@JLeslie – I’m not sure what the Men’s locker rooms look like at the Y…but if they’re like the women’s ones..then it would be a lot of nudity. Women at my Y routinely walk at least half-naked from the shower and/or are actively changing (fully nekkid) around benches/lockers in a wide-open configuration.
I think my son is old enough to notice other women being naked—and so I’d prefer to not have him in the women’s changing room. (More so that he’s not staring at boobies and making any of the women changing uncomfortable…not worried about him..I’m worried he’d make some 12 year old girl in a training bra uncomfortable changing!)
And, to be clear it’s not that I expect the men in the men’s changing room would be “scary” to him or be anything but fatherly and benign towards him…and certainly we’re not all that uptight about nudity in our house (and yeah, he’s definitely seen his dad changing..and they go to Scout camp together and shower in the bunkhouse there)—it’s really more that he’s kinda young & immature for his age and he’s not entirely okay with going anywhere by himself just yet. And, he’s small for his age and could possibly be mistaken for a 6 year old.
He’s just recently started even noticing whether it’s a men or women’s restroom (e.g. in restaurants) and given his druthers, he’d really rather use the men’s bathroom with his dad to wash his hands..but if Dad isn’t with us, he’ll go with me into the women’s restroom to wash his hands without complaint or embarrassment at all.
…Annd now that I think about this some more, I’m remembering something that happened just a couple weeks ago:
We were shopping in a Target in our n’hood – just me, my son and the boy that we foster (basically like a brother to my son – he’s just turned 11, but looks the same age/size as my son.)
The boys wanted to go see the new Skylanders figures, but I was looking at dish soap & kitchen gadgets on the opposite side of the store from electronics so they asked to go look at video games on the other side of the store and we arranged to meet at the checkout area.
I wandered slowly towards the checkout and as I approached a store employee ran up towards me with a walkie talkie and asked if I was missing two small boys. I said we were meeting at the check out and she said, “Well, actually—he’s over at Guest Services crying and we were just about to page for you to meet him.” So, while the older boy was fine…our nearly 9 yr. old got worried & tearful when I wasn’t already waiting for them at the checkout. (We were apart for all of maybe 8 minutes?)
A couple of the Target folks looked at me like I was a crap mom for not being with my son and “scaring” him by not being at the checkout…but the older lady at the checkout was nice not judgmental. I got the sense that she was a mom and understood I’d tried giving him some freedom in a relatively safe place (together, with his older friend) but that it’d blown up in my face.
So, maybe it’s just my kid and maybe he’s a little anxious (hey, runs in the family..so it could be that…) but I guess that recent experience is also why I think he’s not quite ready to do the changing room on his own.