"Two years on, he’s still affectionate at six, but her own responses as a toddler have become more mixed. She rejects any hug he gives her and pushes at his legs when he sits too close. He’s hurt by this, which we find hard. Much of parenting, I now realise, is spent recognising your own neuroses as they stare back at you, half-formed, or attempting to resist the urge to ‘fix’ them for your own child, as if you’ve been granted a time machine.
We try to tell him about personal space and remind him that some people don’t want to be hugged all the time. You should ask, we say. But this advice seems ill-suited for those times he does nothing more than walk into a room, prompting her to cross the entire floor on her doughy little legs so she can stick out a gummy hand and push him away. It’s hard, after all, to preach personal space when she goes out of her way to get him out of her way."
