I think ‘lack of hugging’ is a missing piece of the puzzle with developmentally delayed children and most people who are ailing. I’ve written about this, in part, once before talking about touch in one of my earliest posts on March 2, 2007 “The Three Primary Sensesâ€
Being English I didn’t come from a ‘hugging’ environment – reserve in all things was the order of the day!
One of the few advantages of living thousands of miles away from the place I still call ‘home’ has been to freely develop the ability to hug.
I’m fortunate to have many warm friends and acquaintances here in the US.
For the most part Americans hug more than the English (we are known for our ‘stiff upper lips’! But that attribute has also proven useful in the past few years!), although I suspect hugging may be a cultural behaviour rather than one that comes in many cases from genuine warmth.
Otherwise why would so many children and adults not appear to be warm even when they do hug you?
Did you ever have an instinctive feeling that you didn’t want to hug someone? I am starting to respond to that feeling and hold back – those people end up being scary when you get to know them! And it is their children who aren’t growing up to be warm and appropriately functioning human beings. It doesn’t necessarily make them bad people, just that physical contact isn’t their thing. That lack of physical contact with others does not seem to stop them from producing children!
Genuine hugs make you feel really good! Just think about it for a moment. I have cousins I hug when I greet them for the first time in a while and then I feel their bodies go “whoops, can’t do this for too long”! The rest of their behaviour towards me and my family tells me how they really feel about me so I don’t worry so much about their physical reserve. I can trust them implicitly.
That’s probably the biggest cultural difference I’ve found between our two countries. Implicit trust is another topic for another day.
When my oldest son was in a serious car accident nearly two years ago we took him to my husband’s hand therapist to have his wrist checked out. My son said that the most healing part of what the therapist did was the big warm hug she gave when she greeted him.
My sons hug readily, we have long, warm, comforting hugs on quite a regular basis. The warm hugs we gave my husband when he was so ill really helped him heal – he always says even now he feels his blood pressure drop when he gets a hug from one of us!
His most important doctors are huggers, although I suspect most of their patients would only see the high quality of care they give. And boy have they helped heal — us all!
Check out the healthiest children you know and you will find that they freely hug and are hugged freely by their families and close family friends. If they don’t know you very well you will sense their comfort level with physical warmth because they snuggle next to you to hear a story!
The least developmentally healthy children are expected to give hugs to the adults around them, on demand. The adults in their world aren’t the ones freely giving hugs. And even though such children understand their need for hugs they just can’t quite become enfolded into a hug, even when genuinely given.
Hugging is health-giving!
If we bring back the giving of genuine hugs we will start to heal children with autism, adults with Alzheimer’s, the sick and everyone in between!
Try hugging a warm person today!