A Rose by Any Other Name . . .

So...I think I made my child's daycare teacher a little uncomfortable this morning...

Let me begin by explaining that we taught The Punkin the proper word for her vagina. There's several reasons we did this, but to sum it up: we call an arm an arm and a leg a leg, why should we make up words for other parts of the body?

Also pertinent to the story, we have a new teacher at daycare. The Punkin moved up to the three year old class last week. So we're still breaking her in (whether that refers to The Punkin or The Teacher, you can decide :-)

Well, this morning The Punkin told me that her 'gina hurt. Lovely. She's had some problems with her bowel movements the last couple of weeks, please don't let her be getting a bladder infection, too.

So when I dropped her off at daycare the teacher asked if she was still 'running off' -- that's a colloquialism for diarrhea -- and I said it was coming and going. Then I told her what The Punkin had said that morning: "My 'gina hurts." I asked her if she'd just make a note if The Punkin told her that today when she went to the bathroom.

As I was saying "I hope she's not getting a bladder infection, too" the teacher's eyes got wide and she took a step back. Hmmm, she must be a germaphobe, I thought to myself.

Nope. Turns out it was not the loose bowels, potential bladder infection and lingering cough from a recent bout of croup that was getting to her. It was the fact that our 2-almost-3-year-old knew the word vagina.

"Oh, oh, I don't want to hear the bad word," she said.

"Bad word?" I asked, confused because I still thought this was about bladder infections.

Nope, the bad word was Vagina.

Now, I knew we would eventually encounter some resistence for teaching The Punkin to say vagina, but this is not the form I thought it would take. I figured we'd be talking to the teacher because The Punkin had taught another kid to say it and that kid's mom hadn't taken too kindly to the added vocabulary. But I had not expected to hear a grown woman call it A Bad Word.

Now I guess I'm going to have to rehearse the speech about Vagina-Is-Not-a-Bad-Word,-It-Just-Makes-Some-Adults-Uncomfortable-So-Let's-Just-Use-It-at-Home-and-the-Doctor's-Office-But-Not-at-School. I knew I'd be telling her this someday, I just didn't think it would be for this reason. Or so soon.

I suppose we'll have that talk tonight. I want to be proactive about it because I don't want her to use it repeatedly at school and then her teacher put the idea in her head that it's a bad word. There are plenty of tacky, vulgar and classless ways to refer to a woman's genitalia. Vagina is not one of them. Let's not be ashamed to give it a name.

Vagina, Vagina, Vagina

UPDATE: After some thought about this, I decided not to bring it up yet. The Punkin doesn't use the word often enough that I think it will be a problem with her Teacher. And I can't see the Teacher calling it a Bad Word unless The Punkin is using it a lot. So I'm not going to make it a problem until it becomes a problem.