My Situation

I am an uncle to 6 nieces and nephews. I live about 1000 miles away from the rest of my family, so I only see them 2-3 times each year. When it comes time to say goodbye, it is common practice for physical affection to be given out. My siblings and parents will hug each other and me. The children are encouraged to give out hugs and kisses to their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

I have two particular problems with this. The first is that the children don't seem to always want to give out hugs and kisses (and I think they should be taught bodily autonomy as early as possible). I know about this question (which I happen to have the accepted answer on) which deals with helping children enforce their own boundaries. For this question I want to focus on the other problem, which is that I don't want the kisses.

I am fine with hugging my nieces and nephews if they want to hug me, but I do not want to kiss them or have them kiss me. The reasons for this are that children give very slobbery kisses (which I don't like) and that none of the adults give kisses to each other, so it seems odd to me that they would have their children do so.

The general conversation will be something like this:

Sibling: Do you have hugs and kisses for uncle Rainbacon?

*Child hides face

Sibling: Come on, give your uncle Rainbacon a hug and a kiss and say goodbye

My Question

How can I decline the kisses without offending my siblings?

When it comes to my own young cousins and children of friends, I usually give them an explicit choice between sharing physical affection and not, while still expecting that they will obey the spirit of the parents request by giving a greeting. My personal script for it is, "Hugs, bye-byes or high fives?" (Basically, give a hug, wave goodbye at each other, or do a high five.) Handshake or fist bump are other options that some kids prefer, so choose the greetings that make sense for you.

I try to include various levels of contact including a no-physical-touch option, so wave hello/goodbye is always one of the choices. My three year old nephew, who is not especially comfortable hugging most of the extended family, really enjoys sharing a fist bump, bonus points for making explosion sounds!

The kids think it's fun, or at least seem enjoy or appreciate that they have a choice. You have control over the options you give, so anything that's out of your comfort zone, like kisses, is already off the table.

I haven't had a parent get offended yet when using this strategy. It frames the desire to share one of the listed forms of affection as your preference, and not an attack on their parenting, so it doesn't seem directly undermining or like you are encouraging the kids to disobey or ignore the parents.