Hug your kids, even if it’s uncomfortable – not being touched is a loss that’s hard to make up for

A foster parent recently shared with me the difficulties she was having with a child coming from a home with virtually no talking or touch.

It’s so tragic to me that we don’t teach parents how to interact with their children from the very beginning. Imagine if every parent had to go to a daily workshop for 30 minutes where they had to hold and talk to their child. Even if they didn’t want to be there, even if they didn’t change anything else for the rest of the day – the child would benefit enormously.

Once the children grow up without touch, it takes enormous therapeutic resources to overcome this. So much money and time is spent working with kids who have been hurt, and almost nothing is done proactively to teach parents how to love their children.

For a child who has grown up in a home barren of positive emotion, love and warmth can be the most threatening and difficult thing to deal with. You might think their hunger for love would lead them to melt into it when given, but for some children, it’s kindness can be the trigger for terrible acting out.

Whatever they got used to is familiar, and familiarity is safety – even if it’s abuse.

But every child needs touch and needs love, whether he seems to want it or not. As kids get older, you may have to be more creative about finding ways to physically interact that are acceptable to them. In our case, the twins were five and nine months when they came to us. That’s a lot of years of missing love and healthy physical interactions. But very fortunately for us all, they were physically small enough to pick up, which made it possible to remediate their loss much more easily than for older and bigger children.

Babies are meant to be carried around and rocked constantly. I wanted to regularly recreate the experiences they should have had as babies, because the more rocking they have, the better it is for emotional healing. It’s also good for brain development and vestibular stimulation/ regulation.

When they first came, we carried them around with us – a lot. They didn’t know it was unusual for six year olds to be carried around like babies! Dd wanted nonstop physical touch immediately so this was easy with her – the hard thing was putting her down. But ds shied away from physical contact or even eye contact. I worked on teaching him touch was safe and positive, bit by bit – first a little touch on a shoulder, then a pat, then a firmer pat, and eventually worked up to hugs. He loves physical contact and is so responsive to it, ironically, even more than his sister who initiated so much touch.

From the hugs, I eased into rocking. When I hugged ds, I would bend a bit to side on the right. The next step was moving to the right and the left, one time each, while being casual or exaggerating what I was doing by being being silly. I increased the motions, until he was used to rocking, and from that time, anytime I hugged them during the day, I added in some rocking.

But nighttime was the time I rocked them most. I put them on my lap as we sang Shema and all of the other songs, and rocked them while we did that. I did that for almost three years. I only changed this recently, when our bedtime routine changed due to the kids all going to sleep in the safe room at the same time because of the war. (I’m keeping them in the safe room for now, until the war is officially over.)

Physical touch is so powerful, and I touch our younger kids a lot – stroking cheeks, patting shoulders, hugs and kisses. Touch says ‘I love you and I cherish you’ without you saying a word! With our older boys (ages 17, 18 and 20) who are home less, I make a conscious effort to hug them at least once a day, before they go to sleep. Often I get in a morning hug, too. 🙂

Previously, ds9 allowed himself to be hugged and kissed but didn’t initiate, and didn’t seem to particularly enjoy touch. Then the twins came when he was six. Seeing us show them physical affection opened something up in him, and he began hugging them to say goodbye and as a greeting when they came home, just as we did. That turned into him spontaneously giving us hugs and kisses, and now he loves physical touch, and regularly initiates with all of us. The first time a married sister visited and he gave her a welcome hug, she looked at me and with surprise in her voice, asked, “Since when does he hug people?” It was a benefit us of having the twins come.

If you grew up without a lot of physical touch, it may feel awkward and uncomfortable for you to hug your children. And it may be uncomfortable for them, too! I grew up without physical expressions of love, but gave a lot to my children.

When I was 32, my mother decided she wanted to start hugging me, and when one day she told me she wants to start hugging me and gave me a hug, my skin literally crawled. I felt physically imposed upon and it was so unappreciated and undesired by me, for quite a long time. That was the case even though I hugged my friends as a greeting whenever we saw one another!

But eventually I got used to it and it’s been many years now that my mother and I hug one another without any discomfort or awkwardness. Even though I felt imposed upon at the time of this change, I appreciate my mother’s courage in making a shift that was also uncomfortable for her (imagine hugging your adult daughter who is more like a board than a reciprocal warm body!), because she knew it was important.

I don’t recommend suddenly beginning with a hug for an older child, who might have the same resistance I felt. Both for yourself and your child (whatever age), build up slowly with smaller acts of physical contact, gradually extending to bigger actions. Even if you have teenagers, don’t give up on physical touch!

Avivah