Showing affection to Your Child

One of the most valuable things parents can give their children takes only a few seconds, is free and never runs out.

It's hug.

"Hugs have so many good results you can hardly count them all," says Kelduyn Garland, a social worker who specializes in family attachment and bonding relationships.

She conducts workshops on the subject entitled, The Language of Hugging: The Importance of Showing Affection to Your Child.

At one section attendees decided that hugs can: connect, comfort, make you feel good, make you feel safe, give warmth, relieve stress, communicate love.

The first time we are hugged, says Garland, is in our mother's womb. "We are in an ocean of fluid, it's a totally tactile experience." That's why mothers may be more bonded to their babies than fathers at first. In fact, the sensory organ most developed at birth is the one most essential for survival: the skin and its sense of touch.

Garland tells of orphans who were abandoned as infants after World War II. They were kept warm, clean and fed by caretakers, but there wasn't any extra touching.

"Those babies were dying like fleas," Garland says. They had no social interaction, no emotional sense of protection and nurturing; this, too, is necessary for survival.

Not every infant gets enough hugs. One kindergarten teacher who attended Garland's workshop said she hugs her students and can tell that many of them don't know how to respond.

Garland says this lack of experience with affectionate touching will affect children throughout their lives, in their relationships as friends, spouses, and parents.

"You can't give what you haven't got," she says.

In one psychology experiment Garland related, mice were divided into three groups: one group was mistreated (thumped on the nose, swung by their tails), another was petted and touched kindly, and the last received no touch whatsoever. The first group became violent and aggressive, the second, open and affectionate. The last group had a higher death rate than either of the first groups.