The Forbidden Touch : Fallout from child-abuse cases is taking its toll: Teachers and parents are scared to reach out--and kids miss hugs that used to come so freely.

What teacher would deny a hug to a crying child? Or reject a toddler’s plea for a moment of closeness?

Many would--and do, children’s advocates say. A decade of highly publicized child-abuse accusations--from the McMartin preschool case to Michael Jackson--has taken a troubling toll: more parents on the alert for child molestation; more teachers afraid of being wrongly accused. Three million cases of suspected child abuse were reported last year, up from 1 million 10 years ago.

And now, some experts say, the nation’s youngsters are paying the price for adults’ increased fears. An unwritten edict has been issued at many schools and day-care centers across the nation: Do not touch the little children.

As in: Do not hug, kiss, lift, stroke, offer your lap, rub the back, tuck in the shirt, pat the hair, or be in any way physically responsive to their needs. It has all gone too far, some of the nation’s leading child-development experts say.

Such heightened concern may have prevented some acts of “bad touching,” they believe, but for many small children it has also removed the essential hugs and snuggles that no words can replace.

“So many children who would never be abused by their caretakers are being deprived of the good, healthy touching they need--especially since they get so little of it from parents they spend less and less time with,” said Dr. David Elkind, professor of child study at Tufts University in Boston and author of “The Hurried Child.”

Elkind spends much time observing at nursery schools, he said, “and even I feel reluctant, nowadays, to put my arm around a child or to allow a child to sit in my lap, which they often try to do. It has gone much too far.”

The director of a Beverly Hills private school agreed, but said she has no power to change things. “After McMartin, our school’s owners made it clear that we must show no physical affection of any kind toward any child. Then, they replaced the solid wooden classroom doors with doors that had glass panels.”

The director, who asked that her name and the school’s name not be used, added, “This makes it very difficult here, especially at the preschool and early grade levels.”

The school has changed the way it works out behavior problems and mood swings with young children, she said, doing away with such time-honored techniques as hand-holding, lap chats and reassuring pats.

“Now the big thing is ‘time out,’ so nobody has to touch anybody. If that doesn’t solve it, we contact the parent immediately. We’d like to work with the child ourselves.” But, she said, you can’t easily work out problems with little kids unless you offer the balm of touch.

Anne Cohn Donnelly, executive director of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, said very little good comes from fear of touching.

“In fact, there’s not a child-development specialist in the country who would say that day-care centers should not be hugging children. Such things as hugging and lap sitting are absolutely not child sexual abuse and shouldn’t be considered that. Fondling or touching children in ways that give an adult sexual pleasure--that’s what child sexual abuse is about.

“All of us say day-care centers should have policies that help prevent abuse by doing background checks on employees, making sure the day-care center is open for parents to come in unannounced at any time, and lots of other things like that. But the notion of telling workers not to touch children is nuts. It’s not a good idea.”

Many parents may have no idea their children have become untouchable because most schools haven’t formalized the rule. “Children need physical attention, and their parents assume they’re getting it here,” said one private-school kindergarten teacher, who asked not to be identified. “If we tell them we’re not touching, which is generally true, they may withdraw their kids from the school. But if we pet and hug the kids, and an over-anxious parent gets the wrong idea, we could lose our careers and the school.” Her sadness, she said, is that the kids are losing something important.

That may be an understatement, said Dr. Kyle D. Pruett, clinical professor of child psychiatry at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., and director of training programs at the renowned Yale Child Study Center.

“The younger the child, the more they depend on sensory and physical information to orient themselves in relationships, and in time and space,” he said.

Toddlers “use other people’s bodies all the time, to soothe themselves, to achieve solace. The central nervous system is designed to give preference to touch as a sensory modality in the first few years of life,” Pruett said. “And the way a child is touched or held affects that child’s self-esteem, and his or her feelings of being valued and treasured.

“Younger children gain an enormous amount of information about their own worth through the way they are touched,” he added. “Once children are able to walk, they initiate touching much more aggressively. The preschool child can be comforted by an arm around the shoulder, smoothing of the hair, a hand being held at a moment of separation or fear or stress. Perhaps a back rub, or lap sitting, which is really the use of another person’s body as a kind of recliner that has warmth and a beating heart. Kids love that.”

Unfortunately, Pruett said, “we’ve pulled back too far from touching. No-touch rules are expanding rather than contracting, in public as well as in prestigious private schools and day-care centers. I’m getting reports of this nationwide. It’s particularly sad for younger children, who need touch the most. But we are seeing it across the board, for all ages and all kinds of institutions. The problem is this massively indiscriminate application of a prohibition that is so hard on the children it attempts to protect.”

It has reached such proportions that many little kids can’t stand it anymore, he said. So they’ve taken matters, quite literally, into their own hands.

He has received numerous reports from around the country that “little kids are turning to each other for the hugs and pats” that grown-ups refuse to give. “We’re suddenly seeing all these younger children start to physically comfort one another. They’re not afraid of getting sued. Touch is their meat and potatoes--it’s a basic food group for them. If grown-ups won’t do it, they say, we’ll do it ourselves.”

Ruben Zacarias, deputy superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said the district has “no written rules against touching. But with all these child-molestation cases making news, teachers are skittish about touching anyone, for any reason. They are wary of allegations that they made sexual advances when, in fact, they were only demonstrating appropriate affection.”

