By P Kevin Dykes

1. Start at an early age

Children are born nudists, even in the textile world we haven’t met a single kid younger than 3-4 years old that preferred to wear clothes over running around butt naked on a sunny afternoon. If you have the chance to integrate your children into the nudist lifestyle from the moment they are born, you’ll be able to skip an awkward situation and possibly several discussions. Children who have never known anything else will not question their nudity, or yours.

2. Start with being naked at home

Of course it’s not always possible to take your kids to nudist places day after day, so if you’d like them to get used to the lifestyle from a younger age, it’s important to include nudity in your daily life. Make sure to spend a reasonable amount naked together around the home so the little ones recognise this as a normal way of being. By doing so, they’ll also recognise it as a real lifestyle rather than something you do on vacation once in a while. How far you’re going with this is completely up to you and up to the way you experience nudism. It’s certainly not necessary to spend every second naked just to make sure that your kids follow your example, just by not making a deal about nudity you’ll often accomplish enough.

3. Do you keep it a secret or not?

When you don’t want something to be kept a secret, tell your kids. Yes, they are all little tattletales and chances that they are going to tell everybody who like to hear that you’re a nudist family are pretty large. This could go from a “Mommy why aren’t we naked like at home” in the queue at the supermarket to telling grandma that they can be naked around their own house to drawing a bunch of nude sunbathers when the teacher asks them to illustrate their last holiday. Just keep this in mind. If you’re still in the closet as nudists, it’s probably not the best idea to start including the kids.

A solution could be to ask your kids not to tell anyone about the nudity at home, but we would advise against this. First of all because as we said before, it’s hard for a kid to keep a secret and also because by doing so you’re giving the signal that you’re doing something wrong, that nudity is wrong. We don’t want that.

4. Find some nudist friends for the kids

Yes, we know how much you like that little silent campground where you used to go every summer, but now that there’s more of you, you might want to consider finding a new place to spend your naked time. Not only is a place without other kids extremely boring for yours, places with other nudie kids will also add to their acceptance of the lifestyle when they grow older.

Everyone who reaches puberty wants to belong, pretty much the worst thing that can happen to you at that age is finding out that there’s not really anyone like yourself, at least not anyone you know of and although you’d love that your kids end up seeing yourself as their reference, they will not. Nobody wants to be like mom and dad when they’re fifteen years old. By making sure that your kids have nudist friends, chances are smaller that they’ll turn away from the lifestyle sooner or later.

5. Don’t be too scared of people with bad intentions

We don’t like the idea that perverts can see us naked and we certainly don’t like that they could be looking at our children. Although this is an issue we shouldn’t treat lightly, you have to know that a nudist environment is very protective. Just because we’re all vulnerable when we are naked, we do watch each others backs and if somebody would have too much attention in your kids, people will notice and warn you or get over there and ask the person for an explanation. We would even dare to say that nudist environments are safer when it comes to protecting your children than many textile environments.

6. The story of the birds and the bees

Some people think that by exposing their kids to nudity this will turn them into little perverts or that it might result in child pregnancy. There is certainly no proof for this and we seriously beg to differ. Because they will be used to seeing nudity, they are not going to sexualise the naked body like textile teenagers do. This will give them more confidence about their own body and more respect for the body of their future partners. It’s pretty much an all win situation. And just like in the textile world there will be a time that they’ll figure out about the birds and the bees or that you’ll have to tell them about it, but we have no reason at all to believe that this time will come earlier if they are nudists.

7. What if they don’t want to be nudists anymore?

No matter how hard you tried, no matter how many nudist friends you’ve found for your kids, chances are that sooner or later they will turn away from the lifestyle. There are many different ways for them to do so, sometimes it’s pure rebellion, sometimes they get body issues and sometimes they just want to explore other paths. Let them go. There’s no help in forcing your kid to remain a nudist because you’ll probably only make it worse. Tell them that you understand their choice even though you regret it. Tell them that it’s not a big deal if they want to remain clothed, but that you are not going to change your lifestyle for them. You’re nudies and you will remain so, whatever they want to do.

8. What if they have non-nudist friends coming over?

Ha… this is a tricky one and another reason to put some effort in point 4. If the friends are nudist kids, there’s nothing to worry about. Your kids can be naked, the friends can and so can you. But what if textile friends are coming over?

Unfortunately there’s no answer to this that will cover every situation and you may want to be careful with this because being naked around kids that are not your own could get you in big trouble. The best thing would be to check with the parents if they’re okay with it and if not or if you’re not sure, we would advise you to cover up a bit when the friends are around. You don’t want to chase your kids out of the house whenever they want to hang out with their friends.

9. Sunscreen, a towel and a good book

Sunscreen is probably the most important of them all. If you manage to get your own behind burned, well, that’s your own fault and you’ll have to sit through it (although sitting might not really be an option). But a least try not to get your kids burned. Not only is it unhealthy but they won’t be the best company anymore.

From kids it’s more accepted when they place their naked bodies on some kind of furniture without first putting a towel, but we want them to remain nudists, right? So it’s better to teach them from the start to use their towel.

And yeah, they’re playing so many video games, this might be a good time as well to introduce them to the world of books, or at least to the world of playing outside.