I'll try to keep this as short as possible. Basic background...my daughter is 8 and my niece (not blood related, close family friends of my wife's mother...long story) is 10, and they generally get along quite well. My daughter has no access to older kids aside from being around them at school, whereas my niece has two older brothers who are quite troubled, as well as a mostly absent father who has been accused of inappropriate behaviour with my niece. Nothing ever came of the accusations but everyone's careful around him and he does seem a little bit off if you know what I mean. when the girls were 4 and 6 I caught them in their underwear in my MIL's room during a visit. They had gone in there fully clothed and were giggling and playing around but nothing sexual appeared to be happening (yet). I didn't really react at all, and I just told them I didn't think it was a good idea for them to be playing in there with their clothes off and to get dressed and come out of there.Now on to what happened...They moved away for a while but recently came back, and this is where I don't really know what to think. Now that they're 8 and 10 they're obviously a little farther along, and a lot more curious than they were before, so I understand that, but that day in their underwear was always in the back of my mind. So sure enough, during a recent visit they weren't alone together for even 10 minutes when I decided to go and check on them and they both have the deer in the headlights looks on their faces, and without much prodding at all, my daughter tells me they were playing boyfriend and girlfriend and kissing each other on the mouth. Again, played it cool and didn't act like the world had ended, but I also told them that they were no longer allowed to play together unsupervised if this was the type of "playing" they were going to do. On the surface that doesn't seem so bad, until last night when my daughter asked me what "French kissing" is. I told her. She asked if she could watch her mom and I do it, and I told her that wasn't necessary, and that we both know she's seen it on TV. Then she said she already knows anyway, because she's done it...and admitted to playing french kissing with her cousin told me they were actually kissing with open mouths and touching tongues. I asked her if anything else happened and she said no.So I have officially restricted their contact because I don't need my child getting her sex ed from a kid two years older than her, and to be honest I really don't know who initiated this activity, so I also don't want to hear from my "sister in law" that my daughter is doing this to my niece.We have had age appropriate talks from the beginning, she's seen myself and her brother naked hundreds of times, and we're always very matter-of-fact when it comes to anything sex-related, so I decided that before it was too late I'd give her a quick crash course/refresher last night just to get ahead of it, including "if you have any questions, you can ask us" but she's really shy with this stuff so I don't force it. I really don't know what to think. She doesn't seem to be traumatized by it, but she was incredibly uncomfortable talking about it so I dropped it and just made sure she knew that she could talk to whoever she felt comfortable talking to if it was something she wanted to talk about, and that it was okay if she didn't want to talk to her mom or I about it.I'm having a hard time convincing myself that this was any kind of "assault" or whatever, but knowing how much more exposed my niece is to this stuff, I'm pretty sure this is stuff that's happened to her, considering how quick they were to get at it, and how much she seemed to know. So...as far as my daughter is concerned, do I just drop it and let her process it and let her come to us on her terms? Did anything really "wrong" even happen? I don't want to freak out and make her thing she did something wrong, even if she did initiate it, as I think this is more of a learning opportunity than something that needs to be punished. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2jR08TB
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