The Towel Held Open

The bathroom floor is still wet from the first round. A grandmother sits on a low wooden stool beside a steel bowl of warm oil, and a three-year-old chatters next to her about a dog seen on the road. Then come the bucket and the mug, water over the head, a shriek, a laugh. At the end she holds the towel open, wide, and the child walks straight into it and is wrapped up whole. She has bathed every child in this family for forty years, calmly every time, and nobody in that bathroom has ever been embarrassed.

Later that day, in a room full of relatives, the same child points at their own shorts and asks what that is called. Or a four-year-old watching cartoons is found touching their own body, the way small children do. The room goes quiet. Someone says chhee. Someone else laughs too loudly, and an aunt says sharam nahi aati? Then everyone talks about something else.

Almost every family has said chhee in that minute. Most of us heard it ourselves as children, and it comes out before we think. But here is what the child takes from it: this part of the body has no name in this house, and asking about it makes the grown-ups cross. A child with no words for their own body is the hardest child to understand on the day they need to tell someone something. That is the only reason this small minute matters, and it is worth changing.

What is ordinary

Paediatricians and child psychologists have been saying this for decades. Curiosity about the body is a normal part of growing up.

From about two to five, children like being naked. They touch their own bodies, including the parts we call private, often without noticing who is watching. They are curious about other bodies too, a new baby’s, or another child’s of about the same age, and they want to know why boys and girls are different. From about five or six, something shifts. Children start wanting the bathroom door shut, they get embarrassed, and they ask where babies come from. From about nine, they want more privacy still, they joke with friends, and some have their first crush.

Researchers in the United States once asked the mothers of more than a thousand children aged two to twelve, with no known history of sexual abuse, what they saw at home. This kind of curiosity was common. An earlier study by the same team found that older children showed less of it in front of adults, not more.

No family has to slap privacy into a child. The wish for it comes with growing up, around school age, and the family’s job is to respect it when it arrives. So when your four-year-old does something that makes the whole room go quiet, it is almost always ordinary, and nobody in the family has done anything wrong.

The words we never gave

Every Indian child learns the word for elbow, knee and belly button, usually in two languages and sometimes three. For the private parts most homes have a baby word, a nickname, a giggle, a pointed finger, wahan, neeche, or nothing at all. One study of mothers of toddlers abroad found that girls were less likely than boys to be given any word at all. Many Indian homes will recognise that, and the boys in those homes are rarely told much either.

A child with no word for a part of the body cannot tell you about it in a way you will understand the first time. Uncle touched me there can be heard as almost anything. A child who has the proper word is understood at once, by a parent, a teacher, a doctor, or the person who answers the phone at a helpline. And if a child ever tries to tell you something with no words at all, take it just as seriously.

So give every child the real words. In English, a boy has a penis. A girl has a vulva, which is the outer part, and a vagina, which is inside. Give a girl her words as surely as a boy gets his.

India speaks many languages, and every one of them has proper words too. Use whichever your family will actually say, with one test: would a teacher or a doctor who has never met your family understand the word? A nickname fails that test. Then teach the English word alongside it, because that is the word used in schools, hospitals and police stations across the country. Whatever words you choose, every adult in the house should use the same ones, in the same ordinary voice they use for a knee.

Many parents worry that talking about this will put ideas in a child’s head. A United Nations review of the research found that teaching young people about bodies and sex does not lead to more sexual activity or more risk-taking. A review of 24 trials of body-safety lessons in schools found that children learned how to stay safe, some trials found they were more likely to tell an adult about abuse, and there was no sign the lessons made them more anxious or afraid.

In 2024 the Supreme Court of India wrote that many parents see talking about sex as immoral or embarrassing, and suggested the government bring in experts to plan health and sex education for children from an early age. Most Indian schools that teach any of this start with teenagers. Until then, if a child hears these words at all, they hear them at home.

