With children, the general assumption seems to be "the more hugs and attention the better." However, there is one category of families that will often tell you, "Please Don't Hug My Child," and those are adoptive families.
Adoption is one of the many options for creating or expanding a family. A young couple might decide to adopt rather than have biological children. An empty-nest couple conclude that the best way to expand the family is by adopting a sibling group close in age to the biological children. Or, a couple struggling with infertility issues may decide that they are meant to adopt.
All children who were adopted are involved in a transition from the family or orphanage or group home where they live, to their new family. During that transition, and for months, or even years afterward, the child deals with varying levels of grief, loss, and trauma. Grief and loss at the separation from their previous family, and trauma due to the change in everything - caregivers, food, smells, clothes, or even language. Most children who were adopted also have suffered traumas during those early months or years of their life. Children may have been neglected, verbally abused, starved, physically abused, or, most sadly, sexually abused. Their trust in adults is shattered.
Parents of newborn biological children usually spend little time reading about attachment and bonding - that close connection happens easily. These children were loved and fed well in utero, and when they're born, they are held and fed, and have all of their basic needs met on a prompt and regular basis. They feel secure in their surroundings and trust that the adults in their lives will take care of them.
Many adopted children, on the other hand, were abused even in utero through drugs, alcohol, or physical abuse of their pregnant mother. This trauma is exacerbated by moves from foster family to foster family, or birth parent to orphanage, or birth parent to grandparent to aunt to foster care. They don't trust. They don't feel safe.
Some adopted children move swiftly through the transition to their forever families and are able to adjust, trust, and love. Other adopted children struggle with issues of attachment and bonding. They may be diagnosed with anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress disorder, or reactive attachment disorder. They may be unable to trust their parents enough to love them. They may be unable to believe the permanence of their adoptive family. They may cringe in anticipation of being hit, even though it will never happen again. They may have trouble identifying which of their family members is the main caregiver, since they've never lived in a family before.
It's the parents of these unattached children who will say, "Please don't hug my child." They are creating a snug environment around their child to help them identify with, trust, and eventually love their parents. The parents want to be the primary providers of everything in their child's life, to help re-create the safety and trust that was lost in the early years of their live. They are training their child to trust that these new parents will provide everything the child needs: food, warmth, medical care, and most of all - nurturing.
These unattached, distrusting children may be hard to resist. On the outside they look like any other hug-deserving child. But because of their lack of trust and love for their parents, they seek inappropriate attention - both emotional and physical - from teachers, church members, the school receptionist, the person in the seat behind them in the plane, the woman washing her hands in the public restroom, and the young man who serves up your ice cream cones. They smile, ask you to read them a book, and try to hold your hand. For the parents' sake and the child's sake, resist. Help the parents as they educate and love their adopted child into feeling safe, cared for, and trusting.
The next time a parent asks you not to hug their child, don't consider that as a mean or unusual request. Realize that this parent is doing all the right things to help their child to bond and attach.
Susan M. Ward lives in Asheville, North Carolina where she writes and educates others on family social issues: adoption, children with special emotional needs, parenting challenging children, and family grief issues. Her most recent book, Tears of Despair: The Sorrows of Parenting, was edited, designed, and many of the poems and lamentations written by Ms. Ward.
