I’m Very Creeped Out by What My Preteen Grandchildren Still Do Together

[conuly]

Dear Care and Feeding,

My granddaughter is 12-years-old and my grandson is 9-years-old.

They have slept in their parents’ bed from babyhood until now and are continuing. They also are still showering together. The parents think this is all fine. Am I wrong in being concerned?

—Creeped-Out Grandmother

Dear Creeped-Out Grandmother,

Yikes, now I’m a creeped-out advice columnist.

For starters, I can’t count the number of times my daughters slept in my bed or the number of times they shared a bathtub. The difference is that it ended when my kids were 6 and 3, and they weren’t at the point when they were nearing (or in the middle of) adolescence.

Your grandkids are at the age when their bodies are changing and their hormones are starting to kick in, and being naked in the shower together could create some troubling issues in the near and distant future. Not to mention, will this pattern continue until they are 17 and 14? When is enough enough?

I think you should pull the parents aside and inform them how wildly inappropriate it is to have siblings nearing puberty engage in this sort of activity. In doing so, you should also employ the help of other family members and any facts or reputable research you can find online, so they realize how damaging this is.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to the parents to change their ways. Hopefully your team of loved ones will be effective in making that happen for the sake of your grandkids.

—Doyin

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/02/preteen-children-showering-together-parenting-advice-care-and-feeding.html

Comments

[conuly]

Geez, Doyin, clutch your pearls a little louder, I don't think they heard you on the ISS!

Yes, communal bathing and family bedsharing is unusual in the USA, but it's hardly a deviant practice that will necessarily "create troubling issues". Both these things - which, btw, are two separate things which should be treated separately - are perfectly ordinary in certain other societies.

Come to think of it, I think I was about 10 when I stopped showering with my sister. After a messy incident when I was 4 and got some shampoo in my eyes and then proceeded to keep them closed for an entire day afterwards, I decided I needed some help with my hair and it was easier to get it if she was already in there with me. Meanwhile, my sister was the one who insisted on sharing a bed most of those nights until sometime after I was 10-ish.

Anyway, the point is, nothing untoward happened because Doyin's entire response is absurd.

[ambyr]

I’m creeped out that you’re creeped out by this, LW. Why are you entertaining lurid sexual fantasies about your grandkids?

[kiezh]

Yeah, this is a big overreaction from both the LW and the columnist. People suddenly freaking out at the kids like they've suddenly and without warning stopped being Innocent Children and become Sinful Degenerates would do a lot of harm in itself, and is, from the info we're given here, completely unwarranted.

Now, a *sane* approach might be to talk to the kids (especially the 12-year-old) about how they might want more privacy as they're getting older, and give them the option of bathing and sleeping alone, as well as having their own spaces. It's true that bodily and social changes may make awkward what was previously unremarkable! But treating those changes in a calm, matter-of-fact way emphasizing the kids' agency is much safer and better than flipping out because ADULTS have their scandal-meter on a hair-trigger.

[cimorene]

This.

[syderia]

Yes

[minoanmiss]

Nice people have the filthiest minds.

[tielan]

Um. What?

Like, both the question and the answer are WTF?

Bodies are bodies. They do many many things other than be sexual. In fact, I'd say that even sexually active people are 90% body-doing-things-that-are-not-sexual. And yet people go YIKES about the sexual part and forget...it's just bodies.

Also: nudity does not equal sexual.

I don't know what I wanted to say here, but I find this...very prudish in an obsessive manner?

[finch]

I'm especially bothered by the advice that the LW should go recruit other people to get involved in the shaming. Cripes.

[feast_of_regrets]

Agree. Nothing like firing up the torches and pitchforks over the way your kids are raising their children.

[firecat]

Since when does age 12 count as being “in the middle of adolescence”?

[joyeuce]

Obviously it's not, but I wonder if LW was thinking of bodily changes which could have been going on for a while; my daughter started developing breasts and pubic hair at 8 or 9. Not that this makes the whole pearl-clutching thing any better.

[ethelmay]

Yeah, I can barely remember not having any pubic hair. That started way before anything else with me.