Hugging

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Hello, everyone!
My son is 16, and has gotten in trouble both at school and summer camp for hugging others. I understand that as he gets older, and his female peers get older, permission is important, but he has a difficult time understanding the nuances around what's appropriate, and I don't think punishing him is right.

At school, they want him to ask before every hug. Difficult because he has a hard time initiating conversation! Plus he feels it's unfair that other kids don't have to ask (a very valid point).

At camp this summer, they have tried to limit the number of hugs he can give in the morning to 5 (how in the world do you chose which 5 people to hug?), then they switched to side-hugging only (but for campers only, staff is ok to hug normally - confusing for him).

Do you have any suggestions to help him understand why and how to hug appropriately?

Tell him that some people really don't like being hugged. It's nothing against him.

For various reasons.

I don't really liked to be hugged by men, for example. Not even my father. It's sort of a sensory thing.

And...if a girl is his age, 16, the girl might think it's inappropriate unless it's her boyfriend.

He's definitely not a bad kid for wanting to hug people----he's probably a really good guy, actually--but he has to know, like you said, that there are boundaries.

I would say: do "role playing." Let you be an adolescent girl, for example, let he be himself. Think about how it feels, as an adolescent girl, to be hugged by some stranger guy.

I sure hope things work out for him with that and as a fellow parent, I feel bad for you because I know it must be hard on you knowing he's having to deal with that and figure out life in the "real world".

Do you think he hugs because he wants to give affection or do you think he hugs because he wants to receive stimulation from others by hugging them? Or both?

@Magna I think it's both. He's been dealing with a lot. His dad left when he was little, and his stepdad just left last summer. His worst fear is friends moving away, so I think he just wants to connect with people he likes, and wants that physical reassurance that they aren't going anywhere and are still his friends.

@kraftiekortie I've explained that some people are uncomfortable with hugging, although I could do more, I'm sure, to help him understand. He's not hugging random people, though, and never has. These are people with whom he has a connection, just to be clear.

@arscuore: I'm sorry to hear about what you're going through in your family. Having other people misinterpret or misunderstand your intentions is definitely a hard part of ASD.

@Magna I think they know his intentions are in the right place, but I wonder how much is coming from the director's need to "prevent" a situation from happening, rather than actually trying to help him navigate his confusion.

Does your son understand the difference between a friend and an acquaintance? Maybe he thinks anyone that talks to him is his friend? My sister has trouble differentiating between friends and acquaintances, but she doesn't hug anybody except for my parents and occasionally me and my brother. Tell your son to reserve his hugs for family and close friends. The other kids at school and camp may not feel the same way about him that he feels about them. The other kids may see him as an acquaintance even though he sees them as friends. I prefer to only initiate hugs with my family and my closest friends.

The director may be worried that one of the girls might get creeped out by your son's hugs and accuse him of being a pervert. I think your son sounds like a nice guy who needs help navigating the social aspects of the teen years. Being a teenager on the spectrum is tough.

I'm sorry about your son's father and his stepfather leaving him. That's got to be hard for a boy to lose the father figures in his life.

Hahahaha ouch for real when I was a teen or twentysomething I didn't understand acquaintances were NOT friends. Painful how I had to learn. Hugging? That I avoided like cod liver oil and chewy vitamins. Yuck.