Girl Scouts warn parents about forcing kids to hug relatives for the holidays

And people still wonder why I would be happy to own a cabin in the middle of the woods and never actually interact with society.

If you are actually parenting you should have some idea if your child has anxiety issues and should have talked with said relatives before hand.

That said even if they have anxiety issues good parents should be helping them work on it as well, our first and last step should not be medication, unless everything has been tried and their is still a problem.

If you spot the problems early and begin to help them at an early age you can often help them work through it, but that takes being an involved parent something that seems to be all to rare in this day and age when you can just get a pill for that. (yes I know there are people that need the pills to function, those should be the minority not the majority)

a reply to: Nyiah

Girls scouts are kids too. I used to hate being forced to hug old relatives.

Don't force your kids to do that, give kisses or sit on laps, it freaks little kids out.

Parental controls, sheesh.

a reply to: Irishhaf

Frankly, some parents are dicks.

But, yes, good parents are going to know their kids and get what the quirks are. A kid with super anxiety is going to be pretty apparent. It's sort of hard to miss, and if you are really going to be helping him or her through that, then you will be letting your relatives know ahead of time.

I'll have hands full this Saturday explaining kiddo's auditory disorder to all the relatives, for example. This is a new thing, so they'll want an explanation. And I have had to re-explain it to his grandparents in Tennessee at least twice now.

originally posted by: Nyiah
If anyone has been doubting if we've hit Stupidity Critical Mass in the US yet, doubt no more.


Girl Scouts warn parents about forcing kids to hug relatives for the holidays

Girl Scouts of the USA issued a warning to parents this holiday season, asking them to think twice before forcing their daughters to hug relatives at gatherings.

“Think of it this way, telling your child that she owes someone a hug either just because she hasn’t seen this person in a while or because they gave her a gift can set the stage for her questioning whether she ‘owes’ another person any type of physical affection when they have bought her dinner or done something else seemingly nice for her later in life,” reads the post on the Girl Scouts’ website.

I think it has the opposite effect. I have a family member whose mother used to tell them us and our grandparents weren't really their family because we weren't immediate family when we were kids. She wouldn't let my grandparents hug them or show affection. That family member literally became a prostitute.

a reply to: ketsuko

You nailed it, Ket. I'm not saying make the kids hug every single relative regardless of what YOU, the parent, knows of them. If there's reason to avoid and it's serious, do so. If Junior's just put off by Grandma Edna's breath, that's no excuse. Grandma's breath may be unpleasant, but so are countless other things in life, especially as an adult. There's a very stark difference between touch/sensory issue kids, mentally ill kids and normal stubborn ones. The differences & appropriate courses of action are not hard to spot and learn to work around. This blanket no-hug advice solves nothing in the short-term, or in the long-run. It's a universal crutch.

a reply to: intrptr

Nah, just a quick hug good-bye is sufficient.

But do you understand that for many with dementia life-like babies are a therapy item? Interacting with children is important to them.

a reply to: dug88
That relative comes off as very affection starved Would I be correct to assume that the mother was emotionally/psychologically abusive their whole childhood? Something as simple as hugs and affection make all the difference, it's sick when it's weaponized like that.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: intrptr

Nah, just a quick hug good-bye is sufficient.

But do you understand that for many with dementia life-like babies are a therapy item? Interacting with children is important to them.

Its okay to have kids say goodbye, but let them choose how.

"Come ere kids, say good bye", some kids will just say it, some will goto hug. it should be their choice, not our choice imposed on them.

Meh, I never forced my daughter to hug anyone, perhaps because I'm not much of a hugger myself when it comes to people I don't see very often.

I HAVE taught her to be polite, friendly and helpful to older relatives, just as I have always been taught. I think that's most important anyway. Hugs are optional.

a reply to: Irishhaf

because this is how it is in real life, in the perfect world you live in in the woods.


i won't ask you if you never had insecurities growing up or if your parents ever made you embarrassed, because you'll just say what you need to to prove your point.

but reality is, parents are humans, just like the child, they don't always spot certain things, or dont acknowledge some behavioral issues with children until many years later.
otherwise we'd be living in some utopia where mental health doesn't have a stigma attached to it, or be seen as simple as a parent being able to 'spot' anxiety issues which medical professionals themselves sometimes misdiagnose . if mental health wasn't seen as 'not a big deal' more topics like this would be taken into consideration..

a reply to: Nyiah


Grandma has Alzheimer's, so give her a big hug, was the line I was fed in my childhood.

