the amount time spent on it might not be healthy tho. she does indicate it's excessive. maybe just get him out doing more and different stuff, perhaps...?

Seven seems alarmingly young for this type of thing. A seven-year old isn't a 13 year old, Dan. I think consulting with a child-psych friend to answer this question would have been better (for all the OTHER parents out there...)

So I guess kids aren't too overscheduled...?

@3: "Seven seems alarmingly young for this type of thing"

Seven is alarmingly young to pathologize as well.

@5 that's why I recommended Dan ask the psych, not the parents.

I can explain the dinosaur thing. Kids are interested in dinosaurs because dinosaurs are awesome.

No need to thank me. I'm just glad I could be of assistance.

Sounds like LW is doing the right thing, kids obsess about shit all the time and most likely this one will move on to whatever shiny object piques his interest next in short order. Or not. Some things stay with you all your life, a love of music, a fascination with spiders, etc... when I was about that age, I discovered that (and I have never told this to anyone) rubbing the head of my dick on one of my mom's sanitary napkins felt REALLY good. Weird texture I guess. Eventually figured out I just needed my own hand and that phase thankfully went the way of the dinosaurs without me becoming totally obsessed with feminine hygiene products. Que sera, sera. What will be will be.

I don't think it's weird at all to have a fetish at age 7. I have been a fetishist for literally as long as I can remember. That means all the way back to age 4. However since I'm a voraphile my fetish takes place in my head and doesn't require props. I've talked to others with my fetish and similar ones (macrophilia, inflation, furry, etc) and most of them also began their feitsh in childhood. Some suspect they were even born with it. Of course, there may be a self selection problem here, since the people who want to talk about this sort of thing feel abnormal. For all I know the average person into vore developed that interest at age 24. It's hard to be certain because nobody is studying this sort of thing. I don't have any non-vanilla friends who developed their interests as adults though.

Anyway, I don't know what to tell the parents here. It puts them in a really weird position to be giving their son sex toys. There isn't any standard narrative for talking to kids about fetishes unfortunately.

Hardly sex toys @8, TLC. A bit of play material, pretending to have a broken arm or whatever. My just on eight yr old granddaughter plays broken arm, and walks around in a sling. Does it arouse her infantile sexuality. I Haven't asked.
I'd suggest LW that you just let him sort it, stop focusing on it. Even if it turns into a fetish later on, what harm is there in it?

I agree with @2, the amount of time spent on this one activity might be excessive. Perhaps the parents might consider outside and group activities for their son. His current preoccupation may isolate him at a time when he needs to be developing interpersonal and social skills.

I agree with Lava @8. Even if it's a lifelong fetish, what's the harn to the child, parents, or society? I'd be more worried if he had a preoccupation with torturing animals, intentionally hurting other kids, or some extreme obsessive-compulsive habit that could potentially damage his health or compromise his capability to deal with the outside world. The real squick factor here is that no parent wants to know ANYTHING about their kids' sexual preferences and activities, be they 7, 17, or 70, just as no kid wants to dwell on the idea that their parents conceived them via a sexual act - and most likely kept up the practice after their birth. I second Dan in commending the parents for remaining as cool as they can possibly be, in what must be a very uncomfortable parenting situtation.

Love ya, Dan.

Let's not get all concerned about whether the kid spends too much time in his room. I think the parents have a handle on that, and are asking about what they /don't/ have expertise about. Doubt they need our help on private time versus Minecraft time versus social time.

My nearly twenty yr old son did a mean dinosaur interpretation as a kid.
LW, as a mother to sons, I suggest you take a step back from this scenario, and let your husband talk with your son, alone. And that you don't ask what transpires in those conversations. Around six or seven is when my boys kicked me out of the bathroom and their sexual development. I hoped their father talked with them, he never said, and we've been seperated for seven yrs now, and don't talk. My sons are adults and appear comfortable with their sexualities, two out of four with sexual partners, at the moment.
In other words, I suggest you step outside your son's sexual sphere. No longer your concern, unless he brings issues to you. His dad should deal with it.
It probably is caught up with the infant experience. It traumatised him, surgery at that age. And this play, what kids do to work thru their experiences, is him working it thru. The sexual connection is him gaining some sort of control over the inner wound. At the same time, enjoying his stiffies. Funny word that, what I've heard kids say, can't remember when. I've spent a lot of my life around kids, fascinating little creatures.
Most of all, LW, Don't Panic.

Love to all the readers in Texas. What a horror. Stay safe, and beautiful to see the help you're giving each other.
I

LW, I'm not saying I haven't talked with my sons about their emotional life and make sure they are treating their partners with respect.
This boy is only seven, he's a kid. Don't project mature adult concepts onto his behaviour.

@16 Science says kinks and fetishes often begin pre-puberty.

Science says some infants masturbate to orgasm.

Some kids, not all.

The experience of sexuality is certainly different in early childhood but it's not projection. And sexualized behavior isn't always a sign of having been sexually abused (it might be a sign, but it might not; many mental health professionals are ignorant of this and say it's always a sign of abuse).

