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Childhood sexual behaviour
Home: Family & Friends: About Your Child: Childhood behaviour
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By Toni Cavanagh Johnson.
This article is reproduced with the authors kind permission. No part of it may be copied for any reason without the permission of the author.
(Most information comes from the retrospective accounts of adults who are asked to recall childhood experiences. These may or may not be reliable.)
Children are capable of what appear to be sexual responses even in earliest years.
Masturbation
Most infants probably explore and fondle their own genitals. Not goal directed or systematic play in the same casual way that they do with their ears, noses, fingers and toes. As a child grows older, masturbation to orgasm becomes more and more likely. Most have the biological capacity to derive pleasure from self-stimulation.
In societies permissive about childhood masturbation most masturbate by 6-8 years.
Sexual play
0-3 Years
Children egocentric and are not interested in, nor capable of any sort of social give or take.
3 - 4 Years
Boys and girls may hug and kiss and say they plan to marry when they grow up. The meaning is not clear.
4 Years
Awareness of genital differences around urinating. Play at school is more organised. Children act out sex roles by playing house. May show one another their genitals playing doctor. Sometimes there can be a physiological response.
5 - 11 Years
Conventional rules of modesty take hold. Games like doctors decrease but kissing, touching and showing continue, interest in sex is apparent. Boys and girls profess hatred for each other. Teasing occurs.
Pre-adolescence
Tell jokes, write and whisper sexual words, talk about sex with same sex friends. Send notes. Some sort of coitus or attempt.
Adolescence:
Date, attend mix-sex parties, dances, play kissing games, go steady, exchange letters and gifts, premarital sex, fondling of breasts and genitals, oral-genital contact, intercourse.
© Copyright 1999 Toni Cavanagh Johnson
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Copyright Updated: 12 Jul 2010
The South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault acknowledges the traditional Aboriginal owners of country throughout Victoria. We pay our respects to them, their culture and their Elders past, present and future.