A mom has sparked debate after she told a popular forum that she no longer wants to cuddle her 11-year-old.
The woman asked, “Am I the A**hole for telling my daughter she’s too old to be sitting on my lap?”
The thread has since gone viral, with over nine thousand upvotes and five thousand comments. It’s raised wider conversations about parental affection, and when, if ever, it should taper off.
The woman explained that her 11-year-old daughter is “very small for her age” and as a result, often gets treated like a younger child.
“She loves to hop in my or my husband’s lap and cuddle with us on the couch or in a chair,” she explained.
But recently she’s been thinking that her tween could be getting too old for “that sort of thing” and she’d be hurting her more by letting her continue.
So the mom decided to address the issue the next time the situation arose, but it didn’t go as smoothly as she hoped.
When her daughter tried to hop on her lap one night, she asked her to get off her because she was too old for that.
“She got really upset, got off me, went to her room, and slammed the door. She hasn’t tried to get in my lap since then and things are tense between us. She doesn’t talk to me unless she has to and when I hugged her goodnight last night she didn’t hug me back.”
The poster has since done some reflecting and feels guilty about upsetting her daughter, however, she still maintains her position on the issue.
Most people agreed there shouldn’t be an age limit for parental affection.
One pointed out that “she’s not going to want to cuddle you much longer. You maybe have a year left. And you’re throwing that time away instead of cherishing it.”
Another added: “Now she doesn’t feel like or isn’t comfortable even hugging her own parents. What a terrible shame and sad thing to do to your own child.”
And this person wrote, “My son is nine and still cuddles me. As a dad, I’ll take it for as long as it goes. I know I don’t have long left, it’s kind of sad. I’ll miss that.”
Then a woman shared this heartbreaking admission: “I’m 25 and my mother recently said she wished we could still be held by her. She holds a lot of regret for our childhood because my mother rushed to grow us up. Now we’re independent adults that don’t call her or drop in, not because we don’t like her but because that’s not what we were taught to do.”
“Don’t f–k up your relationship with your kid by pushing her out of childhood too early.”
It was a sentiment echoed by many.
“Don’t gatekeep affection,” one woman urged, while another else added, “This is a core memory that will shape the relationship you two have forever.”
This person added: “She was probably really embarrassed that her mum thought her way of showing affection was inappropriate. Way to make her feel self-conscious at an impressionable age!”