When a set of twins were born prematurely and were hooked up to every wire and tube necessary to keep them alive, here were the doctor's stringent orders to their mother, “You must touch them every single day.”

So the mother watched in horror as every lifesaving tube and wire was unhooked but, as the nurses emphatically explained as they gently placed her tiny, fragile twins into her arms, “Your children need your touch to survive as urgently as those tubes and wires.”

I know this story is true because I have met the twins, now grown up, married with children, miracles who once weighed 2 pounds each.

Here is the story I hear all the time from my clients: I was never touched as a child. I was never told, “I love you.”

“Nobody touched you?” I ask

“Nobody,” they answer. “I was never kissed or hugged.”

Then my clients think about it.

“Maybe when I was a baby. Because I see how my mother hugs the baby. I see how she hugs the grandchildren. But I don’t remember any of it.”

“Do you think you mother doesn’t love you?” I ask.

“She loves me,” they sometimes concede. “But I only know it. I don’t feel it.”

And the desire to be held, to be touched, to be loved by a mother is so strong, that no other touch can ever suffice, even when these clients go on to hug and kiss and whisper a hundred I-love-you’s into the ears of their many children and grandchildren.

Did you ever hear about Harlow?

Ever heard about his monkeys?

Absolutely fascinating story, so I gotta tell you about it.

Dr. Harry F. Harlow was an American Psychologist whose studies and experiments with monkeys has given us incredible information how physical demonstrations of love affect a child’s ability or impaired ability to form relationships throughout life with significant others such as spouses, children, or non-family members.

As social relationships are the foundation of all of human experiences, the implications of his results are powerful statements of how we must parent our children or suffer devastating consequences.

In one experiment, he separated newly born monkeys and created wire figures that could give milk when sucked upon. He also created figures that did not give milk but were draped in cloth instead of wire. Although the monkeys went to the wire mothers for milk, most of their time otherwise were spent clinging to the cloth mothers, demonstrating how the monkeys valued the cloth mother in its ability to give physical affection, so to speak, than the wire mother who dispensed life-giving food. Attachment is more dependent on physical affection than being fed.

Following these maternal-deprived baby monkeys into adulthood who were denied their mother’s touch, showed striking results. Negative traits like aggressiveness, clinginess, and an inability to mate as adults were some observations. Others observations were how these monkeys became socially isolated and then later, neglectful or even abusive parents, unable to comfort, protect, or nurse their own young.

Psychology points to the exact results in human babies starved for physical attention and love.

It explained why babies left in orphanages who were adequately fed and cleaned, simply died for lack of love. Failure to thrive was the term coined by research scientists who studied this phenomenon; leading to revolutionary changes in orphanages in which caregivers who directed to give their charges physical touch along with their bottles.

Many studies try to understand the correlation between touch and physical and emotional health. One explanation is that affectionate touch lowers an individual’s stress and anxiety levels, while touch deprivation raises stress levels. stress hormones, such as cortisol and norepinephrine which are then increased in the blood. Chronically high levels of cortisol prevent normal brain tissue development in children and damage existing brain tissue, especially the hippocampus. The hippocampus is involved in memory and learning, explaining why children deprived of touch statistically have more learning difficulties. Affectionate touch activates different hormones than stress does, eventually changing an individual’s brain chemistry, another study on depression reveals.

Children who lack affectionate touch, and experience chronic stress as a result have weakened immune systems. This accounts for the poor health and abnormal growth found in research studying children deprived of touch.

Scary, no?

No, we are not monkeys. And our adulthood is not carved in stone based only on our relationships with our parents. Because we see those from dysfunctional homes going on to be functional, successful adults in terms of their relationships and actions.

We call those people “resilient” and many studies research the causes of resiliency that allow children to grow up, against all odds, into healthy adults.

And many of these studies point to the ability of these children to reach out and find mentors, teachers, aunts, or grandmothers who become the mother figures their own mother cannot be.

Which brings us back full circle to the importance of physical affection in the lives of our children.

In contrast to the effects of touch deprivation, children exposed regularly to affectionate touch have an enhanced ability to problem solve, recovery from illness is more rapid, suffer less anxiety, show lower propensity to cardiovascular disease as adults, and higher tolerance to emotional and physical pain so it does not impair daily functioning.

Children who are touched, kissed, and hugged are more confident and social; they have the capacity to form relationships easily and comfortably; to go on to marry and form good relationships with their spouses, and later to be affectionate and attentive parents to their own children. Even learning is easier for these children, making their school years more enjoyable and productive.

A self-improvement workshop presented this questions to its participants:

“Who doubts your mother’s love for you?”

Every adult there expressed her solid belief in her mother’s love.

The next question was trickier. “Who doubted their mother’s love as a child, as a teen?”

The majority of hands went up.

And every participant attributed various struggles of their lives, well into their adult years as rooted in the lack of physical affection they experienced.

I am not surprised. My clients express similar feelings and thoughts.

They do not know how to synthesize the mother they love and respect, who often has a close relationship with their own children, the grandchildren, with the mother they experienced as withholding as a child.

The damage is great.

Often adults who have been deprived of physical affection as children may look successful, act successful, exude success; but inside there is a hole so vast, so deep, so terrible, that secretly they struggle with anxiety, depression, guilt, and anger.

The irony is that if these mothers were confronted, they would be devastated. Because they love their children with such a fierce passion that isn’t a burning building too hot they would not enter to save their child.

These mothers would say, “What did I know of hugging? My mother never hugged me and I turned out fine.”

Maybe.

Maybe not.

I watch many people in my community, how the babies are kissed and hugged non-stop and then those same exhibitions of affections dry up and are only available for the next little one, as if touch, as if kisses and hugs are a limited commodity.

I can’t give you the answers of why this happens, when the distance between father and daughter occurs, when mothers and sons move apart, when parents forget to kiss their teenagers good night or good Shabbos, or good morning. I don’t know.

I only know that we cannot be perfect parents. We make so many mistakes. It’s not possible otherwise. But there’s a psychological concept of a good-enough-mother. The mother who can make mistakes and the child can survive them with little if any damage. I think for our children, the good-enough-mother is one who shows the love she has for her children with touch. Because she has the love to give. I know that. Her children know that. But the knowledge of the love is simply not good enough. Only a hug will do.

Try it. Even now. Stroke your child’s hair, pat a shoulder or cheek. Give a hug, plant a kiss. Your kid will squirm, will protest, “Ma-a-a!” But secretly your child will enjoy it.

And so will you.

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My book, Therapy, Shmerapy, can be found in bookstores or online