Parenting

Parents Are Hotly Debating Whether Tickling Children Is A Form Of Abuse

Tickling is one of those strange behaviors we have all participated in that seems really weird if you think about it too much. We…touch each other? In the armpits and feet? And wiggle our fingers like worms until the person screams stop, and maybe even then keep doing it? What a bunch of freaks humans are.

Lately, there has been a lot of discussion around how to teach bodily autonomy to children and it tends to set off a lot of fireworks. Many people think it’s totally normal to insist a child kiss or hug an adult even if they don’t want to, while others argue that you shouldn’t make kids do anything physical with family members or friends if they don’t want to. That’s how they learn boundaries and control over their body. Full disclosure, I’m in the latter camp. It’s not cool to make your kid show physical affection against their will on the reg.

But now they’ve come for tickling. Does this fall into the same category? Should kids get to say no to tickles?

The conversation at the moment is largely revolving around this post from 7news.com.au of all places. They wrote a story about a Facebook argument, sharing a single screenshot and what they claim was the conversation around it.

They say it starts with a mom writing that if a kid says no to tickling, even in play, stop immediately.

“If they come looking for it/ask for it, they like it,” she allegedly wrote. “Stop when they ask you to stop. It’s about consent and you are teaching them their body, their rules.” This then turned into an argument, as things do on Facebook.

“But generally it’s actually the best way to momentarily paralyse a toddler in order to get shoes on them,” one person wrote. Love paralyzing toddlers.

“They will literally tell you to stop, then immediately ask to be tickled more,” said another.

The mom stuck to her guns, which only escalated things. 

tickling child abuse, is tickling abusive, is tickling child abuse
via Facebook/7news.com.au

“He’s two,” one parent said. “He doesn’t have rights over what he wears, where he goes and when etc. I’m not out here advocating it as a punishment or being excessively cruel about it. But c’mon I think you’re delving into this a bit far.”

Mom’s mind was not changed. “This is one small thing you can do to show respect,” she said.

Developing a habit of asking for consent since early years will create a strong foundation of respecting others…

Posted by Smart-tots on Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Of course, this didn’t end there. The toddler paralyzer also claimed that the mom’s original point was comparing tickling to “child abuse” though that doesn’t seem true at all. It sure could be part of abuse if you are an abusive person and being psychologically weird or inappropriate about it. To me, it seems more like the original commenter just wants people to respect their kids and stop groping them when they ask, whether their shoes are on or not. It’s not like you’re feeding them life-saving medicine or something.

Unfortunately, now everyone is tweeting about how people are too sensitive and tickling is NOT child abuse. Reading comprehension isn’t strong with this crew:

Respecting other people’s bodies isn’t stripping you of parental rights. It’s just something to think about.

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