Preach, punish, and scream to stop kids from masturbating

[shedemei]

Over at imamother.com, a forum for Orthodox Jewish women, there's a disturbing example of what happens when you belong to a religion that holds masturbation to be so sinful that men and women are terrified of any situation in which a man might possibly be aroused by someone other than his wife. Like normal women sitting on an airplane. Or ultra-modest women wearing a wig one or two inches longer than the approved length. Or, in this case, being a baby/toddler with normal interest in their body who might turn into a crazy adult who masturbates in the street.

A woman wrote a post asking for advice on how to stop her six-year-old from masturbating. Like many hard-core believers in an Abrahamic faith, she believes male masturbation is 100% sin. Fortunately, most imamother posters are sane and understand childhood development, so they told her that self-pleasure is normal and not sexual at that age and that she should tell her child to do it in private, ignore it, and have The Sin Talk when the child is a teenager and it becomes a religious prohibition. All normal, right?

The twist in this thread is that there are a few batshit crazy posters, including the OP, who believe that a tough approach is needed. OP "punished, preached, and screamed" at her son to stop it when he was was all of two years old. She's surprised and frustrated that it's happening again several years later. Other posters volunteer advice (claimed to be doctor and/or rabbi approved) advocating drugs, lidocaine, and teaching your son to never ever touch or look at his "down there."

I kid you not.

The vast majority of imamother posters found this thread disturbing and appalling, and point out that OP's behavior is child abuse and the rest of the crazy advice is crazy and harmful.

imamother.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=261367 (currently public, but it's locked now and I wouldn't be surprised if it were deleted by their mods)

Here are some gems. After every quote, just insert a bunch of people posting variations of "WTF?!!" before the next reply.

[mollysmom]

I grew up in an ultra fundie house & if my parents even suspected that we were playing with ourselves my mom would beat the shit out of us. For example, when we were growing up she would randomly smell our fingers (yeah....she's a frickin psycho!) and if it smelled like we had been touching ourselves she'd beat us. She obviously didn't know how to handle it.

[mollysmom]

I grew up in an ultra fundie house & if my parents even suspected that we were playing with ourselves my mom would beat the shit out of us. For example, when we were growing up she would randomly smell our fingers (yeah....she's a frickin psycho!) and if it smelled like we had been touching ourselves she'd beat us. She obviously didn't know how to handle it.

Lol the more I post the more I realize maybe I should see a therapist lol :think:

[shedemei]

Lol the more I post the more I realize maybe I should see a therapist lol :think:

I had a different kind of shitty childhood. Therapy can really help.

I cannot even imagine smelling my children's figures to see if I could smell "fluids" on them. Gross.

[mollysmom]

I had a different kind of shitty childhood. Therapy can really help.

I cannot even imagine smelling my children's figures to see if I could smell "fluids" on them. Gross.

Lol I know! How disgusting! Yeah, she was/is something else!