Lajja that belongs to the child

Lajja, or laaj, or sharam, or naanam, whatever your house calls it, has mostly been asked of girls, and mostly as shame. Girls are given too much of it, as rules about how to sit and what to cover. Boys are usually given none, and relatives tug at a little boy’s shorts and laugh as if it were affection. Underneath all of that is something worth keeping for every child: my body is mine, it is private, and grown-ups respect that.

The house already knows how to give that respect, because it does so every day without thinking. The towel is held open instead of a wet child being pulled out of the bucket in a hurry. A six-year-old is told to shut the toilet door, calmly, and nobody finds it strange. Keep going in that voice. Knock before walking in on an older child in the bathroom. Change a child’s clothes away from the guests. When a child shuts the door to use the toilet or to change, let it stay shut. As soon as a child is able to, let them wash their own private parts.

When curiosity shows up in front of everyone, take one breath and say something like this:

That’s your body, and it belongs to you. Touching it is something you do in private, like using the toilet.

In Hindi: Yeh tumhara shareer hai, sirf tumhara. Ise akele mein hi chhoona, jaise toilet akele mein jaate hain.

Then turn the child’s attention to something else, with no punishment and no fuss. If they ask what a part is called, tell them in one sentence, with the proper word. If they ask where babies come from, give a short true answer for their age and stop there. A three-year-old will ask again when they want more.

Later that week, add the other half, because privacy on its own does not keep a child safe. Tell the child who is allowed to help them in the bath or the toilet. Then say: Nobody else touches your private parts, except to keep you clean or a doctor with me there. And nobody ever asks you to keep a secret about your body. If anyone does, you tell me, and you will never be in trouble for telling.

If you said chhee last week, you have not ruined anything. Children forgive quickly, and within a few days they will notice that the house now answers instead of scolding.

All of this works best when every adult in the house answers alike, so start with whoever does the bath. Often that is the grandmother, and she is usually the easiest person to win over, because she has been doing the hardest part of this for forty years.

No privacy and no proper word can stop someone who chooses to harm a child. The blame for that always belongs to the person who does it. What the child gets is something else: the words to tell, and a family that has already shown it will listen.

When to look twice

Most of what you see will be light, curious, between children of about the same age, and easy to turn into something else. That is ordinary. Stay calm and carry on with your day.

Look twice when the behaviour is stuck, secret or forced. That means:

• it keeps happening after you have calmly turned the child’s attention several times, or it takes the place of play;
• the child seems upset, frightened or sore;
• the child knows things about sex that a child their age should not know;
• it involves a much younger or smaller child, or a child with a disability;
• another child is pressured, threatened, or told to keep it secret;
• there is a sudden change you cannot explain, such as a new fear of a particular place or person.

Doctors list several possible reasons for behaviour like this. It can come from a health or learning condition, from something the child has seen or heard, on a screen or in the house, or from harm by someone. If none of it makes you fear for the child’s safety, talk to your child’s paediatrician or a child psychologist this week. A child whose behaviour worries you is still a child. In a ten-year study in the United States, children aged five to twelve who got a short course of the right therapy for this kind of behaviour were later no more likely to commit a sexual offence than other children seen at the same clinics.

If anything the child says or shows makes you fear they are being harmed, do not wait for an appointment, and do not handle it inside the family. Call 1098, the national child helpline, free at any hour, and if the child is in danger right now, call 112. Listen to the child, believe them, and do not press for details; leave the questions to people trained to ask them. The law requires anyone who knows a child has been sexually harmed, or fears a child will be, to tell the police, and 1098 will connect you to them. The law also protects anyone who reports in good faith.

The next time a child in your house points and asks, the room will go quiet for a second. Answer in that second, before anyone else does.

If a child is in danger right now, call 112. If a child has been harmed, or you are worried about one, call 1098, the national child helpline, free, any time of day. For emotional support, iCALL offers free and confidential counselling on 9152987821. This is a hard subject. If it is close to you, you do not have to carry it alone.