Children want hugs. They want to hug their loved ones and unite their hearts so that they can feel that they are not alone in the world and that they are safe.
Most of all, they want to hug their mothers and fathers. They want to feel stronger by hugging and knowing that they are not alone. Think about the last person you hugged and how you felt at that moment.
When I think about when children are the loneliest, I think of it when they are sleeping in their beds in the dark of night, when they suddenly wake up. At that moment, everywhere is dark and they do not even have parents who have not left their side for a moment since they were born. They feel alone in the whole world at that moment. There is only one familiar face next to them. A teddy bear with their best friend.
The eyes of that familiar face they see in those lonely moments when they are afraid, always look at the bear, and the child pulls it to theirselves and hug the teddy bear they trust most, which does not leave them alone even when they feels alone.
It is loyal, reliable because it is always by their side.
All children need to feel safe, to be hugged to feel safe. I’ve been experiencing this with my own daughter in recent years.
We often go to the park after work. We take the pink scooter with us. Let her ride on the road, let go of her energy, learn to stay in balance, adjust her speed, where to stop and where to accelerate, feel the wind on her face and hair, and know that she can be free even if she is young.
Recently she could not stop and fell. The drama really took one of the serious wounds in her life so far. To me, it was just a minor scratch. But what did she do as a first reaction? She looked at perhaps the deepest wound she had ever received and felt insecure. She did not touch her wound, stood up, turned to me and opened her arms. Without even saying daddy, she waited for me to bend down to hug her with wet eyes.
We hugged. It’s okay, sometimes we fall, but look, you got up, I thought it would hurt a little, but it will pass. She hugged me and transferred that little pain in her knee to me and alleviated the pain in herself, making me feel safe to my bones at that moment. It took maybe 3 seconds for us to hug, but then she said let’s go to the park, got into her silence again and continued driving. She even forgot the knee.
I had a tricycle when I was a kid. I was older than my daughter’s current age. While I was going down the slope in front of our house by bike, I accelerated a lot, could not stop, and fell. My knee was starting to bleed. But I was thinking of someone to hug at that moment, not my knee. My mother, who heard my voice, came running and took me with my arms open and hugged me from where I had been waiting since I fell, the pain in my heart was gone, and I started to feel the pain in my knee.
And strangely enough, I realized these feelings while hugging my daughter the other day. Years later, while hugging my daughter, I understood what it means to be someone to hug, as well as the need to be hugged.
Why do children need a hug when they sleep at night? Because they want to feel safe. My mother comes running when I need a hug, just like in my childhood. When my daughter falls, I run again to hug her and I bend down and hug her. But this may not always be possible. Our elders are not always with us, and we may not always be with our children.
That’s why I’m thinking right now, if you have the opportunity, hug each other when you are together. Do not force them to hug the “bears”.
Where did this topic come from?
As I have briefly introduced above, I experience how easy and simple it is to blow a child up with happiness or to disappoint them, and I have it in my daughter’s heart.
If a child wants something by looking you in the eye, it’s because they want you to do it right away, not later. If she had asked you to do it later, she would have asked for it later. Because children think very simply.
Thinking simple is a trait that we, unfortunately, lose as we grow up. Isn’t most of the troubles we had with other adults when we grew up because we couldn’t think so simply? But this is another topic and a long one, maybe I’ll write about that topic later.
Let’s get to the main topic. There is a video below. You’ve come across it on social media in the past few days or someone you know from one of the WhatsApp and Instagram groups has sent it to you. This is the video that made me dive into these memories and make me cry somewhere in my heart.