Anonymous wrote:My 10-year-old is coming home lately with comments like

"What if someone's name was Ava Jaina?"

"Oh, you said BALLZ!" (When I mention meatballs for dinner or a toy ball)
And constant comments about balls/nuts and how hilarious they are.

She seems to be getting a lot of this from one close friend, but she claims her whole group is into these jokes. Her group is just regular kids, mostly immigrants, not the popular crowd at all.

Is this typical for this age? Especially girls?

My mom terrified me growing up about participating in anything inappropriate - bad words, sexual talk, etc - and I had this guilt complex and could never fit in with others even throughout high school. So I don't want to repeat that. But also I don't want to encourage too much too soon with the sex stuff either.

Yup. More common these days than ever due to social media and internet. Was hard to find books with dirty limericks in the olden days.

Anonymous wrote:Not normal for ten-year-old girls, in my experience. It might be normal among pre-teen boys in the context of all-male sports and camps (based on my experience working with that age group in recreation contexts), but I have never heard it from girls and have never heard my eleven-year-old boy and/or his friends speak that way in front of girls or adults, even when they think I'm not paying attention.

Oh, be a good little feminist!

Joking about someone named "Ava Jagina" is perfectly normal...yes, even for girls. You used the word "obsession", which of course is less so.

Not normal for ten-year-old girls, in my experience. It might be normal among pre-teen boys in the context of all-male sports and camps (based on my experience working with that age group in recreation contexts), but I have never heard it from girls and have never heard my eleven-year-old boy and/or his friends speak that way in front of girls or adults, even when they think I'm not paying attention.

That said, what's "normal" in this regard will vary based on socioeconomic and cultural factors. If one of the daughter's friends is hearing crude jokes about body parts from adults in her life, from older brothers, or on social media, she may not realize that this kind of talk is trashy, unsophisticated, and hostile to women in that it tends to objectify bodies and promote an over-sexualized environment. This should be explained to girls and boys alike, with the core message being that if they choose to talk that way, they should do so only in locker rooms, and only if they want to sound juvenile.