metaphortunate | the limits of consent

I have always been insistent that we are teaching the children, by talking and by example, about consent, and that one's body belongs to oneself, as much as possible within the limits of childhood. So, we talk about how everybody has to go in the carseat and get strapped in whether they want to or not, and if the Junebug doesn't want to go, I will put him there. Because that is a thing that has to happen. But if I want to tickle him, and he doesn't want to be tickled, then I don't tickle him, because tickling is just for fun, and if fun isn't fun for everyone, it's not fun.

(That concept was introduced to me by

kcatalyst: that if a game isn't fun for everyone, you have to play something else. My immediate reaction was "that's ridiculous! That would never work! How could you find something that was fun for everyone?" But I think

kcatalyst is very smart and has done a lot of thinking about how life should be, so I sat with that. For a long time. And I have been convinced. It sure wasn't the way I was raised, and I think there's probably a useful addition somewhere analogous to what Cliff Pervocracy has to say about the validity of unenthusiastic consent; i.e., it's okay if something's not someone's favorite game, they may be willing to play it to trade so that later someone else will play their favorite game, or whatever. But, rules lawyering aside: yeah. The idea that if a game is fun for three out of the four of you and the fourth is crying, it's not a good game…yeah. Wow, I really like that, and I'm sad that it took me so long to realize that.)

So I've been asking the Junebug if I can smooch him, or hug him, or tickle him. And he almost always says no. And I have strictly respected that. So, no smooching, no hugging, no tickling, no nose booping…the other day, though, I did something that, if I had done it to another adult, would have been really skeevy. I said I was going to boop his nose, and he said, of course, "No! No nose boop." I did not boop his nose. But I teased him, sort of exploring the limits, and ended up booping his elbow, and his toes, and he ended up shrieking with giggles, and the whole rest of the evening was playful. The truth is that I respected the letter but not the spirit of his "no". And things went much better. It was the evening that we had such a lovely time together.

And I've been doing that more over the past few days. And things between us have been going much better. I've stopped explicitly asking if I can tickle him, etc. I've stopped strictly respecting the spirit of "no, don't tickle me!" in the way I would with an adult. And I think we're both happier.

You know, the reason that the Junebug does not get to make the decision whether or not to ride in his carseat is not because he would make the wrong decision. Even if he liked it and would choose to, that wouldn't mean he's competent to decide, because he still wouldn't understand the situation and the consequences. He is not competent to decide whether he wants to be strapped into the carseat.

That was immediately obvious to me; it has been less obvious, but I have learned, that he is not yet competent to decide that he doesn't want to eat breakfast. With an adult, or an older kid, I will someday be able to say "That's up to you, but if you don't eat now, you'll be hungry on the way to daycare." The Junebug is not old enough to make that decision, I know. He doesn't follow that chain of consequences yet. It is up to me to get him to eat breakfast so that he has a happy morning.

I am starting to think that he is not competent to decide that he doesn't want to play and he wants to reject any friendly overtures and be in a bad mood that will last all evening. I want to give him as much autonomy as possible over his body, but - the effects of not being played with are more subtle than the effects of not having his butt wiped, but I see now that they are there. I don't let him choose not to have his butt wiped. And things have been going better when I have not been letting him choose not to be played with.

Conclusion…I don't know. Consent in kids is a moving target, I guess. We will have to keep paying attention.

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My kid is younger than the Junebug (19 months), and what's working for us is tickling (or booping, or bouncing, or whatever) her a little bit, paying close attention to her reactions, and then pausing to ask, "Do you want more, or are you all done?" She can say, in her garbled 1-year-old way, both "more" and "all done," and she knows the signs for both. If she doesn't reply, we ask again; if she still doesn't reply, we assume she's done.

Teaching her the importance of consent and that her body is her own is hugely important to us; this is where we're at in terms of trying to teach and model that in a way that fits her developmental stage. So there's some anecdata. Looking forward to other comments about this - parenting well is HARD. (Well, yes. Duh.)

Sometimes I call myself "a manager, a.k.a. a social sysadmin." That is to say, just as facilities takes care of physical infrastructure and sysadmins take care of digital infrastructure, I take care of less tangible infrastructure. I thought about this after reading your post, because you and your partner have to provide a lot of different kinds of infrastructure and nutrition to your children, even if they don't really grok all the ramifications right now so they can't give informed consent or refusal.

