Column
Don’t Force Your Kids to Hug Their Relatives Over the Holidays
Teaching children that they have to endure unwanted touching is a mistake
When my daughter Layla was three years old, a woman in line behind us at the grocery store leaned over and caressed her head and hair, cooing about how cute she was. Layla quickly batted her hand away, and the woman responded with a hurt look and a comment about teaching my daughter better manners.
I responded with the world’s biggest eye roll. Because here’s the thing: I don’t think it was my daughter who was behaving rudely — it was the woman who touched my child without her permission who was out of line.
Now that it’s the holiday season, parents need to channel that “hands off” attitude more than ever.
There’s still a widespread expectation in our culture that adults can touch kids without their consent: pinching their cheeks, tousling their hair, asking for cuddles. But even when the intentions are friendly, teaching children that they have to endure unwanted touching is a mistake.
Around this time every year, a Girl Scouts web page makes the rounds among parents on social media — a reminder not to force girls to hug relatives, even during the holiday season. It’s a good lesson for parents of all children, but especially girls, who are so often taught to be quiet and deferential.
The idea is that when we force children to hug or kiss adults — especially grown men — when they don’t want to, we’re sending a not-so-subtle message to young minds about their bodies not being their own. Some of my most visceral, unpleasant memories as a kid are about being forced to kiss or hug relatives during the holidays; it was a reminder that I was just a kid and I had to do what grownups said, no matter how I felt about it.
What the Girls Scouts hope, and are absolutely right about, is that we can start laying the groundwork with our children about consent through everyday interactions like these. Because when we don’t, they get messages they may carry with them into young adulthood.
If we teach children that adults are owed physical affection, for example, they may feel similarly compelled to…
