Most parents want to take advantage of as many learning experiences as possible. Unfortunately, a lot of them go unnoticed. Sometimes, parents don’t realize that they are teaching their kids the wrong things. One woman, Laura Mazza, wanted to make sure that she was teaching her kids to respect themselves, their bodies, and their feelings.
So, when it came time for her son to tell some relatives goodbye, she made sure to let him know that he didn’t have to hug them if he didn’t want to.
She wanted to make sure her son knew that if he didn’t feel comfortable with it, he didn’t have to do it. It’s something she hopes he carries with him throughout his life. She feels that it is important for other parents to consider teaching their kids the same things.
She shared her story and her reasoning.
She said:
“Recently relatives came to visit and asked for a goodbye hug, and my son promptly said no. This person said ‘ohhh come on!! Just one big hug’ and I was looked at by the relative like I should encourage him by saying ‘go on give her a hug!’
“But instead, I said ‘that’s okay you don’t have to’…And what may have been considered as slightly awkward or rude on my part, it’s something I’m proud as a parent to say or do. My responsibility first and foremost is to my children. As their mother, it’s my job to stand up for them when they can’t and teach them to learn to stand up for themselves.”
She continued to explain why it’s her job to protect her kids and teach them these things.
She added:
“I am their safe place, one that they trust and I won’t abuse that by insisting that they do something that makes them feel uncomfortable to be polite. My son gets too much sometimes and wants to hug other kids, or his sister, a little too much. I can’t tell him ‘You can’t hug her/him if they don’t want to be hugged, but if uncle Albert demands a hug, you should give him one’.”
“Because I’m teaching my kids that no means no and that’s it’s okay to say no.
“It means no when I say ‘you can’t have an extra cookie’.
“It means no when your sister doesn’t want to wrestle.
“It means ‘no’ when your girlfriend/boyfriend says ‘no’ to sex or if you or they say, ‘I’m not ready’.
“It means no when you say you don’t want to do something with your body that you don’t want to do. So it definitely means no when someone asks you for a hug and you don’t want to give them one.”
The message is that you can still be polite, nice, and a good person and still say “no.”
“Unfortunately, I know all too well what it’s like as a child to be obliged to do something and be polite as you were taught and we only have to spend 10 minutes on social media to see the statistics of children being forced into situations isn’t a low one.
“But for now I’m their voice and I’m their advocate and I’ll make it count and hopefully that’ll give them the strength in all situations to remember my words and to know that they don’t have to do anything they don’t want to with their body and that, no means no and walk away.”
Mazza isn’t wrong to give her kids this option, and a lot of other parents agree with it.
Sometimes, we expect children to be polite over allowing them to be comfortable. When kids are told that they constantly have to put their own feelings aside to make other people happy, it messes with their own self-worth and can set them up for some bad situations as they grow older.
Teaching children to respect their own feelings and bodies also teaches them to respect others.
It’s OK to say “no” if you don’t feel comfortable doing something. Adults wouldn’t hesitate to do so, so why are kids not given the same benefit? Thanks to Laura Mazza and her story, maybe more parents will do this with their own children.
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