Also I have some painful memories of card games I didn't want to play -- or where I was at least not having fun -- and only, like, in the last YEAR have I really started to relax and treat interpersonal games as fun. (I'm crying just writing this, God.) I think in order to "have fun" you have to let go, let your guard down. You have to trust that the people around you will take care not to hurt you. The "has to be fun for everyone" rule sounds like a really good move towards that environment.

Tickling is a major, major, major horror-inducer for me -- almost approaching the level where I'd use the word trigger -- because it was done to me so much as a kid when I said no. And yet the kidlet has always adored it, and we've had many happy times involving me tickling her.

I've always used

wintercreek's approach -- tickling with lots of pauses for discovering whether she's still enthusiastic about it. (One of the problems that my Tickling Uncles and my later Tickling Male Friends had was that even a person who hates being tickled will laugh, and also that a person being tickled gets to the point of not being able to speak. Honestly, I should have just peed on them. That would have put a stop to it right quick.)

... that sort of got off topic there; sorry.

But I think what you and

wintercreek are saying is that with a kid who's old enough to talk but still very young, careful observation of body language and facial expression is more useful than verbal consent. (Especially since my experience with preschoolers is that they say 'no' in answer to 75% of the questions you ask them, including "Do you like ice cream?" and "Would you rather sleep in a bed without scorpions in it?")

Interesting thoughts. As we left darkforge's sister's house today (where their mother was visiting), Reason declined a hug from both her aunt and her grandmother, and declined to high-five her uncle. She was asked, true, but when two of the three adults tried to move in on her before asking, she stepped back, which they took as a reasonable indication that asking might be a good idea. (I demonstrated hugging and high-fiving as okay things to do with these particular individuals.)

It's not the first time that she's declined to hug darkforge's mother--she hugs my mother all the time--and also not the first time that darkforge's mother has muttered, loudly enough for Reason to hear, "Now I am sad."

I rather agree nonetheless about age + competent to decide re: food, or parents or other caretaking individuals that the child sees every day, because it's a different decision tree from the child's POV. Daily people are more likely to be subject to child whim, I think.

"(Especially since my experience with preschoolers is that they say 'no' in answer to 75% of the questions you ask them, including "Do you like ice cream?" and "Would you rather sleep in a bed without scorpions in it?")"

Yes, this. You can ask my younger child (she's 2), while she is stuffing cake into her face, if she likes eating cake, and she will start yelling "NO GANK YOU MOMMY NO NO NO."

Uh, OK there, kid.

My older kid (he'll be 5 in June) is much more reliable, but that's now -- a year ago, we had to watch his body language a lot more closely to understand whether he was saying "no" because he meant "no" or saying "no" because "no" is fun to say. One thing we noticed is that he started saying "stop" when he didn't like something, and that was pretty much his first step towards saying reliable "no" when he didn't want something to start in the first place.

Really interesting to me, even as a non parent. I have always come down strongly on the side of giving children bodily autonomy (because yeah, like so many others, tickled by relatives who I really did not want touching me), but you make excellent points about the gap between theory and practice.

I recognize that some of this is children learning where their limits are, and exploring setting them, and that the exploration includes being arbitrary and caprecious about where the limits are set at any given time; but on the other hand I don't want to let my kids get away with being rude. So I struggle to figure out the line between self-determination and politeness. For example:
- If grandpa is on the phone, should I require my child to talk? (I don't have an answer to this yet.)
- Is my child required to hug & kiss grandma goodbye? (No, but some sort of gesture is required.)
- Is my child required to come say goodbye to playdate guests? (Absolutely, but form of goodbye is up to the kid.)

As an adult *I* don't always want to hug/kiss my mother goodbye, but I recognize that not doing so would be hurtful and impolite so I do it anyway. Eventually my children will have to learn the same but I don't think that's right now.

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So hard!

We are also working on "Mama, don't sing!" and how he doesn't get to tell me what to do, but he can ask politely. Except that in his room, he does get to tell me not to sing - though he still has to be polite.

I'm so sorry to hear it. I love games in general, but some memories....I still won't play Monopoly. Ever.

Hah. Yes. "No" is a Word Of Power, why would you ever not use it?

Yes, this is a tough one. I am leaning towards that I will indeed require the kids to kiss all of my mom's friends hello, because that is what you do in that culture, it just is. But I'm conflicted about it.

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