we all need to be touched by loving hands -

Skin to skin contact

There is a desperate need for parents to talk to their babies, as a means of developing the connections between the baby’s brain cells, so as to increase the baby’s brain power. There is, however, another method of communication, which is just as powerful and which we are just beginning to learn about.

Touch is the earliest sense that develops in the foetus. Just before two months of age the unborn child will move away from a light touch to its cheek. By three months it will do the same to a touch of its genital area, palms and soles. These continue to be the most sensitive areas of touch after birth and for adults.

At birth, touch is highly developed and it now appears that it is the primary medium through which parent and newborn communicate and become attached. Each time the mother or father touches the child, the bond between them is strengthened and the chances of the child surviving are increased. There are very strong emotions associated with the touching of our children.

It now appears that touch does much more than stimulate emotions. It matures our infant’s psychological development; stimulates their physical and mental growth; assures smoothness of physiological functions like breathing, heart rate and digestion; enhances their self-concept, body awareness and sexual identity; boosts their immune system and even enhances the grace and stability of their movements.

This may be why West Indians move so smoothly. We are a high-touch people.

Experiments done with infant rats, cats and monkeys show that if cuddled, stroked and licked, these animals grow up more gentle, peaceful, smarter, bigger and healthier. If deprived of gentle touch, they grow up antisocial, miserable, sicker, smaller, less able to remember, less able to cope and less able to parent.

Similar experiments in premature babies in intensive care units show that these sick babies get less illness, put on weight more quickly and show faster brain development if they are routinely stroked and massaged in the incubator.

They do everything even quicker if they are moved out of the incubator and held and cuddled by their mothers on their breasts. The more skin to skin contact there is, the better things go.

Touch is so important that an infant deprived of affectionate touch will literally perish from a syndrome called “failure to thrive”. Babies can thrive without sight, without smell, even without hearing. But they cannot thrive without being touched.

At the beginning of the last century, the mortality among children under two years of age, living in orphanages in Europe and in North America, was almost 100 per cent. These children were being well taken care of physically. They had all the food and health care they needed. Yet they died in their hundreds.

Their physical needs were being taken care of but no one was allowed to touch them. At that time, it was thought that cuddling infants would spread infections and make children morally weak.

In 1920, Dr J Brenneman, a hospital paediatrician, introduced a rule in his ward that every baby should be picked up, carried around and “mothered” several times a day. Death rates fell immediately.

In a remarkable study published in the British Medical Journal in 1951, Dr EM Widdowson, from the Department of Experimental Medicine, Cambridge, described the effect of lack of mothering or touching on two groups of children in separate orphanages in Germany, right after World War II.

Each orphanage housed about 50 boys and girls between four and 14 years of age. They were receiving their official rations, which were adequate for their nutritional requirements. The children were below normal as regards weight. It was decided to follow the weights of these children by measuring them every fortnight, for one year.

During the first half of the year, neither orphanage would receive any additional food, but during the second half, one of the homes (A) would be supplied with unlimited amounts of additional bread, jam and orange juice.

As the first six months went by, children were gaining weight at very different rates at the two homes. In the first home (A), the average weight gain for six months was three pounds. At the second (B), it averaged one pound.

During the second half of the year, the position was reversed. In spite of the extra food provided for the first home (A), the average weight gain was much less than it was for the second home, which was not receiving any extra rations. All of a sudden, the children in the second home (B) had began to put on weight. There was clearly some other factor at work.

At the beginning of the year, orphanage A was in the charge of a Fraulein Grun. Orphanage B was presided over by a Fraulein Schwarz. Just at the time when the additional food was first provided to orphanage A, Fraulein Grun left the home and Fraulein Schwarz was transferred from orphanage B to orphanage A. A third woman, Fraulein Weiss, came to take charge of the second orphanage (B).

Fraulein Grun and Fraulein Weiss were very similar in temperament, bright, happy people, genuinely fond of children and the children of them. They constantly hugged and touched their children and encouraged their staff to do the same. Fraulein Schwarz was quite different. She was stern and forbidding and she ruled her orphanage with a rod of iron. Children and staff lived in constant fear of her reprimands and criticisms. She refused to allow her staff to cuddle children or to even demonstrate any sort of affection for them.

The character of the matron was the only variable factor found to explain the startling differences in weight between the children in these two orphanages.

Like love, one has to be touched to live. No one can survive without giving love and receiving love. No one can live without touching and being touched.

©2003-2004 Trinidad Publishing Company Limited
Designed by: Randall Rajkumar-Maharaj · Updated daily by: Sheahan Farrell

The Thank You button is good for one thing..As a parkie it saves us the chore of a typed response..Well two things..If I use it to say thank you its good..When it is used to judge and/or grade a post, then I agree with you Jaye

About the comment, "I would like us to stop the habit of judging and grading each other's viewpoints."

Of course that would be a good thing. And of course, human nature being what it is . . . no one can really do that. But we can all make more of an effort; try to stop and remember, even when some knee-jerk reflex hits.

How about another quote?

"I am treating you as my friend, asking you share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses."
~ Katherine Mansfield ~

here's a question..
why the **** is this thread turning into such a big ****ing deal? we have a ****ing disease called pd. support should be foremost. judgement is not allowed? ****.. when you judge someone for being judgemental, you yourself become judgemental. what we have here is a diverse group of people with diverse opinions and we are all thrown in a ****ing stew called pd. what's that saying? too many chefs do something? or is it something about watching a boiling pot? who ****ing cares. ****. look at it this way. we cannot all be walking around like ****ing droids with the same expressions, that would just make us people with pd. we need to value our opinions to remain People with pd. we need to respect others opinions so we can be PEOPLE with pd. we need to remain tactful with posts, replies, and all input to this forum to keep us PEOPLE........with pd.

btw, all of the ****'s were to drive my point home and to keep this semi humerous.. laugh.. it is good for the soul

No, no, not the face! Oh please don't hurt the face!!!

Just reminiscing. Only my view from where I am. Different place than where I was the other day. Just me. Nobody special.

Jaye

*Historic Note: HFF meant "Humor Flag a-Flyin" to one member in days gone by.

Humourous - Not but I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.



Ken

Every time Isee last page I think this thread is over ..............

chuckle.. got your attention, eh ? cmon.. lighten up. pd is hard enough to live with.

I had no idea that a few words that i said would wallop into such a big deal. I didn't even reply to someone accusing me of "phishing" for replys. I'm with you Harley, what's the big deal?
I guess we're here, and sometimes when things get slow, we babble a lot on threads like this. OK , it was enjoyable to hear all of us get talking, whatever was said, but it's time to bury this one, there is lots of stuff to talk about. Please, somebody else start a new thread; one that takes us away from here. Sincerely, cs

Hey..At least she didnt start throwing cookies..