A mom has penned an essay saying that tickling children is "harmful" and that adults who engage in this seemingly innocuous behavior need to "stop".
Sandra Miller shared her thoughts in an essay published on Mom.com, explaining that if a child was held down by their classmates and touched against their will, most parents would be outraged, before questioning why this same outrage isn't applied to parents ticking their children.
Related - This is not the first time this hot topic has come up:"In its most aggressive form, tickling is a form of torture," Miller wrote. "To call it anything else is ignoring the science that shows, in most cases, the person being aggressively tickled is not having fun at all.
Miller even went as far as to inform her readers to "Google how the Nazi prison guards tickled prisoners in concentration camps" during WWII.
Miller explained that when her children were younger, she physically bonded with them in ways that didn't involve tickling, and when they chose to playfully wrestle, she ensured that they were in charge of the game at all times.
"But whenever a well-meaning adult went at one of my child's armpits with wiggling, outstretched fingers I would stop them immediately," she said.
"It's just a tad too easy to poke a little too hard, to want to elicit a stronger response from the child. In other words, it's easy to cross the line from playful to hurtful. And since every child has a different response to being tickled, how about you just don't do it at all."
Miller then added that despite her best attempts to prevent her children from being tickled, her daughter was "aggressively" touched in this way.
"Although it never happened on my watch, my daughter has still been aggressively tickled," Miller wrote.
"She reports that she hates it, as do most kids. In fact, ask your own children how they feel about it. Chances are they don’t like to feel physically out of control while some bigger person pokes and prods them against their will. "
The mother then concluded her essay by asking readers if they too like to feel out of control in this way.
What do you think? Is tickling children perfectly acceptable or does Miller have a point?
