The first thing I did, when each of my three children were born and they were handed to me wrapped in a soft blanket, all warm and wrinkled and new to the world, was kiss them.
I kissed them on their furrowed forehead, on their soft pink cheeks, on the top of their wet head, on their squishy forearms. And I kissed them on their mouth.
Yes, straight on their lips.
Lips so tiny they were barely any more than two little pink lines in a new, confused face.
But I kissed them there because they were my babies, I had just given birth to them, and we were connected in a way humans only ever can, in this incredible moment of connection between a mother and yet newborn child. And because it felt like the most natural, caring, loving thing in the world.
In the intervening 18 years that have followed the first kiss I ever planted on my children’s lips, I have carried on kissing them there. And just about everywhere else.
I am their mother. We are very emotionally and physically close, and relaxed with each other. And I don’t see anything strange about this at all.
So when it was recently questioned in the British media whether parents should kiss their children on the mouth, or whether this might be, in some way, ‘damaging’ to them…from as young as TWO, I raised an eyebrow or two.
What, I wondered, could possibly be ‘wrong’ with something so utterly natural as kissing one’s own toddler on the mouth? Is it not more disturbing to put our adult concepts and feelings of sexuality, links between kissing and sexual arousal, onto…a child??
Families know best
Of course, there is a question of age, and of what each child is comfortable with.
A lot can depend on how children are raised; if they are in a very touchy-feely kissy family, they probably won’t see anything strange about being kissed at all. They are totally used to it. It would be stranger to them to suggest that it’s strange – and I wish adults wouldn’t do this!
Some children just hate being touched at all, let alone kissed. And kissing on the mouth? Forget it. They can’t bear it. Like anyone else, personal comfort zones need to be respected, and if a child suddenly doesn’t want to be kissed or cuddled, that is absolutely fine. Sometimes they go through these phases. We just have to give them some space, and not force anything. Forcing someone to do something they don’t want to do (at any age), or imposing your wishes on them, is what can cause the problems – not the little kiss on the lips itself.
And of course, when they reach puberty and become aware of their own bodies, of intimacy in different ways, or become more self aware and less comfortable about physical affection, then this is often a time when parents might want to back off with the kissy kissy cuddly stuff, and let their children be the young adults they now are – and respect that.
It gets a little more complicated with wider family. A kiss from Mummy or Daddy might be perfectly normal, but a wet sloppy smacker from Great Aunt Muriel? Not so much. Best to make that clear to any relatives who like to show their affection a little uncomfortably for some. It doesn’t have to be a big deal; just a gentle word that Isabel isn’t so keen on the whole mouth-to-mouth cringing, should be enough.
Teaching affection
And then….there are child carers. If it’s OK for parents to kiss their children on the mouth, how about someone who is stepping into the role of parent, or carer, while we’re out at work?
I got into a bit of a debate about this on TV with a psychologist who said that if we teach our children that kissing on the mouth is OK, they might do this with child carers, teachers etc, and this could be awkward for everyone.
Well, to this I say…absolute nonsense!
A child is perfectly able to understand that Mummy and Daddy are different to a nanny or a teacher. And if they do try to kiss the nanny, it’s very easy to gently say ‘no, sweetheart, that’s for Mummy and Daddy, not for X/Y/Z.”
If you’re not able to say this to a child without freaking them out, then you really might want to ask yourself a few questions about how you communicate!
In all seriousness, making a child feel very uncomfortable about physical affection of any kind is unforgiveable, in my view, and we adults should know better. And it can, quite genuinely, cause enormous problems for them in later life, which may never be overcome. It can deeply affect their ability to form close relationships, and even prevent people from being intimate at all. So it’s really worth remembering how important it is to sense what’s OK for a child, and not push them if they’re clearly backing off.
But parents should absolutely be free to kiss their own children on the mouth, if their kids are comfortable with it. And until whatever age those children are happy with it. There is nothing ‘weird’ about it at all until we tell them there is, or until they decide they don’t want it any more.
At that point, we stop.
My children are teenagers now, and I do still kiss all of them on the mouth sometimes. Just a little peck. But it’s there. And for as long as they are OK with this, I will carry on, and always remember that first kiss in the delivery room, all those years ago, at the start of our lives together.
