Ted Cruz tries to kiss his eight year old daughter on the campaign trail in Iowa and the kid is not too happy about either being kissed or being hugged by him. Not only does everyone else hate Ted Cruz, but his own daughter hates him too!
He tries to kiss her for the camera, and she tries to flick him away with her finger. Then as he hugs her and kisses her, she says, “Ow! Ow! Ow!” He kisses her a couple of times and I swear as she pulls away after the second kiss, I thought I heard her say, “Ugh.” Cruz’s reactions towards his daughter are fine. I detect only kindness and loving warmth from him in this video. But maybe he doesn’t display that towards her at all times. And she clearly doesn’t feel kindness and warmth towards him, more like the opposite.
A lot of people are commenting on this video saying it shows nothing at all, maybe just a kid being bratty or too shy to be in front of the camera. There are a number of other explanations being offered, all perfectly innocent.
However, a lot of other people are chiming saying that they do not like the vibes of this video one bit. This girl clearly doesn’t want to be either kissed or hugged by her father and honestly it looks as if she doesn’t even like him very much. She is actively pulling away from him in revulsion.
I agree with the second interpretation. As a therapist, I do not like the vibes in this video one bit. This video gives off the creepiest vibes to me. I watched it very closely a number of times and paused it many times along the way, looking at it down to fractions of a second. After a lot of analysis, I conclude that this video is very disturbing. She expressions on the girl’s face are priceless. There is a little bit of fear, but mostly I see resentment, contempt and disgust. That’s a pretty bad combination.
Now of course, there could be a completely innocent explanation for this. I am sure you can think of many scenarios which shows that nothing is seriously going on between her and her father at all. Maybe she is just being an entitled, snotty, bratty kid. Maybe she’s had bad experiences with boys at school and now she is repulsed by any man touching her, even her father, in which case, he would be off the hook. And there are quite a few document cases of young girls who become phobic of men’s touch and hence will not even let their fathers hug and kiss them through no fault of the father. I do not know this family nor its dynamics and everyone’s conclusions here are frankly just speculation.
Nevertheless, I do not like the vibes in this video one bit. This is a girl who clearly does not like to be touched by her father, and this is not the only time she has reacted this way. In fact, it looks like something that has happened many times before, and may be going on on a regular basis. He’s done something to her to make her fear, resent and hate him. That initial flicking away with the finger was very disturbing. It almost seems like she is holding up a cross to ward off a vampire. That is the feel that I got off that peculiar gesture.
I assume that most eight year old girls love their fathers just fine. That’s not an age where you are going to see a lot of oppositional behavior. That comes later in the teen years. I would gather that most girls that age love their fathers. Her behavior is not one of a girl who loves her father. That hand gesture almost looks she is trying to ward off evil.
I will tell you one thing. None of us ever acted this way in my family when our father or mother tried to hug any of us. My sister didn’t like my father for most of her life, unfortunately for good reason I suppose, but I think she liked and even loved him when she was eight years old. I think we all liked and loved our father at that age. All the fighting, at least with me, one brother and my sister with my father came later in the Wild West of the teen years.
I can’t think of any of us at that age pulling away in utter contempt and revulsion when our parents tried to hug us.
This guy is a hardcore Christian with a capital C. These are the out and out crazy, wacko, nutcase fundamentalist Christians. I believe that family relations in a lot of these fundamentalist families are a lot more disturbed than people think. Keep in mind that these types believe in spare the rod, spoil the child – harsh punishment for their kids which is basically child abuse except that they get away. And Mr. Cruz has even admitted with pride that he beats both of his daughters. So he beats the little girl in this video.
I am not detecting healthy dynamics in this family.
Just my 2 pfennig.