As adults we tend to forget early childhood sexual feelings, and sexual feelings post-puberty drown out earlier memories.

delta35@17, I'm not saying this behaviour isn't sexual, it obviously is. It is seven yr old's sexuality not an adult's. Don't impose words like kink on a seven yr old who has found a way to relive his trauma from the surgery, by both playing his game and feeling sexual feelings at the same time. It may develop into a kink when his adult sexuality kicks in, at the moment it's a loose game with benefits.
I remember clearly having sexual feelings as a five/ six yr old, playing lovers with a gf, where we'd run into each other's arms. Then the time, again I was giving fiveish when I stayed in a caravan or cabin with this family, friends of my parents. We all sleeping in same space,the parents and their son who was my age and me.
I guess they thought us kids were asleep, as they had sex. Not me: that was a big imprint sexually.

I'm not sure what the parents should do about their son having too much "alone time," but I have advice to parents in general: please teach your kids about fetishes.

I was raised in a very liberal Unitarian Universalist community, which prides itself on extensive sex education. My parents gave me a lot of age appropriate books on sexuality. In spite of this I grew up being completely ignorant about fetishes, BDSM, and kink. I felt very ashamed and repressed because of my desires. It wasn't until I discovered Savage Love in my early 20s that this feeling began to subside. I think parents should teach their kids that fetishes exist, and that they are not wrong. I see no problem with this being a standard part of sex education around the age of puberty. Sometimes people just need to be told they are not defective.

This child in this letter is probably too young to develop such insecurities, but that may change as he gets older and starts dating.

TLC @9: That jumped out at me too. It's one thing to tell your kids that people have different interests, it's another to provide the props for one's kids to get off. That strikes me as a bit creepy whether the kid is 7 or 27. I don't think they should shame the boy, but I do think it's possible to go too far in the other direction. At minimum, they should gently try to steer the kid away from indulging his medical fetish with other children, most of whom will not share his predilections.

Letters like these make me so glad I don't have children.

I've fantasized about being held out to be made fun of naked in public for as long as I can remember, long before I understood what sex was or what intercourse was, definitely before I knew what an orgasm was. I don't recall being ashamed of those feelings. It's just what I thought about when falling asleep. Even after I knew the sex basics, I didn't know any of that was a kink or that other people sometimes thought about the same things. For me it's a shrug, though I am interested in the psychological origins. And agreed about the parents giving him props while knowing what he's doing. That seems one step too far. Ideally kinks can be held in the mind and used in fantasy without needing actual enactment.

Fichu @ 21 - "Ideally kinks can be held in the mind and used in fantasy without needing actual enactment"

That doesn't seem like an ideal to me - more like a living hell.

Unless they involve doing actual harm to others, kinks are there to be enjoyed. People who really do have kinks might suffer psychologically - and eventually become obsessed to the exclusion of any other form of sexuality - if they try to confine them to their fantasies.

If your "kink" is merely a shrug to you, I don't think you're talking about the same thing.

I disagree about providing the kid props in this case. The kid is going to find bandaids. If they want to have sterile bandages available when someone skins their knee, they'll need to keep the kid from raiding the first aid kit. And if they hide them, he'll steal them from the store.

Meant to say: I agree with the parents and Dan on providing props, disagree with commenters.

As much as I love Dan, love you Dan, he isn't an authority on childhood dev. If the parents really feel this behaviour is too excessive, then they should talk with a child trauma specialist. Or take him to an art therapist, maybe he could paint out his feelings around the trauma. Kids are very malleable, and unless the trauma came about by something like watching your whole family get blown up in Syria, I believe they can work thru a lot of their issues with play and other forms of expression.

Based on my very own biased observations I would say that kinks can arrive at different ages and with varying intensities. Withholding them can be nothing but a “shrug” to some, while “more like a living hell” to others. I think it is also wrong to assume that kinks are always a result of a trauma of some sort.

As for the case in hand, I don’t find the boy’s age nor his activities to be too extra ordinary. The time consumption is worrisome to the parents, and I think it will be wise to introduce some other activities. That said, what might seem like your entire universe when you’re a 7 yo may fade into obscurity once you grow out of it. Or not.

@15 @18 @25 Assuming that a person's interest in something non-standard must be the result of trauma is very American. Where is the evidence that having surgery as a child is traumatizing and leads to fetishizing medical things? If that were true, all children who have surgery would fetishize medical things, which they don't. And all adults who fetishize medical things must have had traumatic surgery or major illnesses as children, right? Again, not true. Reason and evidence are powerful tools for understanding the world, you might benefit from exploring them.

There's really no evidence to show how any kink is born - lots of stories and theories by psychologists (of course) but no actual facts. Kink remains mysterious.

Childhood interests don't necessarily translate into adult interests, either. A good friend and her cousin, when they were 6 and 7, would hide behind the couch in her living room, where she'd roll up little balls of aluminum foil and stick them up his ass. She can't remember how it started, but she remembers them both enjoying this game for many months, and then moving on to other, non body-oriented, entertainments. And she hasn't done it, or fantasized about it, since.

Most people remember odd obsessions they had as kids. And most often they don't translate into adult interests.

CMD @ 26 - "That said, what might seem like your entire universe when you’re a 7 yo may fade into obscurity once you grow out of it."

Exactly. GI Joe (the 12 inch, bearded version) and Big Jim were my entire world at that age. Can't say they play much of a role in my life now.

Euh, hold on...

@27: "Assuming that a person's interest in something non-standard must be the result of trauma is very American"

Not discounting the rest of your point, but Lava is an Aussie.

Just wondering if anyone else's reaction to the headline was "eurgh, seven a.m. is DEFINITELY too early for kink"?

BDF @ 30 - Not if you've been up all night.