why I don’t like tickling

When I was a little girl, I remember times where I was tickled so much that I couldn’t breathe.  I remember laughing as it was happening, but I remember not being able to breathe.  I even remember wondering why I was laughing, as I wasn’t enjoying the experience.  I remember being scared, very scared, that I couldn’t breathe.

This experience must have happened more than once at different times in my younger years.  I remember gasping/asking for the tickler to stop, but he (I don’t remember who it was, but I know it was a male) never stopped when I asked.  He stopped when he decided it was over.  I vividly remember the feeling of terror when I couldn’t breathe.  I remember mentally drawing my mind away from what was happening, trying to stop my laughing so that I could breathe.  (I wonder if I can still do that today, will myself not to laugh when being tickled, so that I can breathe.)  I remember running away after the tickling was over, breathing in deep breaths, and not smiling one bit over the experience.

I hated being tickled, and as a young adult, I promised myself that I would never tickle any children, especially my own, in such a way.  I still follow that today, and I’m quite adamant about other people not tickling my daughters.

As an adult, I see how tickling is a way of exerting control over a child.  A tickler is forcing a child to laugh, which may seem harmless and fun and good intentioned, but nonetheless, it exerts control, unnecessary control, over a child.  At times a child may need to be controlled for his/her own good or safety, but it should never be a part of playtime.

There is one man in our family’s life who would mercilessly tickle my girls if I let him.  I know, because he’s tried, and JJ or I have always intervened.  Luckily we don’t see him too often, so it’s not too big of a problem for us.  However it’s now such an established thing for him to do that when I know he’s around, I always make sure that either I or my husband is keeping an eye on our girls so that we can intervene if necessary.

At home, JJ and I don’t tickle our girls in any way other than an ocassional short, light tickle.  Instead, if we’re in a tickling mood, we do “air tickling.”  We do this by waving our fingers around in the air by the child, making the child giggle with anticipation, and then, after “air tickling” for a while, finally bringing our fingers down for a short, quick tickle.  We’ve found that the anticipation of the tickle is more hilarious than the actual tickle itself.  Most importantly, if our child asks us to stop, or (if she can’t talk yet) seems to want us to stop, we stop right away.  We respect our children’s feelings.  We’re not out to bully our kids; we want to have fun with them.

Parents can argue about whether or not we should be “in control” of our children.  That’s a larger topic for another day, but I strongly believe that laughter and giggling are areas that never need to be under the parents’ control.