To the editor:

I agree with Leonard Pitts (J-W, Oct. 4); bans on hugging and holding hands in schools are the pits. My grandson, a bright, sensitive, and affectionate kid (of course!), routinely hugged his classmates and friends at Montessori preschool. He even hugged opponents on the soccer field. Then one day he came home from kindergarten in one of Houston’s Gifted and Talented public school programs and reported, “I got in trouble ’cause I hugged someone.”

He explained to his incredulous mother that he’d been made to sit on the sidelines on the playground because a classmate reported that he’d hugged another child. He was told that by the rules one is “not allowed to touch other pupils.” The 5-year-old was perceptive enough to observe that “the girls do it all the time” without reprimand. That is another issue.

Fortunately, he still hugs his friends when so moved and is back in a Montessori school where such deviant behavior is acceptable. However, he still won’t let his mother kiss him because of the teasing that followed a goodbye peck at kindergarten one morning. Surely that is a cultured, not a natural, response in young children. Rules about how kids will be kids are better directed at bullying behavior than at shows of affection. The biblical exhortation to turn the other cheek should apply to smooches as well as smites.

Paul Enos,

Lawrence