Infant Massage & the Importance of Touch to Child Development

In a world where physical interaction with and among our children has become a concern for parents, many teachers, adult friends and even family members are often, subconsciously, avoiding any type of physical contact with the children they encounter each day.

With concerns of being classified as a "child predator", many adults avoid all physical contact with children, no matter what the cost involved. Because of this, parents must work diligently to make up for the loss of physical contact the child has with the world by encouraging safe and healthy physical contact at home through hugs, pats on the back and even gentle strokes of the hair. For, without this physical contact, our children may grow up to feel a sense of loss in terms of affection and love and not know, themselves, how to express their emotions on a physical level.

In addition to a loss in the expression of their own emotions and affection, children who are deprived of touch growing up also show great tendencies toward other negative effects of life.

In social and psychological studies, researchers have found that with touch deprivation, children often grow into juveniles and adults who show tendencies toward physical violence, sleep disorders, suffer from suppressed immune systems and even show some tendencies toward impaired growth development. The basis on which these findings were concluded seem to indicate that when a child is deprived of physical contact by a parent, especially a mother, the child does not learn to develop and nurture a compassionate and caring side of themselves and thus will not care about the world they are involved in nor care about their own bodies.