And so it begins - circumsicision edition

[Anonymous]

This will go on forever. Just forget it.

[Anonymous]

Does his penis look different for another reason? Is he unusually large, small, crooked, colored? I can't tell if a small child is circ'd or not at first glance and I have experience with both types of men.

[Anonymous]

I can absolutely tell the difference between circ'd and not! And kids will notice students and mention it. We're they teasing or asking "why does your penis look like that and not like mine?" I like the answer from the paragraph explaining a bit of what circ. is.

[Anonymous]

Talk to the teacher. The kids should be supervised in the bathroom anyway... Just seems like common sense. Doesn't matter that they see one anther's bodies; what matters is that one kid is being teased about his body and a teacher hasn't noticed or said anything (that you know about).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are they seeing each other in the bathroom?

Since the rate is about 50/50, I don't understand how this is even an issue.

The more affluent and intellgient areas have higher circumcision rates

I love that "intelligent" was misspelled

Also, the only people I know that still circumcise are those who do so for religious reasons. Wealth has nothing to do with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are they seeing each other in the bathroom?

Since the rate is about 50/50, I don't understand how this is even an issue.

The more affluent and intellgient areas have higher circumcision rates

maybe in 1970...

Maybe 1990-2013 but there is an update and the tide has turned
http://nypost.com/2015/01/29/american-snipper-why-more-men-are-getting-circumcised/
http://www.healthline.com/health-news/cdc-encourages-circumcision-120314
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2012/08/22/peds.2012-1989
"Evaluation of current evidence indicates that the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks and that the procedure’s benefits justify access to this procedure for families who choose it. Specific benefits identified included prevention of urinary tract infections, penile cancer, and transmission of some sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has endorsed this statement."

Sorry - still hearing about many affluent, intelligent parents foregoing the unnecessary surgery.

[Anonymous]

OP it really doesn't matter, the kids will find something else to laugh at about your son. Kids pick on each other, it happens. Give it a week and they'll be onto something else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are they seeing each other in the bathroom?

Since the rate is about 50/50, I don't understand how this is even an issue.

The more affluent and intellgient areas have higher circumcision rates

maybe in 1970...

Maybe 1990-2013 but there is an update and the tide has turned
http://nypost.com/2015/01/29/american-snipper-why-more-men-are-getting-circumcised/
http://www.healthline.com/health-news/cdc-encourages-circumcision-120314
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2012/08/22/peds.2012-1989
"Evaluation of current evidence indicates that the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks and that the procedure’s benefits justify access to this procedure for families who choose it. Specific benefits identified included prevention of urinary tract infections, penile cancer, and transmission of some sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has endorsed this statement."

Sorry - still hearing about many affluent, intelligent parents foregoing the unnecessary surgery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are they seeing each other in the bathroom?

Since the rate is about 50/50, I don't understand how this is even an issue.

The more affluent and intellgient areas have higher circumcision rates

I love that "intelligent" was misspelled

Also, the only people I know that still circumcise are those who do so for religious reasons. Wealth has nothing to do with it.

Agreed that it might not be wealth-correlated once you get above a certain level where people have medical insurance that will cover the costs, but it is absolutely not just for religious reasons either. Among my personal peer group (all university/grad-school educated, mostly middle and upper middle class upbringing), I only know ONE set of parents who did not get their male child circumcised at birth. Only a handful of the families are Jewish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are they seeing each other in the bathroom?

Since the rate is about 50/50, I don't understand how this is even an issue.

The more affluent and intellgient areas have higher circumcision rates

Most ironic post of the day.

I'm totally pro-circ, but I really enjoyed the irony of that one, too.

OP, you said all the right stuff - unless it escalates or really goes on, drop it. It's not too soon to teach your son that when people see that you don't care about what you're being teased about, they pretty much stop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi, OP. Not a crazy judge-r here, but I am a pre-K teacher.

I do _not_ think it's odd that the children have seen each other's private parts, but I _do_ think it's odd that the children have noticed. Not so odd that I'm necessarily concerned. We have one bathroom and the sink is in the bathroom and like it or not there is often more than one child in there at a time, as long as both children are okay with it. Most of the time they don't pay any attention to what the other does or doesn't have between his or her legs -- they're just doing their business and getting back to playing.

I would handle it basically the same way you did. I would tell my child that different people have different bodies and making fun of them is wrong and rude. I would give him some words to tell the other kids if it happened again ("I don't like it when you tease me" or "Please don't say kind words.")

If you do choose to bring it up with the teacher, I would bring it up the same way you would bring up any other concerns of teasing. Your child reported that he had been teased and you'd like the teacher to be aware of it. I don't think the body part being teased is all that relevant necessarily (although it could potentially be).

I don't think the issue is that the children have seen each other's privates. The issue is that there's teasing.

THIS.

[Anonymous]

I am uncut and remember being in preschool and noticing a difference in how my bits looked from all except one other boy in my class. For some reason it didn’t bother me too much, and no one really said anything or laughed at me. Except once when I was peeing in the toilet that was in the easiest view from the classroom and the playground, for some reason it was my favorite one to go in, and one of the other boys came up to me, and said (pointing at my penis) “hey, you don’t have one of those things around, just me and my brother do”. By “one of those things around” he meant that thick ring of residual foreskin that you often see in preschool aged circumcised boys. I was confused because I knew most of the other boys were like him, but when he started peeing in the second toilet, I noticed that his “ring” was almost the size of a donut, lol.
I was only laughed at one other time while peeing, but I think that was because I had decided to pull my pants all the way down that time after seeing a smaller boy do it, most of the bigger boys including myself were at the stage where we just “whipped it out”, lol
Unless it becomes a recurring act of bullying, I wouldn’t be too alarmed by it.