(NSFW) What word do you use when talking to children about female private parts?

Peepee.

mumu

shee-shee

You could use vagina?

Hoo-hoo

My gf grew up with “piggy,” which (to us) is cute enough to keep in use. And she’s 53.

My daughter use to call it poodie when little.

Former residence. ;)

No-no.

I have my daughter calling it her private area, that way its generalized between male and female. I have explained where her private areas are and thats just what we call it for now. When she get old enough to understand the word I will give her the correct word for it since she is only 3.

I knew someone who taught her daughters it was a cookie and it just sounded wrong to call it what it wasn’t.

Joni (from Tantra).

I don’t give my kids euphemisms for genitals. It doesn’t serve them. Making up words for genitals makes them think these places are somehow taboo which contributes to people being incapable of dealing with their own sexual health, sometimes. My 2 year old says penis and a-gina (no v pronunciation yet).

I think it’s Chocolate that uses vj.

Admittedly I used to call it your ‘you hoo” when my daughter was small. lol

I have a friend my age ( 50 ) that still calls it her ‘Wow wow.” hahahaha

@creative1 I do refer to private parts, that’s true. I like that because it gently infers it’s a place not to be put in the open. I was thinking about the occasions where I want to talk about their vaginas. Maybe I’ll just stick to the right word

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I know what you mean. I do think that they are not taboo but are private, that no-one is allowed there without permission.

I was taught to call it a ‘Tweenie”. No clue why.

I agree with @Simone_De_Beauvoir‘s method. Why shelter a child from using the proper terms for a body part?

@Stinley All of our body is private to others without permission. Our necks, our tummies, our arms. I want my kids to know what body parts are called so that they can name them in case of anything both to the attacker and to us, as parents. I don’t want them to be uncomfortable trying to figure out what they mean. I want them to say “he touched my penis’ or whatever, you know?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I do think that some areas are more private than others and that children should know this, but that’s probably another discussion.

I just asked my 10 year old and she didn’t know what to call her vagina, although when I said it she had heard of it. She named the penis as a willy but also had heard of penis. then started talking about swords.

Proper names it is, although I like vj. Thanks

I agree with the others who say just call it what it is. Then there is no confusion.

My daughter has a vagina and knows what to call it.

Home! Well, until recently ;¬}
Oh, I see @lucillelucillelucille more or less got in ahead of me….queue jumper! ;¬}
In that case I shall amend my answer. When I was a kid the “holy shrine” was known as the front bottom.

Why not call it a vagina and tell them about the privacy bit? Trust me, sheltering children only causes harm.

My son calls it a vagina. He refers to his boy part as a penis. He refers to breasts as breasts and calls a man’s pecks either pecks, nipples or “male breasts”.

We expect our son (age 5) to know his body. He needs to know what he may & may not show to others and what others may & may not show to him.

I agree in calling things by their proper names, and in addition listing the common names that others will be using. It doesn’t help a child much to know the proper name for vagina if everyone else persists in calling it a pussy, a cunt, a hooch, a va-jay-jay or any number of other names. (In addition to which, when people speak of the vagina what they usually mean is the vulva, anyway.)

Bagina is one I’ve heard

I vote for calling it what it is.

As a child, I remember other kids calling the vagina “foo foo”. I don’t recall my siblings and I using any terms. In our house ..those things were never spoken of. Goodness, the first time I got my period? I thought I was dying. I had no idea what was wrong with me.

@WasCy That’s a good point, they do need to know these words.
I just googled vulva and it includes the whole area – clitoris, urethra as well as vagina. I was meaning just the vagina as it’s for when I talk about sex and periods

@PluckyDog I never called it anything but front bottom but like you these things were not spoken about.

I know it’s my responsibility to be more open with my kids than I experienced growing up, especially so that they don’t have the same hang ups as me. They can get their own…

I can’t add to all the kid friendly ones mentioned here. Some of the more interesting ones for reference are listed here nsfw nicknames

Hope that helped.

@stinley, you may want to read over this past question about The birds and the Bees here in Fluther it was quite eye-opening for me as a parent. I had no idea that many people had to teach themselves
BTW:how is only the vagina going to be discussed for a “sex talk”? The urethra is important so she knows to flush her bladder afterwards & the clitoris is important, as it may give her pleasure…especially when she tries stimulating herself

Hahaha!—- now I remember I used to call it Chinatown.

