Kissing and hugging

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My 8 yr old son has had issues lately with kissing and hugging people, particularly kids at school. I think his teacher initially thought that it related to him not understanding appropriateness, and was a way of trying to make friends. I probably see it more as happening at times when he is overstimulated, and craving proprioceptive input (eg. touch, deep massage). We have told him hundreds of times what the rules on kissing and hugging are, but he can't seem to help himself at certain times. He says that his brain just tells him to do it and he can't help it.

So, has anyone else had any experience with this? What causes it? And any ideas of how to improve things?

My son is 7 and although he doesn't kiss, he does hug other children very hard. He usually grabs their arm, or will put his arms round their waist, and squeeze hard. I think you're right about this being a proprioceptive issue.

So far, surprisingly, I've not had any comments from school or Out of School Care about this. I've seen him doing it to other children over the years, and he will sometimes hold onto their clothing to try and stop them getting away from him. As he is small for his age, it's perhaps less of a problem than it may become as he gets older.

I'm afraid I have no suggestions, and I haven't managed to stop him grabbing and sqeezing me. I've tried telling him that it hurts people, but he doesn't seem to understand that, or if he does, then it isn't enough to stop him. It does seem to be a real need.

I'll be very interested to see if others here have managed successfully to tackle this type of behaviour.

My son is a hugger. Um, a knock you over and squeeze you to do death hugger. We haven't managed to make much of a dent it as far as how he hugs us, but he doesn't do it to kids (other than his sister) anymore. Basically, they made it really really really clear that he couldn't get away with it and have them treat him nicely. When someone you want to be friends with starts walking away, you get the message and learn self-control.

Mom and dad, of course, he knows will never really walk away.

But other kids will.

At first he would complain about it to us, but we were consistent in our reply: they have a right to choose who they want touching them, and he is going to have to live with it, adjusting his own behavior accordingly. Many, many other things we've paved the way for him on, talking to other the parents and teachers, etc. Not this one.

I don't know if this will work, but it might be worth a try. My son is a hugger too, (however kissing is out of the question), but I am having trouble with space issues, and particularly hitting and kicking to either express anger, or to get attention. Nothing malicious, but it's not understood by others. He wants a Nintendo DS (he's 7) so I did a behavior chart. Made it very simple, explained very clear rules and gave an additional one to his teacher in school for communication (they have to be on board). He is not to kick, hit, push or bump anyone intentionally. He gets one warning a day, (and a lot of preliminary coaching to help him if you see that he will soon be in a situation that he may have trouble) If he gets through the day with one or no warnings he gets a sticker on his chart. After 5 stickers he gets a ticket to buy a game. There is a total of 20 days, 15 stickers for 3 games and 5 more to get the DS. This gives him his DS, motivates him to think about NOT hitting etc, and gives him a sense of accomplishment. I am not done with this process, but my son is very excited about it and is working very hard. This may be something you can try. They did the same type of thing in Daycamp with him last summer and it worked really well. That is where I got the idea. G
Good luck! It takes a long time and a lot of patience to work through these behavoirs, because they can take sooooooo long to work out. I have been dealing with hitting for about 4 years now. It is almost under control

you may be on to something when you talk about him wanting more sensory input........perhaps daily time set aside strictly for sensory would diminish this behavior