As our family — grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles — arrive to celebrate holidays, there is one hard and fast rule in our home: Our children will stop what they are doing and will greet guests at the door with hugs.

This has become surprisingly controversial.

Take the Parents magazine piece by Kirsten Clodfelter titled “Reluctant Hugs: Why You Shouldn’t Force Kids to Show Physical Affection.” In it, “sexuality educator” (and, ahem, “community organizer”) Airial Clark says, “It’s never too early for kids to practice bodily autonomy.”

But anyone who has ever forced a kid into a stroller while they’re doing the amazing trick with their body known as “the board” can tell you that children don’t ultimately have agency over their own bodies. When a parent makes the kid go to the bathroom before leaving the house even though they definitely, definitely, don’t have to go, there’s nothing autonomous about that.

Parents spend large chunks of every day forcing their kids to put their socks on, keep their pants from coming off, try the broccoli, brush their teeth, go to bed at a certain time and so on. No one with bodily autonomy lives under those conditions.

A few days ago the Girl Scouts posted its own version of this rule in a piece titled “Reminder: She Doesn’t Owe Anyone a Hug. Not Even at the Holidays.” On its Facebook page, it added, “Making her give hugs now can make her wonder if she ‘owes’ another person physical affection when they’ve bought her dinner or done something else seemingly nice for her later in life.”

The idea that making your kids hug their Aunt Ida will pressure them to trade affection for food in perpetuity is absurd. It presupposes that you give your kids no other guidance whatsoever as they transition from innocent snuggles with family into more grown-up affection as adults.

If anything, hugging family will teach the difference between good touching and bad, though some insist on making the opposite connection.

A 2015 article on CNN titled “I don’t own my child’s body” makes this same sordid leap. Katia Hetter writes that she “shudder[s] at recent stories of Josh Duggar’s ‘inappropriate touching’ of his sisters, accusations that Bill Cosby sexually assaulted women after drugging them and Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach convicted of sexually abusing young boys. And they strengthen my resolve to teach my kid that it’s OK to say no to an adult who lays a hand on her — even a seemingly friendly hand.”

Turning snuggles with grandpa into something sinister, and comparing it to horrific abuse by monsters like Sandusky, is a real problem. As unwanted touching continues to consume our media cycles, it’s a great time to educate kids on the differences between sexual and non-sexual touching and kissing.

Lumping all affection into one jumbled ball only blurs the lines. Not everyone is a predator, in fact most people are not, and teaching kids to live in a world where they fear anyone can hurt them at any time is deeply unhealthy.

Clodfelter writes that she has her kids offer “handshakes, high-fives, or a wave” to guests. But if bodily autonomy is the concern, how are these any better?

What if the kid doesn’t want to offer a handshake or a high-five or any interaction whatsoever? What if they don’t want to look up at all from the video game they’re playing? They’re autonomous, aren’t they?

Must they acknowledge a guest’s presence at all? It’s practically assault to force them into making eye contact if they don’t feel like it, isn’t it? Their body, their choice.

Kids aren’t born knowing the rules of society or the norm in your family. If you are the kind of family that hugs and kisses when you get together, by all means actively encourage your kids to do the same. You aren’t teaching them anything about the wider world, nor are you telling them that people have license to touch them in a sexual way when they don’t want it.

Don’t sexualize innocent interactions and don’t make your kids afraid of everyone. Encouraging them to be affectionate with the important people in their lives will only brighten the line between appropriate and inappropriate touching for the time in life when they actually are autonomous.