As in, “Show me Chinatown.”

My mom gave me the “where babies come from” talk when I was four (4) years old, complete with a hand-drawn diagram of the parts involved. Suffice to say, it was called a vagina in our house.

True story – when I first started parenting my step-daughter (between the ages of 1 and 2) her mother had taught her to refer to this part of her body as her: “BUDGIE”. Yes, the same word as the pet bird.

So when she had diaper rash or didn’t like the bubbles in the bath she’d tell me: “My budgie owie” (owie = ouch-y/hurt)

I was NOT thrilled with this..and kept telling my SO (now husband):
“We have GOT to teach her the proper words, or a more commonly accepted euphemism like “private parts” because one day soon she is going to go to someone’s house and they’ll have a pet bird and she’ll be shocked when she finds out they keep THEIR budgie in a cage!!”

I was always taught “privates”. I know of one mother who taught her daughter to call it a “cooter”, until her pediatrician said she needed to know the proper names in case she was molested, so that she could tell people what happened. Now, I’ve always kind of felt like of all the reasons for teaching your kid the proper terms, this really isn’t one so long as the term you do teach them doesn’t really mean anything else. No 4 year old is going to tell a police officer that the bad man touched her “cooter” and the officer is going to think, well, that’s just her elbow…

There is also “vulva,” which is the “whole female genital ‘package.’ ”

“It includes the “lips” or folds of skin (labia), clitoris, and the openings to the urethra and vagina. MedlinePlus

@gailcalled The problem with the term “vulva” is that it doesn’t include the actual vagina, which can make it a bit confusing when dealing with 3 year olds, who aren’t great with subtle nuance.

Front bum!

Yoni.

Here’s another vote for vagina. We’ve never referred to vaginas nor penises by euphemisms. The kids will giggle when the terms are used.

I have to admit that I fail to understand the reluctance on calling a vagina a vagina. I don’t think there is much reluctance with penis.

Well, my kids call it a “vagina”.

My wife and I don’t believe that calling it a “pee-pee”, “hoo-hoo”, or any other cutesy name changes the realities of life nor do we believe in hiding those realities from our children.

Peaches or “bug”

Yet another vote in favor of teaching the proper names for things. I also like @Zaku‘s suggestion of using “yoni,” however, as it comes with overtones of respect and sacrality rather than being purely technical.

And for whatever it’s worth, the counterpart of “yoni” is “lingam.”

@SavoirFaire I do like yoni, because it’s more inclusive than vagina or vulva.

I’d go with privates or private part if they are young like a previous poster said.

When they start hitting 7,8,9,10 then I;d say it is important for them to know their proper names.

It may benefit them to know the proper names from the start (in terms of safety) however I feel it kind of robs them of their innocence in a way. Penis and vagina sound too much like vulgar in a 5 year old kid’s mouth. I mean those words are nothing as a teen and can be joked about easily however at 5 does not seem age-appropriate to me.

I am not sure when I learned those words. It definitely wasn’t early on. I just know I turned out good from what I can tell.

@raven860 They only sound vulgar if they’re taught that they’re vulgar. If kids are taught those words right off the bat, then it’s just another word – a clinical, medical, proper word.

Vajingo.

@raven860 Without looking them up, which of the following words “sound vulgar”?

-samenerguss
-schwanger
-kiiga
-saiijintai
-jardin
-balcon

(Hint: not all of them are vulgar words in their language of origin.)

My daughters both know the proper terminology, but they prefer to refer to it as their “tootoo”. They’ve never gotten it confused with a ballerina tutu.

I call mine my vajayjay or just jayjay, I also call it my tootoo when my girls ask me a question about it, and I’ve been known to say my “vj” or my “down there”. I do this simply because to me, the word vagina sounds like something slimy.

I was never taught that vagina was a “dirty” word or “bad” word, It has just always bothered me. I do actually use “vagina” when I’ve seen a gynocologist, but on my own, and in random conversations (like talks about piercings and shaving and things like that) I feel more comfortable using a euphemism. I wasn’t conditioned to do so, it’s just a personal preference.

