Author’s practical guidance
Personal space, theirs and other people's
Source named in the book: RIE (Gerber) · Positive Discipline (Nelsen)
Small children stand too close, hug strangers, climb on visitors and push their face into another child's face.
Say this now
“Ask first: can I hug you?”
One sentence that teaches both directions at once.
“You don't have to hug. You can wave.”
Give an alternative, so declining is not a scene.
Do this
- Offer choices for greetings: hug, high five, wave, nothing.
- Back their no in front of the adult who asked, every time.
- Name the border physically: an arm's length, a hula hoop, a bath towel on the floor.
- Say what to do, not what to stop: "stand where I can see your feet."
- Notice when they ask first and say so.
Avoid this
- "Give Grandma a hug." — requires their body to obey somebody else's wish.
- "Don't be rude, he wants to say hello." — the same instruction with guilt attached.
- Only teaching the outward half and never the inward one.
If it repeats
Standing too close is normal until at least four, and it fades faster in children who have been given the words rather than the correction. The right to refuse contact is worth installing early — it is the same skill they will need at fifteen.
Why the book suggests this
Small children stand too close, hug strangers, climb on visitors and push their face into another child's face. They are not being rude. The idea that a body has an invisible border around it is learned, and nobody mentions it until it is broken.
The same rule runs in the other direction, and that half matters more. A child who is required to hug relatives on demand is learning that their own no does not count — which is precisely the lesson you would least want them to have.
From this collection
Same Words: Big Skills
45 prepared situations in this family area.