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Hi everyone, Melissa here at CloudMom, talking today about when do you stop dressing and
undressing in front of your kids? We had a very interesting piece by a blogger named
Beth Anne on Babble and she talks about how self conscious she has started to feel around
her toddler, Harrison. Beth Anne says that she even feels like throwing on her bathrobe.
Well, this is something I dealt with, with all three of my older boys. They're now five,
seven and eight. And it happened with each of them around the age of four. When they
were very little, I would have around me when I was in the shower, dressing, undressing,
trying things on, whatever, and it was all fine. But with each of them there was a very
concrete moment, almost a visceral moment, where for the first time I started to feel
uncomfortable. And I think that this moment stemmed from the fact that they were really
observing and noticing my body for the first time. So for me, this was kind of like my
pointed moment, my sort of stop moment where I really started to think about how often
I was dressing or undressing in front of my kids. Now obviously, when it comes to how
we all are around the home, private zone, people have all sorts of things that they
prefer to do. I am not a walk-around-the-house-naked kind of gal much to my husband's chagrin.
It's just not my thing. I'm much more comfortable when I'm wearing my padded bra and a pair
of black pants, but not everybody is this way. So obviously this is a completely personal
thing that's gonna very much weigh into your decision of when you want to stop dressing
and undressing, or if you wanna stop dressing or undressing in front of your kid. But I
know for me with each of these boys there was sort of this moment when I started to
feel uncomfortable. So what did I do then? Well, here's really what I did. If they ran
in, I was naked or whatever and I felt uncomfortable, I just would sort of gently usher them out
and I would say "Mommy needs privacy". But not in like a crazy way as if they'd done
something wrong. Just sort of say, "Mommy needs her privacy" and kinda make clear to
them that there was a boundary there and that I needed some space. On the other hand, in
these casual moments like in the morning if they're in my room, I'm just sort of throwing
my bra on or whatever, I try not to make such a big deal of it because I don't want them
to feel as if there's something that we all need to be uncomfortable about or as if they
need to be uncomfortable about when it comes to their bodies. So this is really what I
do, but I'm very curious to hear what you do and how you've dealt with this issue. So
please comment on this blog on CloudMom.com or you can also tweet me @cloudmom on Twitter.
Thank you so much for joining and see you next time.