When is it too old to hug your parents?
A mother on Reddit asked the question. She is being shamed for saying that she wouldn’t let her daughter cuddle with her because she thought the girl was too old for that.
She wrote on the subreddit “r/AmItheA-hole” (AITA), which is a place where people try to figure out if they were right or wrong in an argument that has been bothering them, that her 11-year-old daughter likes to sit in her lap or in the lap of her husband.
Mom tells her 11-year-old daughter that she is “too old” to sit on her lap and cuddle.
The woman wrote on Reddit that because her daughter is small for her age, she is often treated “like a younger child.”
She loves to hop in my or my husband’s lap and cuddle with us on the couch or in a chair,
she said.
But the woman has started to think that her daughter is a little too old to be cuddling and trying to sit on her parent’s lap and that as a mother, she may be “hurting” her by letting her keep doing it.
She talked about the most recent time her daughter tried to jump into her lap for a hug but was pushed away.
The girl’s mother told her right away that she was “too old” to cuddle and needed to “get off” her lap.
She got really upset, got off me and went to her room, and slammed the door,
the woman said.
Since then, the woman has noticed that her daughter hasn’t tried to sit on her lap and that things between them have been “tense.”
She doesn’t talk to me unless she has to and when I hugged her goodnight last night she didn’t hug me back,
she concluded.
I feel really guilty because I obviously hurt her feelings but I feel like she might be too old for sitting on my lap.
Most of the people who replied to the woman’s post on Reddit agreed that she was wrong to scold her daughter.
Several people on Reddit told the mother she was wrong for scolding her daughter and that her daughter wouldn’t want to cuddle her anymore after that.
You made her feel like she’d done something wrong. People sit [on] their parents’ laps at all ages,
She’s a child. No wonder she’s upset with you.
Your kid obviously loves you and shows love through cuddling up with you guys and feels comfortable.
What you did by saying this basically makes her feel embarrassed/bad about showing you guys love.
You should have talked to her about it beforehand rather than abruptly telling her to get off.
With no explanation from you, it’s easy to get confused why something was okay one day and now it’s not. If you’re both okay with cuddling, what’s the problem?
