"My daughter came home from school and announced, 'A boy pinched and punched me today'."

My daughter came home from school recently and announced, “A boy pinched and punched me today.”

“What?”

“He gave me a pinch and a punch.”

Then it sank in. It was the first day of the month. My daughter had never heard of “a pinch and a punch for the first day of the month”. Who knew kids still did that? In our household, my son and daughter pinch and punch each other whenever they feel like it, rather than restricting themselves to just one day per month.   

“Was I supposed to tell the teacher, Mum?” my daughter asked.  

I opened my mouth to say, “Oh, come on. It’s just a bit of fun”. And then I stopped. Would that be giving my daughter the idea that she had to put up with unwanted physical contact? Would I, in that one moment, be ruining her entire life?

Aaarrrgghhhh!

So I rang Sydney psychologist Clare Rowe to get a professional opinion.

“I think your intuition in that case was probably spot on, to say, ‘Don’t worry about it,’” she told me.

According to Rowe, the tradition of “a pinch and a punch” is still well and truly alive among kids.

“Kids in my house do it to my husband and I and each other, every single month,” she says. “It’s a little bit annoying. They come and do it to us when we’re in bed. We get pinched. It always happens. They’re being kids.”

At school, Rowe believes the pinching and punching becomes an issue if one kid is hurting another kid.

“That’s not in the spirit of what that little thing is supposed to be,” she explains.

“If a child came home and said, ‘That really hurt me,’ that’s an issue, and we need to teach skills to the child of standing up for themselves, and if that doesn’t work, give them different options. Like ‘First, try and stand up for yourself. Second, try and ignore them. Third, go to the teacher and seek help.’”

Rowe says it’s treading a fine line.

“What I’m trying to teach kids is, ‘You always have a right to say, “I don’t like that, please don’t do that to me,” and I don’t want you just sucking it up and putting up with something you don’t like.’ But let’s not read into it and say, ‘Oh, it’s encouraging violence from boys to girls,’ and, ‘It’s encouraging kids to be violent to each other.’”

LISTEN: On This Glorious Mess, Holly Wainwright and Ben Fordham discuss whether this game encourages violence.

“Kids come in my room every day and report they’ve been bullied, and when I find out what happened, some other kid called them an ‘idiot’ once. That’s what kids do. Kids are kids, and they’re going to call each other idiots every now and then. You’re not being bullied.”

Rowe says that if we tell kids they’re not allowed to touch each other, we’re not helping them grow up in the real world.

“I know many schools where you can’t hug people. There’s to be no touching at all. It’s just unrealistic. Kids have always rough-and-tumbled and hugged and grabbed each other in playful ways and linked arms down the corridor, and we’re getting rid of all that. We’re making this artificial environment where we’re not actually letting kids work out relationships and normal social interaction.”

So I had a chat to my daughter. I found out the boy who gave her “a pinch and a punch” was a friendly kid who normally gave her a high five. I told her that if she didn’t like it, she should ask him not to do it again, and just stick to the high-fiving.

Problem solved? I hope.

Listen to the full episode of This Glorious Mess here: