Through massage the parent is able to soothe, strengthen their baby’s body while growing their baby’s brain, and building their relationship, one touch at a time.
Parents can determine if their baby is being overstimulated or if their child is accepting of their touch and wanting to continue their massage. Through this interrelational interaction, the baby’s brain is being structured, repetitive routines are being established with respect leading to secure attachment, trust, and harmony, while the pharmacy of the baby and parent are sending hormones through their respective systems which can reduce stress, improve sleep, and affect the release milk for a parent who is nursing, .
In the three examples above, massage helped regulate and soothe, reduced pain and built relationships. Just like when your mother kissed your booboo and told you it would be all right, so too with massage, the strokes to the skin affect the short nerves which carries the pain receptors regulating the brain’s notion of pain. The “good hormones” are released through massage (oxytocin, prolactin, serotonin, melatonin). The “stress hormones” are reduced (cortisol, norepenephrine, XXXX). Massage strokes the skin which is made up of the same cells as the brain, and once again, within the massage relationship, between parent and child, massaging the skin structures the brain. Forming a relationship, as the parent reads the baby’s cues, uses voice and rhythm to help structure themassage moment, brings forth greater sense of self. Massage offers social resciprocity. Massage offers a respect of the child, gaining permission before a massage is offered. Massage offers a way of bonding, developing secure attachment, reducing the parent role as a medical technician, and promotes a healthy, happy and calm life.
Through massage, the basic desire of relating can be achieved. All humans are wired to relate. Massage offers this way to connect with one another at the most primal sense, the touchsense. offers benefits of the physical, social-emotional, cognitive
For Sessss, a child with attention deficit hyperactive disorder, having grandma learn about the massage acupressure strokes in the palm of her granddaughter’s hand meant all the difference in the world, as the girl SEsss went from tantruming for twentyminutes in a row, to tantruming to five minutes. Eventually, she was able to administer self-massage and was able to regulate her own behavior in a safe way.
Whatever the special healthcare condition, one thing is perfectly sure, massage benefits a variety of children with behavior issues, health problems, or developmental delays. Utilizing the massage structure, parents and children engage in eye gaze, as the parents focuses on his or her child, uses for the most part “parentese” rhymes and songs during the massag
Bathing your baby or child in a massage somatosensory experience, you are incorporating touch, eye gaze, reading your baby’s cues, rhythm, voicing, engaging your child in the moment, being present to the touchsense that is the first sense that is developed in utero and the sense upon which other senses are formed. Touch is not an extra for a developing child, touch is a necessity, for without touch a child can wither and die. Children discovered in the orphanages in Romania were found to be delayed or disordered as manyof them were not touched or nurtured. or should he survive, he will be delayed or disabled,
These are just some of the benefits of massage that I have seen while working with parents of children ranging in ages from 3 weeks of age to 13 years of age.
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