This NYT report probably has a paywall, but it is worthwhile reading.
Laughter doesn’t always signal enjoyment, and “stop” should mean “stop.”
www.nytimes.com
When she was a young child, Ashley Austrew’s father would hold her down and tickle her so hard she felt momentarily paralyzed. He thought they were having fun — the tickling made her laugh, after all — but she dreaded it. More than once, she rolled off the couch and hit her head on the coffee table.
Tickling was common in Austrew’s family, along with other kinds of roughhousing, such as a game in which her dad would pretend to sleep as she and her two sisters tiptoed around him, and then he’d pop up and playfully grab one of them. This game, she said, felt “safe, fun and funny.”
But the tickling was different.
“I didn’t like it, but also there was this pressure to like it, so it put me in a weird position,” said Austrew, a freelance journalist who lives in Omaha, Neb. “It felt like there was an unspoken social contract that adults were supposed to tickle kids to make them laugh, and kids were supposed to like being tickled.”
It’s a familiar story. Many of us have memories of being tickled in a way that made us feel annoyed, uncomfortable or even violated. The idea of unwelcome tickling dates as far back as
Socrates, who said it brought more pain than pleasure. Yet plenty of children, my 3-year-old daughter included, genuinely seem to enjoy it. Tickling sends her into fits of delighted giggles. The moment we stop, she demands more.
So what do parents need to know? Is there a right way to tickle our kids, and what are the dangers if we get it wrong? How do we tickle without violating boundaries? And should we be tickling at all?...