It’s hardest on younger children, he said. “If you don’t hug them, they’ll come over and try to hug you. We’re serving a latchkey generation,” and these kids could stand some of the warmth and reassurance they ought to be getting at home, but probably aren’t. “But we can’t blame teachers for not wanting to risk their credentials. Once an allegation is made, even if investigation shows it is unfounded, it is very difficult to unring the bell.”

With this in mind, the youngest kids at Pinecrest School in Northridge (part of a 12-school Southern California chain, from preschool through sixth grade) are escorted to the bathroom by two teachers instead of one. Daria Hosseini, the kindergarten director, said preschoolers tend to have “accidents” that require a teacher’s physical care.

“But it’s become so very clinical,” she said. “We bring someone else in with us so we have a witness; it’s required by the school. We don’t want a student saying, ‘The teacher touched me.’ But we also know it’s scary for a child, who’s embarrassed anyway about the accident, to have two adults hovering and watching.

“In general, we are careful showing affection. I tell teachers to use common sense, to understand that the children need lots of hugs and warmth, but to always have other adults around. I had a parent call me last month, out of the blue, to tell me it’s OK to hug her son. She’d heard of the no-touch trend around town, and was afraid her son would not get what he needs.”

*

Nick Franco, 24, spends 8 1/2 hours a day with 4-year-olds.

When he started working at day-care centers in the San Fernando Valley, he said, he got the message loud and clear: no touching. Then he realized that the unwritten rule is not always in the best interest of the children. So he found a job at Lemay Street Children’s Center in Van Nuys, a state funded day-care program run by “excellent people,” where he can, with his supervisors’ blessings, show appropriate affection when one of his charges needs it. “If a child falls and cries, I can lift him up and give him a hug.

“Some of our kids come from homes where there may be zero affection. Others are here from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. They spend more time with us than with their own parents.” If counselors don’t give kids some kind of strokes, he said, “they’ll have a hard time relating to others in future. My own family is very openly affectionate. I have no problem hugging my dad even to this day.”

Claire B. Kopp, adjunct psychology professor at UCLA and author of “Baby Steps,” said she has noticed “major concerns about adults touching their charges, particularly about male teachers hugging and fondling young children.” So far, though, she has not seen this no-touch trend documented with statistics in the psychological literature.

James Garbarino, president of the Erikson Institute for Advanced Study in Child Development in Chicago, said the ban on touch has reached major proportions for no good reason.

Perhaps people have been approaching the issue from the wrong direction, he said. “There is no such thing as risk-free child development. Every need that a child has presents both an opportunity and a risk. The opportunity in this case is that touch reassures children, strengthens their attachment and helps them connect with adults. The risk is that predatory adults may exploit children through touch.”

Why should touch be viewed differently than any other aspect of child development, Garbarino asks. “For example, (a) 14-month-old child needs to practice walking. Walking creates the opportunity for getting around on his own two feet--and the risk that the child may hit his head on the corner of the coffee table or fall into the lake.” Would you deny a child the opportunity to walk? Then why deny him the opportunity of touch, Garbarino asked.

At the private Highland Hall school in Northridge, preschool and kindergarten teacher Rosalie Bate said, “We act like mothers act. That means if a kindergartner cries, usually they get picked up and comforted. If they climb into our laps at story time, that’s fine. We believe in a balance, in a nurturing environment that is also respectful of each child’s body.”

Ronnie Anderson, director of a preschool/kindergarten in Santa Monica, said he, too, ignores the anti-touch trend. “If a child is having a hard morning, I think it’s really important that he or she feels hugged. This is the children’s first experience in a classroom. The first person they go to is an adult. If that adult makes them feel comfortable and valued, then they can branch out and start to make friends.”

The trend has gone beyond the classroom, many say. Consider the plight of a Santa Monica artist, who asked that his name not be used. One hot afternoon a few months ago, he went to a party at the house of his close friend, Ann. She was in the kitchen; he was conversing with another guest in the living room when Ann’s 3-year-old daughter rushed up, put her hand in his, and asked him to take her to the bathroom.

“I was startled. For a split second I thought, I’m not married, have no kids, and I won’t know what to do for this child, whom I love. But I didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable, so I said ‘sure.’

“Luckily, I left the door partly open, and she only had to tinkle for a minute. When I pulled the door open, her mother, who is my dear friend, was waiting there with eyes like daggers. ‘What are you doing in the bathroom with my daughter?’

“She pulled the child away for ‘a private talk.’ I was shocked and humiliated. I even felt guilty for a minute. I left as fast as I could. I felt lucky I had a witness. The woman I was talking to would surely tell the mother that the child came up to me and asked, not the other way around. The mother wrote me a letter a few weeks later, saying she still loves me, but she believes it’s better to be too safe than not safe enough.”

Like the ancient mariner, he tells his story to people, collecting their reactions. Most say he did the right thing; some say he shouldn’t have taken the potty trip. To this day, he’s still not sure.

Tufts’ Elkind said such problems are bound to arise in a society that gives such hype and glitz to a problem that is not the primary danger in most children’s lives.

“The leading cause of death among young children is not abuse; it’s accidents. The primary cause of death is balloons, swallowed by tots who choke on them. The second leading cause of death occurs among young children playing with older children’s toys. If we really care about kids, we can literally save thousands of their lives by (publicizing) accident prevention instead of child abuse.”