Tickling
Jeff Kaufman
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Tickling
October 6th, 2018
kids
Before our kids learned to talk, I would play tickles with them. I<br>would make tickling gestures as I moved towards them, they would start<br>giggling a little, then I would tickle them and they would laugh.<br>We'd continue until they seemed to be done with the game, and then<br>we'd move on to something else. As they got older and learned to talk<br>a bit I would ask them "do you want to be tickled?" and their initial<br>response was typically to say 'no' and giggle. They really looked<br>like they wanted to be tickled, and the traditional way to handle that<br>would be to interpret the 'no' as a play 'no' and try to do what you<br>think they want you to do.
On the one hand, taking in everything you can tell about a situation<br>and making your best judgement is part of the pragmatics of human<br>conversation. When someone tells you "that's just what we needed!" a<br>small change in tone of voice can shift the polarity entirely,<br>indicating the opposite of the plain reading via sarcasm. On the<br>other hand, several people have told me that as kids they hated being<br>tickled but would involuntarily smile and laugh while objecting, which<br>the adults around them misunderstood. In general, ignoring a 'no'<br>seems pretty risky, especially in cases where we know some people have<br>misleading involuntary reactions.
Instead, when our kids would do the no-with-giggle I would respond the<br>same way as if they'd given a fully serious 'no'. They were initially<br>confused by this, and would sometimes repeat the no-with-giggle more<br>emphatically. I'd ask again if they wanted tickles, and only tickle<br>them if they said 'yes', trying to teach them that they needed to give<br>clear signals. Over time their no-with-giggles responses petered out,<br>and they started consistently saying 'yes' or 'no' when I offered<br>tickles.
This was very surprising to me: I wouldn't have expected the mixed<br>signals response to come so naturally, and need explicit practice to<br>learn to suppress.
Referenced in: Avoid Contentious Terms
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Jeff Kaufman
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