> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://christingeorge.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Nobody Asks the Kid - URL: https://christingeorge.com/nobody-asks-the-kid/ - Published: 2026-10-22T06:54:36.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-22T06:58:49.000Z - Description: Children made to hug, kiss and share on demand learn that their no does not count, and one father showed me what letting them decide looks like. - Author: Christin Emmanuel George - Tags: Life, Parenting, Uncle-ing, TWM Not long ago I watched a father lean down and whisper something to his son. The boy had something difficult he needed to say to an adult, and his father knew it. He did not tell the boy what to do. He did not say it loud enough for the room, and he did not stand back and wait with everyone watching. He gave him the words in private and left the rest to him. Acting on it, or not acting on it, was the boy's call. The boy chose to say it, quietly, before they left. Nobody made a spectacle of it, and when he came to me, I did not make it a lesson either. It was second-hand healing to watch. --- I should say who is writing this. I am not a father. I am an uncle to many, I find noisy children annoying, I annoy them, and I avoid them whenever I can. Everything here is what a third party sees from the edge of the room. Parenting is a herculean job, and I know I am not capable of it. What follows is an outsider asking "why not". --- In July 2017 I wrote a post on my old blog, [The Worried Man](https://christingeorge.com/the-steps-nobody-built/), called "Beta, give your uncle a kiss no?" It argued that a child made to kiss a relative learns that their body is available on request. That leaves the child open to abuse, because most abusers are people the child already knows. That has not changed. In 2024, India recorded more than 20,000 cases of the most serious sexual offences against children by a family member, family friend, neighbour, employer or another known person ([NCRB data via Dataful](https://insights.dataful.in/articles/most-pocso-victims-are-adolescents-and-most-offenders-are-known-to-them)). I still believe every word of that post, though I borrowed most of those words from a CNN column. Nine years on, I think the predator was the smaller half of the problem. --- Kisses were only the example I reached for in 2017\. Children in our families are made to hug relatives, sing for guests, touch the feet of elders they have never met, finish the plate because an aunty made it, and walk over to whichever uncle is calling them. When they refuse, the correction usually happens in front of everyone, with the room watching and a joke at their expense. Each request is innocent, and the adult asking means no harm. The child learns two things from the pile anyway. A grown-up's wish outranks their own body, and saying no in public will cost them their dignity. Sharing gets defended hardest, because it sounds like a virtue. Talking to children about sharing, and what it does for the people around them, is worth every minute. Forcing it the moment they refuse is another matter, whatever their reason. That conversation can wait. Asking a child why they did not want to share sometimes uncovers a whole story, and sometimes the answer is just "I didn't want to." Both are fair answers. The world will beat them down soon enough. There is no need to start at home. That pile is the precedent. A child who has learnt to give in to authority over their own discomfort cannot tell an innocent request from one that is not. Both arrive with the same instruction to be good and do as they are told. The 2017 post stopped at that danger. It missed that the habit outlives the childhood. --- It is the same reflex that keeps a grown adult smiling through things they should have objected to. At our tables it is an aunty recommending a whitening cream for some girl or woman in the family. I hear it often, and I still force the smile through it. I am not only the one smiling through it. Body shaming is a monster that gets into the brain and churns out inappropriate jokes. I have made plenty of them. My excuse was that I am fat, so I could make fat jokes. The same went for skin colour. Anyone I teased could say "look who's talking" and hand it straight back. Age taught me that those jokes land differently from how they are meant. I can take a fat joke and give one back. Some people can't. They take it and keep it, and then they feel abandoned by the friends who made it. My "you can tease me right back" was never theirs to use. They are kinder than that, and I am the asshole. Easy pickings still get past my mouth sometimes. The worst part is that the ones on the receiving end are often my best friends. --- When we were children, that scene would have played out in front of the room. What I saw that day was generational trauma being stopped with kindness and care. I think that is where the pain we felt growing up gets dammed up. All it asked of that father was to give up a little control in front of other people. The children our generation raises will carry different wounds from ours. Those will come from ignorance, from things we have not learnt to see yet. We only know what we know. None of this has to be one more thing for parents to manage. Nobody needs to negotiate with a child for a hug, and no child should have to negotiate with an adult to be left alone. The ones who like me do all of that on their own. They lead me by the hand, give me fruit they have picked off the trees, insist on walking with me, and bring me things they are sure I will find as interesting as they do. That boy will not remember what his father whispered. He might remember that it was his to decide.