Most parents see tickling as a harmless and enjoyable way of playing around with their children. But for one mom, it's not nearly as wholesome as it seems.
According to the New Zealand Herald, the unnamed woman recently went viral after appearing in a widely-spread Facebook post in which she claims tickling children should be considered child abuse.
And suffice it to say, people are pretty divided over this one.
In a screenshot obtained by LADBible of a Facebook chat between the mom and another user on the social media site, she writes,
"If [kids] come looking for it/ask for it, they like [tickling]. Stop when they ask you to stop. It's about consent and you are teaching them their body, their rules."
"So it'd be child abuse to do it to my kids?" the other user replies.
That person then goes on to explain that children can be rather fickle when it comes to knowing what they want. One minute they want tickles, the next minute they don't, and then suddenly they want them again.
"[Not tickling] is one small thing you can do to show respect," she shot back at the other Facebook user.
"It's easy and causes no harm. Why wouldn't you?"
"Tickling isn't going to traumatize a kid in this case," one user said, as per NZ Herald.
Another added, "What? We argue about tickling now? 2020 is the worst."
"I hate being tickled because my brother and sister would tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and wouldn't stop even when I started crying," one user commented. "I'm totally with [the mom]."
Another chimed in that they "tickle [their] kids, but stop the second they ask [them] to."
Sure, it can cause us to quite literally squeal with laughter. But in an interview with the New York Times evolutionary biologist Richard Alexander said tickling "does not create a pleasurable feeling — just the outward appearance of one.”
According to Healthline, we laugh when we're being tickled because we're having an autonomic emotional response. But in fact, the physical reactions are a panic response, much like someone might have if in severe pain.
Respecting a child's right to say "yes", "no", or indeed, even, "stop", will help them learn that they also have the right to decide what happens to their own body.
As psychologist Alice Miller once said, “If children have been accustomed from the start to having their world respected, they will have no trouble later in life recognizing disrespect… and will rebel against it on their own."
