We touched on this topic a little on the Virtual Meet last night, and I had a follow on message this morning - so I thought it would make an interesting sister topic to this topic: https://www.anaturistworld.com/forums/topic/23/naturism-and-children
I want this topic to look at ways of introducing children to naturism. This could be at home, or maybe the later steps of going to a naturist beach, holiday, event or club.
Share tips and advice, share you past experience, and if you are looking at this for your own children ask questions and share your concerns.
Thanks in advance, Anna
I would say that a really good place to start is at home.
Ideally you want to always have a laid back attitude towards being naked around your children, allow them to grow up seeing you naked from birth and they will never question it. They will also hopefully never find it weird to be naked around you. We always let our boys enjoy being clothes free as babies and toddlers and never got to a point where we began to suggest they covered up. The outside world has influenced them, especially our eldest, to be aware that nudity can be something to question, but they still remain relaxed about nudity at home.
If you are not in the situation where you can start from birth, just introduce it when you can. Start by being relaxed about your own nudity, walk from the bedroom to the bathroom naked, leave the bedroom door unlocked when getting dressed or bathroom door unlocked when bathing and don't make them feel like it is a big deal to be comfortable with them seeing you naked.
Once they get used to you being naked they will hopefully start to consider the same attitude to their own bodies. Afterall it is nicer to be naked. Over time you can find more time to be naked as a family around the house. Use the garden, play, eat, and if you have a pool then that is an excellent excuse.
Once this is part of life talk about taking it out and about. If you show them an event or campsite and they see fun things like a pool or a water slide then that will be part of the reason that naturism sounds OK. Most children also love a trip to the beach. Chat about these things and let them know of rules. They can decide to not be naked if they like when you go to the beach, and just decide how they feel of the day. Same with a campsite, but explain there may be times when they have to, like using the pool. Make it fun, make it easy and make it natural.
Since our eldest moved back to England he has been much more wary about naturism, this coincided with becoming a teen and also with some nasty school experiences. So it wasn't something he felt 100% relaxed with any more. But he still is happy to be naked at home, still uses swimming pools, saunas etc naked, and has never seemed uncomfortable with our nudity, or the nudity of other people on beaches or at clubs and events.
Our youngest has remained much more at ease, and was the only older child last year who walked around Montalivet without clothes and was happy to be naked around the club we visited last month. He is now 13, and fingers crossed things won't change.
One thing is really important, and that is they remain totally OK with our naturism, and very comfortable chatting with other adults when they meet them. They have never acted like they find nudity shocking or concerning, even though our oldest, now 16, acts happier to be covered up around others himself. This allows us to continue to enjoy naturism, and also continues to give them some of the social, educational and honest lessons that naturism has to offer. When else do they get to see real people naked? In fact, when do they actually ever get to talk to adults other than teachers and family? Naturism offers them such a lot, much more than being naked. We feel it has made them more confident, polite, aware and friendly children. Last month our 16 year old sat in the TV room at the club, without us as company, talking to a group of men old enough to be his grandfather while he watched football. What an amazing social experience, the fact that these men were naked only adds to the fact that this is a cool and comfortable environment for our children to experience.
Awesome that's great to have shared your experience. I have a couple of friends who are from Germany and their family are nudist, awesome seeing how they were able to grow up it with and not have naturism as a secret or weird thing.
One of my mates family is involved in their local FKK club and spend most of summer there. He said growing up it was just normal to be nude socially at home, at the club or when getting to beach/sauna and his friends would know people would be nude at his home if they visited.
He said for a couple of years some of his friends would be more reserved about being nude but then usually when it came to summer, it was just the normal thing to do and they got over it once they saw everyone else was nude and wasn't a big deal.
Great point Ant, and I think that is one of the big problems we have here in the UK. Our boys almost never get to see any peers enjoying naturism.
When we went to Montalivet last year our youngest was the only child/teenager who went around around the campsite without clothes. The other children/teens did undress to use the pool, but they got dressed again immediately afterwards and would enter the pool cupping their breasts or genitals (depending on gender). Even if you were a teen that was happy to be naked, the fact that others acted like it was shameful made it difficult to not follow suit! There is an outside, learnt behaviour here, as no adult acted this way, but many people did wear clothes around the camp. This cupping of genitals or breasts is behaviour shown in films and TV when people strip off, and also mimicked by some naturist influencers/celebrities who promote a naturism where they place great importance on who can and cannot see these parts of their body.
Since being in the UK our sons have not gone to a single beach to find other children enjoying naturism there with their parents, and our visits to clubs have had similar results.
We even went to an event that was aimed at families, but families were still a minority, and most of the children over the age of 5 or 6 wore clothes most of the time, stripping off when they had to, like the water slide visit. Even the event organiser's children wore some clothes most of the time. So even though our children have enjoyed some moments of nudity with other children since leaving Spain, it is rare and they have been encouraged by peers to cover up as soon as possible and feel embarrassed about body parts while naked. Luckily our youngest ignores all of this at the moment. But it is not ideal and there is something wrong within naturism that this is happening. A shortage of children and families in general - non at beaches and few elsewhere - but when they are there they have a tendency to stay dressed whenever possible and are not relaxed about their nudity when they undress.
