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Imagine today is your child’s birthday party. As the party comes to a wrap (thank the lord, am I right?), you are collecting gifts and trying to condense them all into a fewer number of gift bags, the other parents are all popping over to say thank you for the invite and your family members are all starting to say their goodbyes. Your kid is sitting at the table eating a second cupcake, and as you throw away the last plastic tablecloth, a well-meaning family member comes over to say goodbye to the birthday kid. You tell them goodbye and then they walk over to your child and say “I’m getting ready to leave so come give me a hug!”.
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In this moment, there is this external pressure to chime in, supporting your well-meaning relative, and ask your child to get up and give a goodbye hug. But for me, and maybe for you, reader, there is another pressure that stems from our internal monologue. This pressure is one that wants you to let your child decide whether or not they want to give that person a hug.
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If you give in to the external pressure, your response probably sounds something like “Hey, bud, Grandma is leaving. Can you please get up and give her a hug and say thank you for the new LEGO set she bought you?”
If you trust your internal voice, your response could sound something like this, “Hey, bud, Grandma is getting ready to leave. Can you please pause what you’re doing to come say thank you?”
What happens next will depend entirely on which of those two approaches you took as the parent in the scenario. Your child either comes over and gives an uncomfortable, forced hug, or they come over and they a) give a hug because that’s what THEY want to do, or B) say thank you to Grandma for their new LEGO set and use their words to explain that they don’t feel like giving a hug at that moment.
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Let’s do a quick check-in, Mamas. How are you feeling? Are you feeling anxiety in your stomach or tension in your shoulders? Yeah, that’s normal. Take a deep breath, relax, and remember that the tension you’re feeling is probably not because something is wrong. It’s because your brain is torn between doing what has historically been done (requiring kids to give hugs as signs of affection) and what many psychologists and pediatricians have started to suggest in more recent years (letting children decide whether to show physical affection). Level with yourself, Mama. The anxiety is your own reaction, but it doesn’t have to be your kids’. You don’t have to make Grandma happy by forcing your child to do something they don’t want to do. They don’t owe Grandma a hug. They owe her a thank you, but there is no reason the thank you has to involve physical affection if your child doesn’t want that.
What you’re doing is not mean or encouraging ungratefulness. What you’re doing is teaching your child that they have autonomy and authority over their own body. You’re teaching them that their body deserves to be safe and feel comfortable, and that they don’t have to violate their own safe space or comfort zone for the sake of making someone else happy or easing a social situation. By allowing them to exercise control over their own body and decide whether they’re comfortable giving Grandma (or whoever else) a hug, you’re reinforcing something that is beyond critical to their ability to develop, communicate, and maintain boundaries. Because what may seem like a harmless hug here and there may actually feel like a violation to your child’s internal system — one that makes them second-guess whether or not they can trust their own body.
Mama, please know that I am not writing this to say that all hugs are bad and that if you’ve made your child hug someone, you are in any way guilty of anything nefarious. All I’m saying is that maybe we all need to give ourselves permission to pause and listen to our internal dialogue and feelings before we make a decision that involves our bodies. And that maybe, just maybe, if we model what it looks like to set calm and respectful boundaries, we can show our kids that love doesn’t require discomfort. And when we sit with our own unease in those moments, we’re doing the quiet work of breaking patterns we didn’t even realize we inherited.
You’re not raising rude children by not forcing physical affection. You’re raising children who know their bodies are theirs and theirs alone. And in turn, you’re helping raise the next generation to know that other people’s bodies are not theirs to dictate. And Mama, I think that is something worth feeling a little uncomfortable for.
