How young can a kid go and dress by themselves at a gym?

I don’t know if I’d be “peeved” or “creeped out” by it, but 12–14 is certainly old enough to dress on your own. If you’re old enough to have pubic hair, there’s no reason for mommy to dress you.

A mother should not share a dressing room with any son who’s age 12–14. Those sons should use the boys’ or men’s locker room. If a kid’s shy about disrobing in a room full of guys, he can use a toilet stall. Or, he can wait in line for one of the family dressing rooms while Mommy stays outside.

When you say that you’re “sort of creeped out,” you’re being generous.

And, I hope nobody will start the debate about how nudity’s common in other cultures, family members in other cultures routinely undress around each other, and standards and norms are just arbitrary and meaningless. In this culture, mothers don’t take off their clothes in front of their teenaged boys, nor do the boys undress in their mothers’ presence.

The only thing I can imagine is that the 12–14 year old boys just look like they’re 12–14 and are actually younger..and/or the mom can’t trust them not to get into trouble or change on their own in the men’s locker room.
OR, the mom does not trust that men in the locker room would leave the boys alone..and hence, feels more comfortable using the family changing room.

Personally, I have a 9 year old son and I wouldn’t send him by himself into the men’s changing area at our Y. If my husband wasn’t along with us, I’d probably use the family changing rooms—but he would probably change in the shower part w/ the curtain drawn and so would I (for privacy).

I would imagine that 8 or 9 and up would be old enough to go into the boys’ locker room by themselves. Is there such a fear of paedophilia that they are not doing this? Idon’t find it creepy so much as helicoptering.

I do not believe any child should be alone in a public dressing room. I would stand outside the stall, but never leave them alone.

The changing rooms at the Y are NOT just men and women. There is also lockers for boys and girls age 6 – 16. I wouldn’t send a 9 year old off to the men’s room, but to the boy’s room? I’d think so. I went to the girls’ locker room by myself at 7.

It peeves me because the locker rooms are CROWDED and there are little mini changing rooms in the family locker rooms. You can’t just scoot over and undress a little closer to someone. So when a kid far beyond old enough to dress themselves is taking up the changing room I assumed was reserved for babies, toddlers and preschoolers with their parents, I get a bit peeved.

It’s not so much the nakedness that creeps me out. It’s the treating your half grown boys as if they were preschoolers. I found out my sister in law still does the little turkey hand drawings with her boys—including one who’s a sophomore in high school and I felt almost the same way… really? You STILL trace his hand? And he has a learner’s permit? It wouldn’t surprise me if she would try to get him to change with her in the family locker rooms.

@janbb I would imagine that 8 or 9 and up would be old enough to go into the boys’ locker room by themselves. Is there such a fear of paedophilia that they are not doing this? Without a doubt, YES, affirmative, correct, yup, you got it, of course, you betcha, absolutely believed, no doubt about it. Any man who is NOT there with a kid or family is ignoring all those toned women in Spandex to lay and wait for some young skinny boy~

I think by 8 or 9 also if the gym is in a nice suburban area (I know pedophiles can be in nice suburban areas) that felt overall safe. As long as my son felt comfortable and he knew to never let another adult touch him, and to change in privacy, and that I would be waiting for him on the other side, I think it is fine.

Ugh, what a nightmare, in the girls/womens locker room I don’t even think about it. 4 year olds and 65 year olds all naked, no big deal.

Very creepy. My friends beat up some weird dude at the Y one day when we were kids. He never came back. If their moms had been there, they would not have done it. He would still be there.

I just asked my husband when he started changing by himself in a mens locker room, and he said by 6 or 7. Then I asked him what he thought about a 12 year old going with his mom to the family changing room, and he said, “stupid.”

@keobooks – maybe your Y is bigger/nicer than mine.. but my Y only has these three choices:

“Men”, “Women” & “Family” changing rooms. We don’t have any for boys or girls. That sounds like a wonderful option!

So, for me..my choice is to send my 9 yr. old son alone into a room where strange men are parading around naked, or take him into the Women’s with me (and the other women would not like that) ..OR go into the Family changing cubicles. Which I agree with you, are ALWAYS crowded…at least at our Y.

For what it’s worth, I live in a semi-suburban area where the average family has 4 or more children per family (we have 3 and sometimes foster a 4th)..so, yeah, I feel your pain..there is definitely always a wait for a family changing room.

My soon to be 9 yr. old son (our youngest, turning 9 next week) is still not entirely comfortable going into any men’s room (e.g. public restroom) by himself. When he’s with his dad – or even a friend, no issue. He just doesn’t like to be alone (no parent/older buddy) by himself (at this age) ever..at least for now.

@geeky_mama If your son is uncomfortable that’s one thing, and I can understand not pushing him. But, don’t most boys see their dad’s naked? It isn’t like an adult body is really that big of a deal is it? The men aren’t all rowdy in there like a high school locker room are they?

Does he still go with you into the ladies room in public restrooms? I would think that would be very uncomfortable for a 9 year old boy. As a woman I don’t care at all if he comes in there, don’t get me wrong. I have had men come in with their very little girls and I think it is perfectly acceptable. My husband came in when I was badly injured and I could not go to the bathrrom myself.

I’m just thinking out loud now that some locker rooms are more naked than others depending on how they are configured.

