![](https://www.schoolbag.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/imran-johri_unconditional-hugging.png)
How does your family express love? For Imran Johri, it was through a big, loose hug. Disappointingly, not all of his children are their biggest fans. In this entertaining story about a mission gone wrong, learn how Imran and his wife figured out what works and what doesn't when it comes to rewarding good behavior.
Imran Johri is a part-time humor writer and full-time father of three who finds the bright side of parenting every chance he gets.
I would like to say that most Singaporean parents are not very fond of hugging their children.
Of course, we see this a lot on the first day of primary school or on exam results day, when Singaporeans' survival instincts are at their peak. But other than that, I have rarely witnessed spontaneous, unconditional hugs between parents and children in public for any reason.
Okay, I guess you need a really good reason to just hug. What's worse is that when we hug, it's an expression of expectation. My wife and I recently discovered that we, too, are guilty of conditional intimacy. We got a hug as compensation. And that's coming from me, a ridiculously expressive person, so what happened?
Different strokes for different people
This is likely a legacy behavior passed down through generations.
I grew up in an environment where displays of affection between parents and children were not uncommon. Some were related to our culture, such as children greeting adults by kissing their hands as a sign of respect. My mother was a spontaneous person. She said my mother loved kissing us on the forehead, which I appreciated, and I grew up thinking that was normal.
My wife grew up in a less demonstrative family. Physical expressions of affection in most forms were rare. Resilience, sacrifice, and tough love were virtually the lingua franca of affection.
Obviously these differences were never really addressed during our courtship or before we became parents. And I feel like we messed up establishing a love language with our firstborn.
All day long we shouted, 'Good girl!'
When our first child, a daughter, was born 11 years ago, I was ready to unleash my bear hugging abilities on the innocent baby, and my wife was always ready with a word of praise.
But here's the creepy thing. I also began to connect with my father, who had strict ideas about how children should follow a path of strict discipline.
As new parents, my wife and I are very aligned. We will use hugs, kisses, and praise to reinforce good behavior, but we will not defend bad behavior either.
I cringe now when I think about how, most of the time, my oldest was just a kid, watching out for even the slightest prank. In fact, she was a pretty exemplary child from when she was a baby, through kindergarten, and into elementary school. Day by day we were going like this:
“Good girl!”
“Good job!”
“good job!”
Being a cool kid meant she rarely misbehaved, words of praise and affirmation began to lose weight and our hugs understandably lost their warmth.
In fact, as a result, she began to lose her desire for hugs and didn't seem to crave hugs at all.
Should we cherish the stick and hug it?
Of course, everything started to unravel with the birth of Number 2.
Born early and screaming, our son soon developed a rebellious streak to match his insufferable middle-aged parents.
As he got older we tried to introduce a cane as a disciplinary tool. He didn't react well, treating the wand like it was a scream amplification tool. It was literally a shit parade. Everything became a war of attrition to see who would tire of the threat first, those receiving training or those being trained.
My wife and I were both panicked and at a loss.
“We can’t do this to him.” she lamented.
“I know, he’s nothing like his sister.” I gritted my teeth and sighed.
And then we were shocked. They are not the same person. So we had to try something different. It turns out that all this little boy wanted was a hug.
He is a major hugger. Hugs are the antidote to everything, even when he does something wrong. And this I found myself in one of my more intense road prep situations when I was too tired to continue and gave in to my instincts and let out my inner hug.
I put the cane aside and asked, “Can I give you a hug?” sibling?”
And he nodded with a face full of tears and jumped right into my arms. I felt tired, sorry and defeated. But his reaction to this was surprising. He held me tight, soothing my heart with a generous warmth I hadn't felt in a while, which brought immediate relief to both of us.
Re-understanding what it means to hold our children
In summary:
- I used to hug indiscriminately, but now I hug as compensation.
- Wife who doesn't hug, tries to compensate by hugging
- My daughter saw hugs as ineffective reinforcement.
- Our son asked for a hug to confirm his love even in unfair situations.
Algorithmically, any permutation of a particular parent's embrace of a child would result in a highly inconsistent and unnatural outcome.
It was then that my wife and I knew we had to reinterpret what we needed for the benefit of our children.
What we really wanted was to express affection as freely and naturally as possible. So we threw away the whole artificial reward system and happily embraced it.
The results showed promise.
My daughter, who had previously looked uncomfortable, began to hug me freely. Our son gets all the hugs he needs to feel the love we have for him, and instead of involving various permutations of Pokemon-related media and paraphernalia for discipline, we came up with an incentive structure.
But as we adjust to this new normal, we now have to contend with our third and youngest daughter. My daughter, now five, gets her hugs on her own terms. She is well aware of her privileged status as the youngest and cutest, so she is currently showing us conditional mercy.
My wife, two older children, and I are still trying to figure this out.