Is This Masturbation?

[SunnyClouds]

There is this five year old girl that lives in the same apartment block as my family does, and quite often whenever we run into her, she is seen just standing there, and squeezing her vulva between one of her fingers and a thumb. She does this just out in the open, down the hallway, in the elevators, but stops as soon as she notices either of her parents looking in her direction. I am curious why she does this? Is it a form of masturbation? Do lots of other girls do this? I love masturbating, and used to hump my hands, and many other things at that age myself. But I don't feel anything myself when I try to do the same type of squeeze. Am I just not doing it hard enough?

[Heather]

Hi there, SunnyClouds.

It's very common for small children to masturbate, even though for them, the motivation is usually different than it is for teens or adults -- for young children, based on all we know in both sexology and child development circles, masturbation is more about comfort seeking or exploring sensation without realizing there's something sexual about it for older people, because early childhood sexuality is just a very different animal than it tends to be once puberty starts. It also may be something they do without fully realizing they're doing it, especially since young children often haven't yet been conditioned by adults and the rest of the world to think of their genitals as any different from any other body part. The reason this child likely stops when she sees her parents looking is that she's probably been told that that's not something to do in public, and she's not yet fully learned that because she's just a little kid. Little kids can also be rebellious, like anyone.

I would not try and figure out how to masturbate yourself based on what you see a small child doing, and I don't think we could assess what kind of sensation she's getting like you're trying to do. Instead, how we find out what feels good for us is just exploring on our own, and what we discover we do and we like and feels good for us will tend to be unique to us.