A Noodle By Any Other Name...

This is just going to be a quick, minor rant (hopefully), because I really can't describe who/where/when I heard what I'm about to rant...about:

I hate when parents teach their kids silly, stupid names for their body parts (and I can't describe which body parts, because then, knowing the internet, I'll get some nasty person trolling for horrible things looking at my blog...).  But I heard a mother today (a very educated lady who I know has taken anatomy and should therefore be comfortable with all the ins and outs of the human body) describe her daughter as calling her body part a "front bottom".  I almost threw up in my mouth.

Someone tried to teach him to call it a wee-wee, pee-pee, noodle, and only God knows how many other things.  (You don't call a bottom a "poo-poo", so why would you use "wee-wee" as a nickname?)  I nipped that in the bud, believe me.  Luckily, by the time he came home with those words, I had already taught him the correct term.  Or I would have suffered.  A lot.  From the moment my son became aware that he had more going on downstairs than his feet, I was determined that he would know the actual word for it.  It probably had something to do with the fact that I was entering medical school at the time, but let's not be picky.

I really can't figure out why parents teach nicknames.  As children, my sibs and I called a certain anatomical part a "squirt".  But, admittedly, that's funny, so maybe my parents just let us call it that so they could secretly laugh every time it came up in conversation (which was how often???).  I don't remember a point at which I learned the correct terms, so maybe we knew them at a young age, but just were not encouraged to use them.

I suppose some parents do it so that other adults won't be like "OH MY GOD!" when your son yells "Ow, I hurt my PEN15!" in public.  But if you're just trying to avoid embarrassment, it's not any more subtle when  the same child hollers "Ow, I hurt my pee-pee!"  Really not.  Sorry. That just makes me laugh more.  Which is really not what a small boy wants to have happen when he's just been injured in such a sensitive spot, after all.  My son's had his share of those moments, and yes, they're not the best parental memories, but children have to be taught that there are things you don't talk about in public anyway.  So why subject yourself to hearing "front bottom" in private...?

Anyway, I can't really express why I hate bodily nicknames.  But I think they're inappropriate and degrading, and feed into this horrible societal impulse to treat every normal bodily thing like it is shameful and sinful.  Isn't it a better idea to just teach our children, rather than hide our fear behind silly nicknames?

Ok, I'm done now.  Commence eye-rolling.