Obviously this is partly influenced by the outside non-naturist world, and some bad messages being sent out by influencers within the naturist community, but the big problem is not having naturist experiences often enough, and not having enough naturist families around to help change the idea that they can be naked as a casual normal part of life. If for example these children were going to a beach regularly, or a club regularly and other children were there, then the habit of relaxing around peers would grow. Going to an event or holiday once a year will not be enough experience to do that. The main problem: naturism is not doing enough to encourage families, and not doing enough to ensure those families that do exist feel supported, welcome and catered for when it comes to encouraging more families to be part of naturism.
In fact, certainly in the UK, naturist families are encouraged to be afraid. I have actually read warnings from within naturism that if a family goes to a beach that they will be placing themselves in a vulnerable situation and will not have the protection of organised naturism. Is this based on a paranoid fear or a desire to ensure that families stay hidden behind the fences of expensive, organised events? It is hardly surprising that naturist families are becoming an endangered species!
It is not easy for families within naturism today, as we have found out over the last five years. Anna is correct when she states that families are no longer encouraged, and our experience has been basically a mainly closed door policy when it comes to bookings within the naturist community.
Having raised our children to be body positive and accept the skin they are in at home, where our children naturally embraced naturism, we found ourselves entering the world of social nudity to be a difficult one, and even now, most of our family nudity is conducted within the garden at home, or at one official swim meet each month.
Raising children as naturist at home is not that difficult, our two embraced the casual atmosphere we had as parents, from an early age. We slept naked, so if we had issues with our children at night, such as bad dreams, or they were ill, we would naturally attend to them naked. It was normal for the kids to jump in the bath with their mum, or wander into the bathroom when we were showering, so from day one, they could see their parents were completely accepting of their naked bodies.
Children learn very quickly from example, so seeing us casual around our own bodies imprinted the same messages within them. We feel children naturally prefer nudity to being dressed, especially when they are young, and so we never stopped them at home, and allowed them to be their authentic selves, which when they had friends over to jump in our pool, our children led the charge, and soon all of the kids were in the pool naked. Our relaxed attitude with their parents who were always present, fostered a more positive view as we told them, “The kids are happy and having fun, leave them to play.” And so over time our friends adopted the view that kids love being naked, and our place was a safe haven for that.
High School became our first major obstacle, as the naturist world bumped heads with the dressed world, especially for our son.
High School aged kids today have become far too sexualised by society, and their lack of maturity present issues in the manner in which nude bodies are see and discussed, which leads to mis use of words and images. Nudity is weaponised within the young who have been poorly educated via apps like Tic Tok, which has become a battle ground of sexualisation and exploitation, where free porn is distributed to the young, who have not the emotional skills to deal with it, and as a result, the human body has become the focus of shaming, abuse and hate. Within society, naked people have been labelled, weirdo’s, perverts and freaks, and it all adds up in the minds of our young, who have been taught to hate who they are and how they look.
As naturist parents, we found ourselves caught in a battle with our son, who started to repeat what his friends were saying, and became an ardent hater of nakedness, to the point where he demanded the whole family dress.
It is here mainstream naturism failed us, because in their rush to overcome an attack on naturism back in 2020, the whole of UK naturism retreated into hiding rather than deal with the negative view of naturism, and to a degree, it has stayed there since. Family naturism has been placed on the back burner as a fear has grown of attack, resulting in naturist parents left struggling alone and fending for themselves, as there is now a major lack of facilities and events available for families to unite with other families. The truth no one wants to admit, is naturism is failing children, and parents have little options if they want to raise their children around others within mainstream naturism.
One event a year is not enough, and yes, some clubs do offer brilliant facilities within their boundaries for families, but the big issue is, they rarely advertise it out of fear of reprisals as the textile world has now become so bent and twisted over children and nudity, it has woven its way within naturism.
The current situation is that the whole of society has now reached a point where the largest majority have been influenced via media and people of influence to hate their naked skin, as it has impacted on every generation leaving naturism more isolated now than ever. The message within naturism today, is mainly stay in your clubs or stay at home if you have children, there is little to offer elsewhere for parents who want their child raised naturally and positively.
We are lucky, whilst our son has turned his back on naturism, our daughter has embraced it, and she is still a thriving member of the community. When it came to taking the first steps out of home into the naturist social community, due to the way she has been raised, she did not bat an eyelid and embraced socially naturism completely. We were more nervous than she was, as we watched her embrace her first socially naked event, which at that time was a swim meet, shortly followed by a beach visit.
Raising her at home within naturism showed, she had no fear, and treated the event in the same manner she would one of garden days when her friends came around. She understands naturism, and so takes what she has learned into her own naturist experiences, of which today she has had many, equally as many as an adult naturist. Raising children naturist at home we feel is key, but you have to be aware that the world is not such a nice place at times. There is no doubt in our minds that naturism needs to stop hiding and open up more about the benefits of good wholesome family naturism, something we have tried to do with a few others within the naturist scene. Mainstream naturism is lacking when it comes to families, and to be honest considering the long and established history of family naturism, especially in the UK, it time that those who organise on a larger scale within naturism, grew up, and stopped acting like the dressed world and stated acting like naturists, and worked to helped families reestablish the traditional roots of naturism, which id family centric.
There are so many positives for young children growing up in a body accepting environment, a great deal of which has been written about and recorded by the very organisations that are now shying away from families. Children flourish when they have no fear of being who they are and accepting themselves, they certainly grow into more well rounded and stable individuals, and yet, knowing this, more naturism these days lives in fear of being seen to host families. Change is needed to help our young, and it has to start with opening back up and catering for full families, only then we will have any hope of convincing the rest of the public.
