I recently saw a 5-year-old girl who had been adopted at age 2 from a Russian orphanage together with her 7-year-old sister. They both have transitioned extremely well. One behavior that remained, and was of some concern to the mother, was their self-stimulatory/soothing behavior of “masturbation” that they both would do prior to going to sleep each night for a short time. They were cognizant of this and had learned to limit this to only in their bed in privacy; the younger would occasionally ask specific permission, and would refrain if so instructed. I understand that some children outgrow this behavior (similar to other self-soothing behaviors). Upon discussion with the mother, the larger concern emerged of how their sexuality during their adolescence would be affected by this- would they be hypersexual or precocious teens? Any thoughts??

This is an interesting situation. As with all questions regarding comfort habits, it is worth considering if these children retain a little anxiety about their previous experiences, and need extra soothing when they're falling asleep, or if this has become a habit that works too well for them to drop. Five and often still seven are ages which still have a lot of magical monsters and bad guys lurking around the edges of the defenses you have to relax to fall asleep. I haven't found any very scientific theory pertaining to this question, but I would dismiss any concern about their later sexuality, given that it is one of the universal behaviors of children.

I can understand that it makes the parents uncomfortable. Trying to think about what is more common in our culture for kids of this age who of course all need comfort and soothing to fall asleep, I might suggest a lot of cozy things in a somewhat more extended bed-time ritual_ hot chocolate or icecream and cookies, warm bath, lotion all over, fluffy soft animal toys or a resurrection of a transitional object, if it's still around, musical good night songs or recordings, a back rub... I'm almost asleep listing all the things that would work for me. The idea is to socialize the comfort rituals if the parents are willing to participate for now with these still quite young children. If they're there, rubbing the back, I don't think the kids should masturbate. A fair rule is not when anyone is with them. If the parents want to stay with them to fall asleep, that should work. If they don't want to do that, they should probably not worry. Harriet McGurk