Naked in Front of the Kids - When is it Time to Stop?

How many times have your kids interrupted you and your husband (partner, etc.) reenacting the very chemical reaction that created them? Do your children see you naked from time to time? If so, when is it time to stop? When do you feel your children are too old to see you full monty?



It seems my three mini midnight marauders, ages 5, 3 and 2, are gifted with spot-on sex-dar (think gay-dar but not gay). Just as the first kiss boils over into something much more stimulating between their starved for each other’s adult romantic attention parents, one of them annoyingly chimes in from down the hallway with a very un-sexy, extremely interruptive mom-demanding kid screech.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dashed buck naked down the hallway to stage-manage one (or all) of my kids back to sleep. Plain Jane Mom is in the market for a nightgown for the same reason. In fact, her recent ruminations on the subject are what inspired this post.



Every morning my husband parades around full monty as if we reside in a nudist colony. The kids never seem to notice when daddy’s bare in the buff. But when I am, forget it. The boys stare like deer in headlights at my deflated no longer in the baby nourishment business milk bags and make a visual b-line for my crotch. My youngest, my daughter Pigtail Sprite, 2, is none the wiser. She practically thinks she’s naked even when she’s fully dressed. Clothes are still irrelevant to her.

“Mommy, your butt’s jiggly like Jell-O,” my five-year-old, The Maestro of Mouth, informed me tonight as he back-handed my sporty running spandex-covered back end. “Back up the truck, mister,” I warned. “Your dad’s the only one who can smack that. It’s not okay for you to touch mommy that way. Understand?”

“Yeah, mom,” he said, uninterested in anything other than the extended wiggle of the junk in my trunk. “But why doesn’t mine shake like yours?”

Because you’re not fat. Because you don’t scarf half a pound of cheese a day. Because mom’s a voluptuous baby-got-back kind a’ dame. That’s why!

Of course I didn’t actually tell Mouth any of that shwag nonsense. Instead I quipped, “It’s a known fact that girls have better butts than boys ... Uh, and don't say that at school tomorrow.” What possessed me to say something so sweeping and (kind of) unfounded beats me but it sure got him off my ass, literally.

You know what’s really a hoot, sprinting to your kid’s bedside in your worst hoochi mama lingerie and wondering why your little bed-headed whipper snapper is staring in shock at you like you have three heads then realizing that, yep, you sure did forget to slap a bathrobe over your complicated garter get-up.

Not exactly a seductive sight post three back-to-back pregnancies. And certainly not a sight at all appropriate for children. Especially if they are your own and can potentially remember you in your 31-year-old birthday suit when they grow up.

My eldest and most curious child turns 6 this February. He peppers me practically every day with thorny human anatomy questions. With his heightened physical awareness and the advent of kindergarten, I’ve finally begun to practice a wee bit of modesty around the house.

I no longer dart from my bedroom shirtless in search of a clean demi-bra from the drying rack in the laundry room. I no longer ask him to fetch me a fresh towel after stepping out of my morning shower. I no longer sunbathe butt naked in the back yard. (Okay, that last one is a complete fabrication. I don’t have the ovaries to sunbathe naked in the backyard. Too bad … My summer tan lines will just have to die hard this winter.)

Last night I drew the naked line when Mouth climbed into bed between me and the hubster, who were newly naked and planning something overall unplanned, after having a bad dream. Reluctantly I allowed The Maestro Mouth under the covers and then dragged my bare self to my dresser to grab a pair of unimpressive flannel pajamas. I can’t say the same for my unapologetically nudist husband, though. He remained naked as the day he was born until he showered and donned a dapper business suit the next morning.

Victoria’s Secret headlines my to-do list tomorrow. And not for the sexy stuff this time. That begs the question "Is it okay to bring kids to Victoria's Secret?" Motherhood provides endless opportunties for beating your mama self up with nagging impossible to concretely answer questions and infinite possibilities for guilt down the line.

How do you deal with nudity in front of your kids? When did you start to limit it? How old were you and how old were your kids when you first started covering up?