Drugs not Hugs....

This is the exact same argument one would have when forcing 'respect' on someone just because!
I am all about not being robotic and keeping life real... so this is a hard one.

We're told to respect our teachers, cops, judges, parents, the president etc without any of them having earned it (through the eyes of the child). It just is. Which goes against the very nature of having 'respect'. At times we can be very robotic due to all our conditioning.

So this 'hugging a relative' is along the very same line of 'doing something just because it's expected rather than doing something because it's authentic.

(abused children are conditioned to continue to respect their abusive parent, or inappropriate teacher, or pedophile uncle etc.... so there can be a lot of conflict here)

I also think some of the problem is we're losing physical contact with one another as a whole. Greeting someone with a hug or even a kiss was much more prevalent (I think) when I was growing up 50 years ago. Now?....between catching germs (and whipping out hand sanitizer as if it's a standard item) , instilling the 'stranger-danger' fear and having more physical contact with ones phone/laptop than human beings.......this human separation will increasingly get worse.

a reply to: Human_Alien

I think its important to have physical contact with people you are close to, i.e., husbands/wives, parents/children, etc. I do not think it's necessary to hug on people you aren't close to.

I am a member of a women's meet up group, and sometimes I see women hugging each other while meeting for the first time. That just seems weird to me. It seems a bit fake, kind of like the fake kiss on both cheeks I see the rich and famous do. Its not for me.

a reply to: odzeandennz

Heck yes I have been anxious my entire life its a constant fight for me, add on to it as a kid I had a severe stutter, took 6 years of daily speech therapy to get past that, but by that point my anxiety was pretty high.

But my parents also did not cater to my every whim, they tried their best to prepare me for life and over all did a pretty good job of it.

Now obviously no blanket approach will work for all kids, I am not saying that but people have to stop wrapping their kids in bubble wrap you are not doing them any favors in the long run by being over protective now.

ETA: part of learning to function in society is learning to deal with people you do not care for, I have had bosses I hated being in the same room as but had to deal with it. Odds are high we all have, and that most kids will have people they cannot get away from even though they do not like them, teaching them at a young age how to deal with it is much better for them than them learning it on their own in the real world.

originally posted by: Nyiah
a reply to: dug88
That relative comes off as very affection starved

Would I be correct to assume that the mother was emotionally/psychologically abusive their whole childhood? Something as simple as hugs and affection make all the difference, it's sick when it's weaponized like that.

I don't know if they were abusive necessarily. They were both fairly neglectful as parents and the mother in particular has her own issues with a lot of things. I didn't spend enough time with them to say either way if they were abused but there was definitely a lack of affection all around. There was some oddly cruel things like they wouldn't give any Christmas or birthday presents from relatives to them and tell them they just never sent any.

It's really weird to me. The rest of the family is really close. My siblings and I all grew up with our other cousins like they were siblings.

Sounds right for these days huh

we hug family because our spirits know about family....we can feel the love

the new thought lacks love or family ...i do believe

fail for the new wave thinker there....huh!

It's an agenda to make human emotionless to the point of removing love from the Earth and destroying our natural beings

I just find the whole idea of wanting to hug a person who so obviously does NOT want to hug me absolutely foreign. Hugs, by their definition, are the physical manifestation of emotional intimacy. When a person pulls back from a hug, they just don't feel the emotional intimacy they'd need to show it physically. So why the bleep would I want to hug someone who doesn't want to hug me right back?

TL;DR - I don't wanna hug nobody dat don't wanna hug me too

And yet at the same time , they are encouraged to try to cookies to strangers.
Teaching them to play nice and be cute to get what they want from strangers.

Does anyone see the irony in that ?

I don't think that children should be forced to hug anyone, even a relative

If there is genuine affection and a hug is welcomed by both parties then great.

If a child doesn't want to hug creepy uncle Joe, you should pay attention to the child. Perhaps the child is picking up signals that you as an adult are missing.