I’ve heard small kids call it ‘gina’ with a long i. I assume the parents say vagina and the kids shorten it when they say the word. In my childhood, it was never spoken of. I don’t remember when I learned it. I think it’s healthier to call anatomical parts by their name and that seems much easier these days.

Here are a couple of German options, although some are only used by teenagers, not smaller kids:

blume, chäfer, dose, fut, honigtopf, katze, liebesgrotte, löchlein, lustgrotte, moese, mumu, muschel, muschi, möse, pussy, ritze, schnecke, schneggeduuz, spalte, vulkan, vulva, vötzchen

@mattbrowne: By the time you say all three syllables of “schneggeduuz,” people may have forgotten the question.

@gailcalled – As far as I know only people from the Mannheim region speak of schneggeduuzes – they love long foreplays, you know…

@mattbrowne:That kind of language does occupy the mouth, however)

edit:—Kissing, kissing, I meant kissing.—-

I also refer to them as schneggeduuzes. It just rolls off the tongue.

I think vagina works fine or just say private parts and be non-specific.

Zen, I looked up some Yiddish words: pirog, mutersheyd, pirge. Ever heard of them?

My Yiddish is rusty. Google translate to the rescue…

You know we’re in the Vagina thread, but what the hell: Pirog is some kind of Russian Pie – I may have heard the word before. Muter is mother and sheyd comes back as sheath – are you saying “Your Mother’s cunt” in Yiddish – or something like that? That would be correct for this thread. Pirge: company?

That’s ok, translate away – none make much sense…..

just to update- I’ve been having a vagina and penis conversation with my four year old. She did not have a word for vagina but she did know that boys have a ‘winky’. I’m going with penis and vagina and just saying there are lots of words for them but these are the proper words.

Thanks for all help

Lots of euphemisms here.

On a serious note, it’s best to get them comfortable just calling it what it is.
I don’t believe in baby talk for kids either.

Harry S. Plinkett calls it a “sex hole”

The Cock Ness Monster

Whoops, I thought you were asking what we call our own junk. That’s what I get for not reading the details section.

Just use the medically accurate terms.

In the right setting, I’m OK with people seeing any of my bits. But my brain is private parts. Don;t go in there and muck around unless invited. Talk to me, instead, about why I ought to go in and change my mind myself.

I don’t think I saw anyone mention vajayjay? That seems to be the new popular one now. My husband uses cha cha. If you use vagina, eventually, when they are a little older, maybe point out the vagina is actually the inside part. So many women have no clue what is really the vagina anatomically.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I had to change the title so it’s now NSFW-friendly but a bit less precise for those just joining…

@Stinley You could change it to “What do kids call a woman’s private parts?” or “What can I call a woman’s private parts with my kids?”

@SavoirFaire thanks, I was looking for that exact phrase and failed. I’ll change it again to What do kids call a woman’s private parts?

Count another vote for using proper names with kids. It’s silly to think that they need to use euphemisms – kids shouldn’t have to think that “penis” and “vagina” are dirty words.

When it comes to “pet names”, though, I’m a fan of cha-cha.

On the rare occasions I actually need to refer to those parts of anatomy, I use pictures. I put the pictures in a box and the box has a curtain over it, and then the child can pull the curtain apart and view the contents within in privacy. Then, when they are done, we continue our conversation, only each time we need to name something, we point to the box and say mmph-hmm.

Other than that, we try to keep all knowledge of mmph-hmm from them as they will surely, never have use for such knowledge, innocent beings that they are. So pure and so desireless.

That’s a funny, in case you thought I was serious.

We use bottom when talking about anything to do with between the cheeks. If someones says, “my butt hurts” then it’s just about the rumpy part but if someone says privately, “there’s something going on with my bottom” then we know they’re talking more serious stuff.

I don’t think I’ve hear testicles used, they pretty much just call them balls and breasts are called boobs. Vagina is used rarely in reference to anything inside otherwise it’s just called crotch or lips.

I’m sure amongst themselves the kids call their parts dick, pussy, ass, tits, etc. They’re all teens and very versed in Myspace, Facebook and Xbox live chat speak. I don’t there’s anything they haven’t seen on the internet that we have. They’ve know about Urban Dictionary for some time too and have us stumped rather than the other way around.