@JLeslie – I’m not sure what the Men’s locker rooms look like at the Y…but if they’re like the women’s ones..then it would be a lot of nudity. Women at my Y routinely walk at least half-naked from the shower and/or are actively changing (fully nekkid) around benches/lockers in a wide-open configuration.
I think my son is old enough to notice other women being naked—and so I’d prefer to not have him in the women’s changing room. (More so that he’s not staring at boobies and making any of the women changing uncomfortable…not worried about him..I’m worried he’d make some 12 year old girl in a training bra uncomfortable changing!)

And, to be clear it’s not that I expect the men in the men’s changing room would be “scary” to him or be anything but fatherly and benign towards him…and certainly we’re not all that uptight about nudity in our house (and yeah, he’s definitely seen his dad changing..and they go to Scout camp together and shower in the bunkhouse there)—it’s really more that he’s kinda young & immature for his age and he’s not entirely okay with going anywhere by himself just yet. And, he’s small for his age and could possibly be mistaken for a 6 year old.

He’s just recently started even noticing whether it’s a men or women’s restroom (e.g. in restaurants) and given his druthers, he’d really rather use the men’s bathroom with his dad to wash his hands..but if Dad isn’t with us, he’ll go with me into the women’s restroom to wash his hands without complaint or embarrassment at all.

…Annd now that I think about this some more, I’m remembering something that happened just a couple weeks ago:
We were shopping in a Target in our n’hood – just me, my son and the boy that we foster (basically like a brother to my son – he’s just turned 11, but looks the same age/size as my son.)
The boys wanted to go see the new Skylanders figures, but I was looking at dish soap & kitchen gadgets on the opposite side of the store from electronics so they asked to go look at video games on the other side of the store and we arranged to meet at the checkout area.

I wandered slowly towards the checkout and as I approached a store employee ran up towards me with a walkie talkie and asked if I was missing two small boys. I said we were meeting at the check out and she said, “Well, actually—he’s over at Guest Services crying and we were just about to page for you to meet him.” So, while the older boy was fine…our nearly 9 yr. old got worried & tearful when I wasn’t already waiting for them at the checkout. (We were apart for all of maybe 8 minutes?)
A couple of the Target folks looked at me like I was a crap mom for not being with my son and “scaring” him by not being at the checkout…but the older lady at the checkout was nice not judgmental. I got the sense that she was a mom and understood I’d tried giving him some freedom in a relatively safe place (together, with his older friend) but that it’d blown up in my face.
So, maybe it’s just my kid and maybe he’s a little anxious (hey, runs in the family..so it could be that…) but I guess that recent experience is also why I think he’s not quite ready to do the changing room on his own.

At our Y, there are not only special kids’ locker rooms, there is almost always someone cleaning inside and in the summer there is almost constantly a class of kids going in and out of the kids’ locker room. I seriously doubt that anyone could sneak into the kids’ locker rooms and hide out, waiting for a kid to be alone.

Maybe it’s a state law or something. The Y I went to as a kid was in a very small town and it had kids’ locker rooms too. In that town, I used to walk to the Y after school and get dressed for the pool, swim around for a bit and go home almost every day at ages 7 – 9 (then we moved away)

I know that towns don’t build sidewalks like they used to and it’s not safe for kids to walk home from school—let alone the Y. At my local Y, kids aren’t even allowed to be there without a parent under 12 anymore unless they are in a program. So most of my childhood memories wouldn’t even be possible today. But I think it’s kinda sad that kids are getting less and less independent to the point that they can’t even go to a locker room specifically made for kids on their own.

@geeky_mama Like I said, if he is uncomfortable going alone, I wouldn’t push him. I wasn’t assuming you would take him into the women’s changing room, I was asking only about the women’s bathrooms at public places. I also was not assuming you thought or were paranoid about scary men in the locker rooms, I was asking if men were rowdy, because I really am not sure what a men’s locker room is like, I would guess it varies a little gym to gym. My gym in TN I could see if there was no adult around if a bunch of the 14 year old boys were in the locker room they could be intimidating to a 8 or 9 year old boy if they all of a sudden got an itch to act up, be loud, etc. It’s the same reason I don’t like the 6th graders in the same school as 9th graders, which seems to be very common now.

I have never belonged to a gym that had a boys and girls locker room separate from the adult locker rooms, I didn’t even know that existed. My husband actually said he always went to the adult one without me even mentioing it, so I guess when he was little some of the places he went to they had it.

Kids at any moment can freak out if they feel lost from their mom. They can play for an hour never looking up to see if she is there and all of a sudden have a melt down. I wouldn’t worry about those stares you received at Target.

I was just talking to a mom who said she tried to have her 9 year old go into the boys dressing room and it ended badly. He refused to take his underwear off and nobody noticed until he was swimming for a while. He also lost his locker key and they had to get staff to open the lock. Then when they opened it, his shoes weren’t inside because he placed them outside the locker and someone put them in lost and found. After half an hour digging around in a giant box of shoes, they finally found them. They decided to wait a little longer before sending him off to the locker room again.

@keobooks Wow. Yeah, I guess he isn’t really ready yet. LOL. Poor kid. He probably felt badly. I guess you have to know your child, even then a parent can over or underestimate. I was home alone after school from the age of 9, really almost 10. I can’t imagine at that age not being able to make it through a locker room. By 10 I was on my own, my sister was around too, but she was younger, all day in the summers. I don’t remember if I was allowed to go to the community pool alone or not. By age 11 I was in Jr. High and we had to change for gym class.