Only On Top Of The Head

This post is about my son and hugging.  He doesn’t really like being hugged.   It’s not so much that he dislikes hugs for hugs sake, I think it’s more that it’s an interruption to what he’s doing or that he’s not in control of his body when you’re hugging him.

He doesn’t run away from hugs, but he doesn’t run to hug you either.   So I decided to work on it.   I’m thinking, like most things, that as parents we had a big factor in the hug (or lack of hug) stance my son has.    We made sure the children were find when we left to go out by not making a large event of our leaving, giving hugs, saying we’ll be back and to not miss us, etc.    And on that front we’ve been very successful.

We’ve done the same with bedtime and I’m glad to say our children don’t need a lot of external comfort to go to sleep.   They can give self-comfort well and nightmares excepting, they go to sleep easily all by themselves without a big to do.

But I do like to hug my son and with the recent sensorial evaluation and issues at school I’ve been making an effort to come over to him at random times and hug him.   Hug just his shoulders or legs if he’s busy, but do so in a way that gives a firm, steady contact with his body.  

Initially my son wasn’t so sure about it but he’s gotten interested more and more.   He doesn’t even flinch now when I come up to him and he’s busy, I think he even likes it as sometimes just my proximity will start a thoughtful dialog from him.

But he’s still a no way on the kissing.   Apparently I would hug and kiss him at the same time, wherever my face was so a hug with a kiss on his shoulder for instance.  We had some negotiations in which it took days for him to believe me that I wasn’t going to kiss him, I promised, only hug.   Once he was okay with that he let me do the hugging, initially with resistance but now with what I hope is happiness.

But I had to ask.  I asked yesterday if I could give him a kiss.   I could tell he wanted one, but he had to hold up that air of hating kisses so he begrudgingly said yes.   Then tonight I came downstairs and asked if I could give him a kiss—on top of his green hair’d head—and he said yes again.    After I kissed him he said, “you can kiss me any time if you want, but only on the top of the head.”   I told him I’d take it.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is interested in infinity and in a not related to infinity way, dragons.   So I had him watch Vi Hart’s dragon doodling on YouTube.   It’s high-level math concepts, but it’s done in a way that’s still somehow intriguing and interesting even to a child who’s not quite seven-years-old.   He kept watching her and started making math doodles on his notebook while he watched.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter experienced the loss of a stamp today.   We debated if it was a bad thing to use stamp loss as a negative motivator or if we were only using the stamps as a positive motivator like we do the pompon bowl.   But it worked, she lost a stamp and even though she had loads saved up, that was important enough for her to not want to have it happen again.