Delta4Embassy
Gold Member
While I know the psychological and physical benefits of hugging and touching, the idea of hugging or touching a kid here has me imaging full-well how an onlooker would interpret it. "He's a pedophile." In our desire to protect children, we've eliminated all the beneficial human contact so important to childhood development. Studies back before animal rights really caught on showed what happens to infant primates deprived of physical contact from their nurturing mothers.
"Deprived of their mothers, Harry Harlow's monkeys were at times apathetic, at times hyperactive, and given to outbursts of violence. Raised in isolation, they were socially inept: they often held themselves and rocked like autistic children.
What Harlow could not know at the time of his dramatic experiments in the late 1950s and 1960s was that these behavioral disturbances were accompanied by brain damage. More recent studies suggest that during formative periods of brain growth, certain kinds of sensory deprivation -- such as lack of touching and rocking by the mother -- result in incomplete or damaged development of the neuronal systems that control affection (for instance, a loss of the nerve-cell branches called dendrites). Since the same systems influence brain centers associated with violence, in a mutually inhibiting mechanism, the deprived infant may have difficulty controlling violent impulses as an adult. "
Article: Alienation of Affection
"Alienation of Affection"
Are we making all 'good-touch' 'bad touch?' And in doing so, making normal human empathy diminish in ourselves, and putting kids into an even worse state? Can anyone imagine returning a child's hug in this day and age? One of the boys here a few years back was evidently a hugger-type and when he first hugged me I remember going rigid with stress. And thinking back to my own childhood, I was just like that hugging teachers all the time. Yet over the years, and since becomming an adult, I've stopped hugging. Even feels weird hugging my Mom. And yet I fully understand the benefits of it. Has society conditioned me, and the rest of us, not to hug children out of fear of being thought a pedophile?
Are the people reading this now assuming I must be a pedophile? Case in point. We've been so conditioned to protect children, that any interactions between adults and children is thought inappropriate or worse. Even writing of it triggers the over-protective conditioning.
National Hug Day Is Jan 21: Have You Felt The Benefits Of A Hug?
"Myriads of studies have shown that physical contact between humans — such as kissing, hugging, or simply touching — is essential for overall mental and emotional well-being. Hugging, in particular, can improve psychological development, boost your immune system, decrease levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and lower the risk of heart disease: all perfect reasons to take part in National Hug Day, which falls on January 21st."
The only solution I see then, is reconditioning ourselves. And that begins with education and making people aware of the problem. If people don't understand they've been conditioned to feel a certain way about a certain thing, they'll continue on oblivious to it or how damaging the conditioning is.
"Deprived of their mothers, Harry Harlow's monkeys were at times apathetic, at times hyperactive, and given to outbursts of violence. Raised in isolation, they were socially inept: they often held themselves and rocked like autistic children.
What Harlow could not know at the time of his dramatic experiments in the late 1950s and 1960s was that these behavioral disturbances were accompanied by brain damage. More recent studies suggest that during formative periods of brain growth, certain kinds of sensory deprivation -- such as lack of touching and rocking by the mother -- result in incomplete or damaged development of the neuronal systems that control affection (for instance, a loss of the nerve-cell branches called dendrites). Since the same systems influence brain centers associated with violence, in a mutually inhibiting mechanism, the deprived infant may have difficulty controlling violent impulses as an adult. "
Article: Alienation of Affection
"Alienation of Affection"
Are we making all 'good-touch' 'bad touch?' And in doing so, making normal human empathy diminish in ourselves, and putting kids into an even worse state? Can anyone imagine returning a child's hug in this day and age? One of the boys here a few years back was evidently a hugger-type and when he first hugged me I remember going rigid with stress. And thinking back to my own childhood, I was just like that hugging teachers all the time. Yet over the years, and since becomming an adult, I've stopped hugging. Even feels weird hugging my Mom. And yet I fully understand the benefits of it. Has society conditioned me, and the rest of us, not to hug children out of fear of being thought a pedophile?
Are the people reading this now assuming I must be a pedophile? Case in point. We've been so conditioned to protect children, that any interactions between adults and children is thought inappropriate or worse. Even writing of it triggers the over-protective conditioning.
National Hug Day Is Jan 21: Have You Felt The Benefits Of A Hug?
"Myriads of studies have shown that physical contact between humans — such as kissing, hugging, or simply touching — is essential for overall mental and emotional well-being. Hugging, in particular, can improve psychological development, boost your immune system, decrease levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and lower the risk of heart disease: all perfect reasons to take part in National Hug Day, which falls on January 21st."
The only solution I see then, is reconditioning ourselves. And that begins with education and making people aware of the problem. If people don't understand they've been conditioned to feel a certain way about a certain thing, they'll continue on oblivious to it or how damaging the conditioning is.
