Issues with 3yo not respecting boundries/personal space

[TruffleMonkey]

My daughter is almost 3 and a half and I am really struggling to get her to understand and respect other people's space and boundaries. We have always been pretty hot on consent and letting her know she can say no to touch, hugs, kisses etc which she is very confident about but she just doesn't seem to understand that it works both ways.

When she plays with her same age friends/cousins, often she will try to hug them or pull their arm to something and when they ask her to stop she just won't. I have to intervene and take her out of the situation so she doesn't upset another child. I then explain about giving people space, stopping when they ask etc but it's like it just goes in one ear and out the other.

She's very tactile and loves giving hugs and cuddles but sometimes she will be too exuberant (with me especially) and I have to literally peel her off me because she won't stop when I ask.

I'm starting to feel a little embarrassed about it to be honest because i see other children confidently assert their boundaries and her just ignore them.

Advice greatly appreciated!

Friends have had great success with explaining everyone has a bubble and you shouldn't go in someone else's bubble without asking. Then they just need to shout "bubble!" when they go in someone's space.

But don't worry too much, she's so little she won't understand why others don't like it. They all have things at this age that they don't "get", you have to hope that if you tell them ten thousand times they won't still be doing it at 8.

Aww bless her. This may well be a phase that she gets past pretty quick (but will feel like forever for you as her mum!) I mean it’s a lovely trait in many ways to be so affectionate bur I can see the issue with being forceful with it.
I’d keep a low key eye on other behaviours whether they flag any neurodiversity traits, I’m far from an expert but have seen in some of my friends kids who have autism that they can sometimes struggle to acknowledge other people’s boundaries as they can have quite fixed thinking about what they want / need to do at that moment.
being only 3 it could be a million reasons why she’s displaying this behaviour, it’s a key age for trying to gain control so she might be forcefully doing something that she’s twigged you don’t want her to do and also gets some attention.
Go easy on her, it’s not a nasty trait and worrying to much about what everyone is thinking will only inflame the situation. All you can do really is calmly manage the situation when it arises. And also go easy on yourself, this is likely to be a bigger problem for people in your head than it is in real life x

3yo haven’t developed empathy yet so she might know when something has annoyed her but not necessarily why it would annoy someone else/cross their boundaries.
Children usually respond better to praise/reward so I’d spend 15-30 minutes of play with her with teddies showing her “no =
your teddy stops touching my teddy” followed
by “yayyyyyy hi-five” etc. x

Thank you for the kind comments & suggestions ☺️ I have tried something similar to the Teddy thing actually and she got it quickly and was stopping. Maybe I just need to do it a little more as it didn't seem to translate to real life!

Yeah it’s an ongoing task unfortunately until it’s really sank in.
I started it with my DD when she was around 3 and I’m still doing it every now and again with her and she’s 7 now.
Like we’ll all be play fighting/tickling and then we’ll say “okay that’s enough now” and if one carries on someone shouts out “my body,
my rules” and then it stops immediately x