6 year old not fully retracted

[maciascl]

DS1 just turned 6 & he is still not fully retracted. Should I be worried? He pulls the skin back as far as he can when he pees & in the shower/bath but other than that he doesn't mess with it too much. DH is not circ & he seems kind of worried so I don't know what to think.

[MommytoB]

My ex whose my son father wasn't fully retractable until he was close to his teen years . So I wouldn't worry and my boy is 5 yrs old nearing 5 1/2 he's only partially retractble so I'm not worried and if he's not fully retractable by 16 and he's not in pain I won't worry then because a few rare men out there who have not retracted at all and they aren't in pain.

[MCatLvrMom2A&X]

The avg age for retraction is 10yo. Not being retractable until adulthood is normal for some boys. Puberty usually takes care of things and it only becomes a problem if the boy is complaining.

Sounds like he is a bit retractable now so the process is underway. It may be next month when he is retractable or it may take until he is well into his teens. Either way totally normal.

[Crunchy Frog]

Here is a very informative article on the development of retractile foreskin that should ease your mind.

http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcisi...etraction.html

Your son is completely normal.

[Camile Rynd]

I asked my DH when he could fully retract and he said that he was at least 13. No worries!

[eepster]

It's perfectly fine.

Have you talked to your DH about why he is worried? Uninformed Drs (especially in the past, but still today) sometimes give dire warnings about boys needing to be circ'd if they are not retractable by X age. When your DH was a child it is likely that the Dr told his mother to forcefully retract him to clean underneath.

I would talk to him about how thinking has changed over the years.

[RiverSky]

Totally normal. My 11 year old does not retract yet, either, and has never had an infection or sore penis.

[A Mom's Love]

No worries! Dh didn't fully retract until early adulthood.

[tutucrazy]

Please read my article about this:

http://www.mothering.com/discussions....php?t=1176109

[Jaimep]

Tutucrazy! Thank you for that link. It answered a lot of my questions I was coming on to post about.

My son is 4. He was retractable last summer. On his own. I noticed on day as he was running around the house naked, that he was pulling it all the way back! I was shocked, but thought Oh well, its just because he plays with it all the time. LOL. Later it was kind of sore and almost cracked (like dry skin) or something. We thought it was yeast. Long story short, we messed with it (antibiotic cream, then other creams) for several months trying to get it "back to normal and retract again". Finally we decided that if it wasn't infected or anything we would just leave it alone and keep an eye on it. I was baffled and very worried since then about something being wrong with it.

I am super happy to read your explaination of how the opening works and that not attached doesn't mean retraction. Also your comment about retracting once doesn't mean it will stay that way in small children.

I also want to say, all of this happened AND my DH is intact. Isn't it crazy that he is intact but we still knew nothing about the care of the intact penis in children? It just shows the lack of knowledge about it in general.

[brant31]

For those intact men who were late retractors, it's easy to remember that the foreskin can adhere naturally for many years. But some guys loosened up at a much earlier age, so as adults they have no real memory of it.

The situation is probably even more complicated in the United States, where for generations the medical profession insisted that parents (those who were stubborn enough to resist circumcision) pull back their baby's foreskin every day for "cleaning", so those boys would never have known a time when their foreskins weren't retractable. It was like an entire culture lost its collective knowledge of how our bodies develop. Even the medical profession seems to have fallen back into the dark. That's the weird part.

Moms here are the seeds that re-implant that knowledge into our culture. It's up to parents who understand the natural anatomy to tell their friends and neighbors, to write articles, to shout it from every blog, to make videos and even to educate their doctors. This has to become part of our national discussion, or we're doomed to repeat the circumcision error all over again because of perceived "problems" with intact penises.