Stop Touching Her Like That!

He was a total stranger.

“Do you all need me to pray for you about anything?”

My friend was in the Target checkout line with her 12-year-old niece. The man with scraggly hair and an eager smile was making them both uncomfortable.

He stood too close.

And he wasn’t getting any of the nonverbal hints they were putting out.

So my friend moved her body in between the man and her niece and said loudly and firmly, “No. Please back up!”

Once they were back in their car, she debriefed with the tween. “You don’t have to be polite when someone is all up in your grill like that. You can just be direct. And you can always ask for help if you’re uncomfortable. Trust your gut.”

Sadly, I think we've all been Jerry here.

A colleague recently told me a story about when her friend was a first-time mom bringing her six-month-old with her to Costco. An elderly woman approached her cart and started gushing about how squeezable “those little cheeks” were.

Then the stranger reached out and pinched those little cheeks! Next, she grabbed the baby’s chubby hand and brought it slowly up to her lips as if to kiss it.

The new mother watching this personal space horror story, shook herself free from shock and instinctively placed her hand on top of the baby’s hand, blocking the presumptuous smooch. The gray-haired lady looked affronted and begrudgingly moved along.

These caregivers are the unsung heroes doing the difficult work of breaking generational cycles.

These interactions are so challenging because most of us weren’t taught to prioritize our physical comfort over the feelings of other people.

Even as adults, many of us remain frozen, quietly acquiescing in uncomfortable moments. Like our voice has been temporarily disabled.

Keep practicing!

Our moms and grandmoms certainly didn’t teach this to us, and they came by it honestly because their boundaries were not prioritized either. (And now, sometimes they’re the ones doing the boundary-pushing!)

We must gently educate them over and over again. Sometimes it's exhausting.

It’s our job to protect our child. It’s not our child’s job to make the adults in their lives comfortable.

Have you ever had to intervene in an uncomfortable situation to help protect a child?

Do the grandparents in your life respect children’s autonomy or do they need lots of reminders?

I’d love to hear about your experiences with holding boundaries around physical touch on behalf of your child. Hit reply and rant away! I can’t respond to every email, but I do read each one.

Rooting for you (and your boundaries!),
Mary