than half of girls and one-third of boys as young as 6 to 8 think their ideal weight is thinner than their current size,". That's a huge percentage of kids in the early years of their schooling. These kids, little children, worry about their weight. Why?

Because even at 6, kids can recognize what a "desirable" body looks like.  And when these kids look in their own mirror, they don't see it.

This isn't middle school; these kids are 1st and 2nd graders.

Kids, in many ways, become more vulnerable as they get older. They may not be as easy to trick but they are more aware of what the world expects them to know and how they "should" be (thin) or behave (diet). (Poor children, children of color or kids suffering from trauma often have even more challenges.) We need kids, especially girls, to feel self-confident and hang onto that confidence. Body image is not something kids are born with; it is learned. We must help kids love and appreciate their bodies. 

Here are four things you can do:

1) Use the right language to describe body parts...yours and theirs. Picking and choosing the correct body parts to use ("vulva" but not "breasts") is confusing. Even if it feels uncomfortable, use these correct words.

2) Normalize conversations around sexuality with kids. When they ask, tell them. Sex is nothing to hide away or feel shamed about. When you talk openly, kids know to go to you, not porn or other kids, for information.

3) Watch your language about your own body. Kids take cues from parents modeling when they are newborns. Negative self-talk including your weight are no exception. 

3) Help kids know what their body is valued for. It's not for cuteness or hotness but for strength, capability, doing good in the world. Telling them that you noticed their strong legs when they were swimming. Or how hard they were working to pass the ball to a teammate. Allow kids to see that you notice their efforts also helps develop a growth mindset.

Slang hurts everyone. But it can immobilize kids. Slang keeps kids small and stupid while also perpetuating the confusing Catch-22 of both disposability and idealization of certain female bodies.

Use the right language. Start now. Do it today.

*for this story, I am going to use the language that the aunt used, not the correct terms.

Ouch! Why You May Be Feeling This Way

I suffered from seizures from age four to almost six. I was in and out of the hospital and was given at least one EEG to try to figure out what was wrong with me. Those experiences were traumatic. My mind forgot the worst memories (although I do remember the electrodes attached to my scalp) but my body remembers. Our body often remembers past trauma and that memory surfaces in different ways.

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One way that memory might surface is through triggers. Needles are a trigger for me. Needles always made me feel sick, light-headed and no matter how skilled the nurse, needles are always physically painful. Triggers, like a needle, are real whether you remember the past trauma or not.

Triggers remind us to pay attention to something. The reminder is likely related to "danger! that ____ hurt you before,". If you've experienced family abuse, for example, a visit from a parent can be triggering. When you pay attention to that trigger, you are in a better position to manage it. We can manage triggers in a few ways:

1) Create better boundaries. We may not be able to drop triggering people from our life but we can create rules for ourselves about them. Your parent doesn't stay at the house or we always meet a former partner at a neutral place instead of home.

2) Get present. Remind yourself that the danger has passed. You are healthier and safer now than you ever have been. Saying aloud to yourself, "I'm safe, I'm okay," can go a long way.

3) Practice self-care. Triggers remind us that we need extra support and/or love. Give that love to yourself in the form of special self-care or get it from a trusted person.

We can't always know why we are triggered and even when we do know, we can't always eliminate that trigger. But we can recognize it when it's happening and remind ourselves what we can do about it. That goes a long way toward feeling more successful and confident in all areas of our life.

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Speaking of family abuse, I start a new Domestic Violence Survivor Peer Support group on Wednesday March 15. Click here to learn more.

Bedroom Confessions: Why You Need To Ask About Sleep

If you are someone who works in a helping field you need to be asking about sleep. Asking someone about their sleep patterns is often a way that I start a conversation with a survivor. Sleep is a safe subject especially with someone you don't know. And this is the kind of bedroom confession you need!

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Asking a "how" or "why" questions gets people to dig deeper, giving you more information to work with, so says behavioral investigator Vanessa Van Edwards. I like "how" and "why" questions for these reasons too but also because they are trauma-informed. They encourage the respondent to answer in a way that allows her to both share her story on her own terms.

Here are a few sample ways to ask about sleep --------->

The answers to sleep questions help you consider physical or emotional challenges. Is the client going through menopause or struggling with the loss of a parent? Or perhaps she is now coming to terms with her history as a rape survivor? Sexual abuse survivors typically have less quality sleep than non-survivors. They are more likely to sleep fewer hours, struggle with falling asleep and have disrupted sleep.

Sleep questions give you opportunities to create trust between you and your patient. They are non-medical questions that enable the provider to share power by allowing the client to be the expert. How many of us ever feel that way when we see a provider? Sleep questions also ask for an opinion. Asking for an opinion allows you to pivot from all-knowing provider to interested learner. Each of these small changes build trust.

Quality and quantity of sleep are important to consider when looking at health. We all sleep. We all eat too but asking someone you don't know about their eating habits can be tricky. And not only if they have struggled with disordered eating in the past! But asking about sleep is different; it's a conversation starter. Sleep questions provide useful background and help you understand how a patient thinks of herself. So get those bedroom confessions going! Ask about sleep.

The Cycle of Abuse revisited

The Cycle of Abuse is a social theory by Dr Lenore Walker in 1979. Walker interviewed over a thousand domestic violence survivors early in her career. She found that there was a familiar pattern to the abuse that they had experienced. She named that pattern The Cycle of Abuse. Maybe it was something you've experienced in your family of origin or in a relationship?

When I was looking for a diagram of the Cycle a few weeks ago, I found ones that looked as if they, too, were from 1979! Ugh. The Cycle may be a bit depressing in content but it doesn't have to look that way with Times New Roman font and all black and white. So I updated it. Aside from the improving the appearance, I made another change. Can you tell what it is?

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Did you guess it?

The old diagrams of the Cycle of Abuse don't include sexual assault as a type of incident. Neither does Walker in her explanation of the Cycle (that I can find). But it needs to be. Rape is a story survivors tell that is their “incident”. A sexual violation is no less important or valid than physical abuse. So it's included here.

Agree? Disagree? Love the jewel tones? Want the old version? Share your thoughts below. Thanks for reading