The Exceptional Cruelty of a No-Hugging Policy

[babylonsister]

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/family-separation-no-hugging-policy/563294/

The Exceptional Cruelty of a No-Hugging Policy
When kids separated from their families on the U.S.-Mexico border can’t get hugs or physical comfort from the caretakers at their shelters—or even from one another—their experience becomes even more traumatic.
Ashley Fetters
Jun 20, 2018

snip//

Ever since the Trump administration’s recent statement that it had separated nearly 2,000 children from parents facing charges of illegally crossing the border—a number since raised to more than 2,300—troubling reports from inside the shelters where those children have been detained have proliferated. Many describe conditions in which, whether by official policy or not, shelter staff are prohibited or prevented from hugging or touching the detained kids—hundreds of whom are younger than 13 years old—to comfort them. Some testimonies, like the one from a former Tucson, Arizona, shelter worker, Antar Davidson (who quit last week because the shelter “didn’t have the trained staffing to handle the influx of younger, more traumatized children”), allege that even siblings in the shelters are prevented from hugging one another:

The breaking point for Davidson came, he says, when he was asked to tell two siblings, ages 6 and 10, that they couldn’t hug each other. “They called me over the radio. And they wanted to translate to these kids that the rule of the shelter is that they are not allowed to hug,” he says. “And these are kids that had just been separated from their mom—basically just huddling and hugging each other in a desperate attempt to remain together.”

Southwest Key, the nonprofit that operates several shelters along the U.S.-Mexico border including the one where Davidson worked, told NPR it has a policy of allowing hugs and comforting touches in certain circumstances. A South Texas shelter, meanwhile, told the American Academy of Pediatrics president Colleen Kraft when she visited (according to the same NPR story) that there was no federal regulation prohibiting workers from touching kids in their care. Still, what Kraft described witnessing in South Texas were staffers who believed they were not allowed to touch the kids to soothe them and behaved accordingly, and children who cried and cried yet were not physically comforted.

As anyone who’s ever witnessed a handoff to a babysitter or a drop-off at the first day of day care can attest, a hug or a snuggle from a sibling or trusted adult can be instrumental in relieving some of the anxiety, and even panic, associated with the departure of a parent. The research to confirm this goes far beyond anecdotes: According to decades of psychological study, positive touch from adults can not only lower stress levels in the moment, but can have long-term beneficial effects if administered regularly. And, relatedly, a consistent lack of positive touch has been shown to have detrimental effects on kids as they mature.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/family-separation-no-hugging-policy/563294/

[AlexSFCA]

1. state sponsored dehumanization

I bet they staff these internment campa with white supremacists.

[Guilded Lilly]

2. The abject inhumanity nauseates. But the soulless cruelty from this administration is expected...

we must relentlessly haunt those who promote and perform it.