Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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Many psychologists would agree that sexuality becomes fully integrated with(in) the child when awareness of and experience of self-sex is realized both physiologically and psychologically, if not "acknowledged" as such by the child by the age of four.

This acknowledgement of course, is to self; most children at age four do not have the capacity to communicate such awareness, certainly in ways that the adult readily comprehends or understands. On the other hand, most cultures socialize adults to disregard awareness of their child's capacity to know, in favor of interpreting adult perceptions "of the child's best interests." This learned behavior on the part of adults contributes to the child's difficulty in comprehending and communicating the actuality of their experience.

It is a biological fact that all children, even infants, are sexual. At this age and throughout our lives, sexuality is as ongoing a daily reality as breathing, eating, urinating, defecating and sleeping. Prior to age four children experience their sexuality as adults do, but outside of physiologically pleasant feelings they remain unaware of what these feelings are. By age four children have integrated these physical pleasures with their mental (emotional) awareness of them, what they are, they just cannot (internally) define nor (verbally) conceptualize and communicate them.

When adults are socialized by cultures that are healthy in addressing actual biological realities such as child sexuality without shame or guilt to "pick up" on the signals of such awareness among their children, these children are then acknowledged (validated) by adults for these universal experiences, and especially so, with regard to their feelings about these experiences.

This is a "make or break" situation for both the child and adult. The child has only his or her internal awareness, it has not been "tested," validated or acknowledged externally "by the world" of adults.

By saying, "Betty Anne, you're getting too old to sit on Daddy's lap, " Betty's father was acknowledging, in his way and for his time and of the culture he was socialized by, that "It's ok to be sexual, but it's just not appropriate now."

At the age of four, Betty Anne knew that her father "knew," and had been "told" through the action of being lifted off her father's lap, perhaps not for the first time (but for the first time that Betty Ann remembers), that these feelings of warmth had to be ended, for now.

In the same way, Carlin's experience of orgasm at the age of three or four, really happened. At the time she couldn't communicate or define it as such, but she felt it, because now, as an adult, she is naming her memory because she understands, as an adult, that that's what she experienced.

So girls - and perhaps those boys who are more keen to their feminine side - are sexually precocious at this age, though such behavior could happen earlier, and for boys especially, abit later (by five); in actuality Betty's experience of sitting on her father's lap is very common, spoken of quite frequently in the literature, and indeed, is "classic," stereotypical behavior for and by young girls, and there is an equivalent experience for boys.

For this reason, it's not coincidental that evolutionary psychologist Helen Fisher and others postulate that four years is the "organic" break for biological parents to first "get the itch" for another merging with say, a different partner; by then, Fisher argues, the "hot-wiring" of humans instinctively recognizes that the utter dependency/survivability of a child through infancy, toddlers, and "pre-school" has been reached ("satiated," if you will), and thereby, the continued need of these biological parents to be present in their child's life is unnecessary.

At this juncture, there is nothing more that a set of biological parents could/can do for their own child that other adults, and older children overseen by adults present in the local culture where the biological family exists, could/can not do. This does not mean that the biological parent's role in raising their own child would otherwise cease; the bonding all children have with their biological mothers, especially if as infants they are breastfed and cuddled often, and with their biological fathers, if the local culture provides for these men to be present and express affection (nurturing) not only for their own child but for its mother, continues in a special way for the child throughout life, because of these first experiences.

But in healthy cultures where it's acknowledged that the continuing needs of the child would otherwise be met by other adults other than the biological parents through an extended family of both blood relations and non-blood social friends, a child born into such a culture has far greater opportunity for positive experiences that integrates both internal biology and feelings and external stimuli, including teachings, than within the constraints of the so-called "traditional," nuclear-family model, a modern economic fiction.

Thank you, Mr. Chilton