The power of touch

Today has been a pretty hectic day, as ever it is when we visit friends or they visit us. I spent alot of the day trying to watch over Abbie, who didn't want to share her toys with anyone, and was vigilantly retrieving any toys back off those who were in possession of any! She also had lot of fun, running around in the garden and then in the house with her playmates. As the day progressed, Abbie got more tired she lashed out more and lost the plot really, not knowing what she wanted. She normally naps for at least an hour after lunch but definitely didn't want to when she knew there were three little girls playing downstairs.


Everybody left around 3pm, when all of the toddlers were played out. Abbie could barely focus. Luckily, after some cuddles in front of a little quiet children's TV, she fell asleep and stayed that way for an hour. She woke up a bit confused and teary, managed to eat her dinner but was still a bit 'wappy'. Bath time lasted all of 1 minute, where she was upset and wobbly again. I managed to calm her down with more cuddles and quiet songs (trying to remember songs like Eidelweiss, Daisy, Ride-a-cock-horse etc). Unfortunately, neither choice of getting nappy and pyjamas on or her hair dried was answered with a positive yes (more like a protesting no). I ended up sitting on the bed with her and she laid there quite quietly after I put her down. She was so relaxed that I thought I'd try to remember some of the baby massage classes that I had taken ages ago, when she was about 6 months old.


Baby massage for toddlers too

I used some baby cream (Lavender and Dill) and massaged her feet, legs and arms (she didn't want me to do her chest as think too cold). She really enjoyed it - looking more relaxed and smiling too, especially when I did her feet. She offered me her hands after I finished her legs and so on. It was really lovely to do for her and to see her relaxing after a hectic day. I also massaged her face (I didn't use any cream for that), just running my fingers across her eye brows, across her forehead and sweeping away from her tear ducts out to her cheeks.

The last month or so, Abbie's been more restless in the evenings, going to bed at 6.30pm - 7pm but being awake and bubbly until 9pm. We've been up and down the stairs alot. Tonight, however, not a peep since she went to bed at 6.30pm. All that playing must have helped, although she's had days like that on and off throughout this month. This is the first evening I tried massage to relax her before bed, and it seems to have been really helpful. Relaxed me too! Just so special to be able to provide that moment of peace and tranquility for her, lovely to be smiling, and even laughing, as we did it.

For some massage sweeps try this site - one point is to always massage towards the heart (finish strokes back up or down to the direction of the heart, depending on where in the body you are doing it).

Love and contact comfort

Tonight's experience made me think of the experiments carried out in the 1950's with baby monkeys by Harry Harlow.  The following description is direct from wikipedia (sorry I didn't paraphrase, but hopefully full text worth it):

"In Harlow's classic experiment, two groups of baby rhesus monkeys were removed from their mothers. In the first group, a terrycloth mother provided no food, while a wire mother did, in the form of an attached baby bottle containing milk. In the second group, a terrycloth mother provided food; the wire mother did not. It was found that the young monkeys clung to the terrycloth mother whether or not it provided them with food, and that the young monkeys chose the wire surrogate only when it provided food.

Whenever a frightening stimulus was brought into the cage, the monkeys ran to the cloth mother for protection and comfort, no matter which mother provided them with food. This response decreased as the monkeys grew older.

When the monkeys were placed in an unfamiliar room with their cloth surrogate, they clung to it until they felt secure enough to explore. Once they began to explore, they occasionally returned to the cloth mother for comfort. Monkeys placed in an unfamiliar room without their cloth mothers acted very differently. They froze in fear and cried, crouched down, or sucked their thumbs. Some even ran from object to object, apparently searching for the cloth mother, as they cried and screamed. Monkeys placed in this situation with their wire mothers exhibited the same behavior as the monkeys with no mother.

Once the monkeys reached an age where they could eat solid foods, they were separated from their cloth mothers for three days. When they were reunited with their mothers, they clung to them and did not venture off to explore as they had in previous situations. Harlow concluded from this that the need for contact comfort was stronger than the need to explore.

The study found that monkeys who were raised with either a wire mother or a cloth mother gained weight at the same rate. However, the monkeys that had only a wire mother had trouble digesting the milk and suffered from diarrhea more frequently. Harlow's interpretation of this behavior, which is still widely accepted, was that a lack of contact comfort is psychologically stressful to the monkeys.
The importance of these findings is that they contradicted both the then common pedagogic advice of limiting or avoiding bodily contact in an attempt to avoid spoiling children and the insistence of the then dominant behaviorist school of psychology that emotions were negligible. Feeding was thought to be the most important factor in the formation of a mother-child bond. Harlow concluded, however, that nursing strengthened the mother-child bond because of the intimate body contact that it provided. He described his experiments as a study of love. He also believed that contact comfort could be provided by either mother or father. Though widely accepted now, this idea was revolutionary at the time" "


Although I cannot rationalise or negotiate very well with my nearly two year old, I am going to try to remember the power of other senses, particularly touch and the comfort it provides, I'm especially going to try and keep the massage up now too.

Extra thought: Tiffany Field's work at the Touch Research Institute, University of Miami, on the benefits of massage for pregnant mothers and the children they carry is also worth reading about. Reduced stress levels, and depression and anxiety was found in a number of studies, e.g., see "Pregnancy and labor massage"