Guilt from childhood sex play

[Letsgooooo1234]

This has been haunting me for years
When I Female was about 7 or 8 I was hanging out with a little boy around 3/4. I was starting to learn about sex from friends and I started looking at him when he was getting his diaper changed. One day I poked and held his private part for a minute. I am not interested in kids nor have I ever been. Just confused why I did this and feel nasty after realizing what it meant after being an adult. I've been roles thianwas just child sex play and was innocent but I still feel like I did something terrible

[Latha]

Hi Letsgooooo1234,

I'm sorry you've been struggling with these feeling of guilt for so long! I agree that this just seems like child sex play, not any kind of sexual abuse. You didn't do anything terrible or nastyy. You were just being a curious kid.

It is normal for children to be interested in people's bodies. Naturally, that can include an interest in things like genitals and nudity. Sometimes children will express this by showing each other their genitals, or touching those of other children. This isn't inherently bad or abusive. Often, these children are just curious like you were, and haven't fully grasped concepts like privacy, boundaries, or appropriate behavior.

Abuse is different in a few ways: it often involves a pattern of coercive or manipulative behavior, it is deliberate instead of spontaneous, and it does not end when there is a distraction or if one of the participants indicates that they want to stop. That isn't what happened in what you've described.

How does it make you feel to read this?