Clinical Reference Systems: Pediatric Advisor 10.0

By their very dependent nature, newborns and young infants require and normally get a lot of physical contact from their parents. As children get older and their demands change, parents tend to touch their children much less. By the time children are 4 years old, they are usually toilet trained, can get dressed and undressed themselves, can feed themselves, and can bathe themselves. Thus, if parents don't purposefully try to have a great deal of physical contact with their children, the children will be touched much less than they were at an earlier age. There are several things that parents can do to help offset these natural changes.

1. Physical proximity. During boring or distracting activities, place your child close to you, where it is easy to reach him. At dinner, in the car, in a restaurant, when you have company, or when you are in a shopping mall, keep your child near you so that physical contact requires little, if any, additional effort.

2. Physical contact. Frequent and brief (1 or 2 seconds), gentle and nonverbal physical contact will do more to teach your child that you love her than anything else you can do. Discipline yourself to touch your child at least 50 to 100 times each day. Touch your child any time that she is not doing something wrong or something that you disapprove of.

3. Verbal reprimands. Children may mistakenly interpret verbal reprimands, nagging, pleading, and yelling as signs that their parents do not like them. Always keep in mind the old expression, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

4. Nonverbal contact. Try to make most of your contact with children nonverbal. With young children, physical contact usually has a calming effect, whereas verbal praise, questioning, or general comments may only interrupt what your child was doing.

5. Independent play. Children need to have time to themselves--time when they can play, put things into their mouths, or stare into space. Generally, children don't do nearly as well if their parents carry them around much of the time and constantly try to entertain them. Keep in mind that, although your baby may fuss when frustrated, she will never learn to deal with frustrations if you are always there to help her out. Give children enough freedom to explore the environment on their own and they will learn skills that they can use the rest of their lives.

REMEMBER: Children need lots of brief, nonverbal physical contact. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.