Learning about the sense of touch

How does it feel?

Babies like to cuddle. There is no question concerning the importance of bodily contact between your baby and you, and right from the start it is important to create as many opportunities for physical contact with your baby. Feeding, whether breast-feeding or bottle-feeding, is a great opportunity for physical closeness between you and your baby.

Your baby is born into a world that is new for her- sounds, sights, temperature, smells, and touch, are all new experiences. You, as a parent, want to help your baby to feel safe and relaxed. With your help, she is rapidly learning to manage her new world. Touching and movement are often effective ways to soothe an infant. It is important to remember that every baby has her own special style of managing the world, her own special way of sensing, processing, and reacting to her environment and by understanding her uniqueness you will learn to respect her competence and attend her needs.

Newborns show that they sense they have been touched by making distinctive movements, such as withdrawing the part touched, or turning towards the direction from where they felt the touch. Furthermore, it is now considered a fact that while babies may not experience pain in the same manner that older children do, they nevertheless do feel pain. A study of facial expressions in response to immunization shots given between two and nineteen months showed that expressions of pain and anger predominated at all ages.

Your baby the scientist

Your baby is an active agent, and not just a recipient of sensations. Using his sense of touch, he explores the environment actively and learns about the world. As a small baby he uses his hands to grasp objects. As he starts to crawl, he presses his hands against the surface of the floor and feels his weight on them. About the same time finer movement develops, and he can touch and feel, and learn to discriminate by touch different textures and shapes. Allowing him the opportunity to play with toys of different textures, and to learn to operate them in different ways, like pushing, pulling, or turning, is very important for the development of fine motor ability. Using a knife and fork, getting dressed, drawing and writing, as well as playing musical instruments- all require good fine-motor control.

Exploration changes from mainly grasping movements to fingering and palpating objects at around four months of age. At that time the hands rapidly transfer objects backwards and forwards, allowing visual exploration to occur, thus providing a basis for cross model comparisons- touch and vision.

In fingering one hand supports the object while the most sensitive portion of the other (the finger tips) explores it. The fingering is accompanied by visual exploration and decreases if there is no visual feedback- for example when the infant is in the dark. From three months old the ways in which infants manipulate and explore objects are related to their physical properties. They will scratch a ball with sandy-texture surface, which makes an interesting noise, but will not attempt to scratch a soft ball. Actions of exploration depend on both the age of the infant and the nature of the object. The amount of mouthing and looking at the objects, as well as the amount of two-hands grasping, decrease with age. Picking up, releasing, (from six to nine months), and squeezing (from nine to twelve months) increase with age.

Isn't that tasty!

Attention has been paid to the infant's use of his mouth as a tactile tool for exploration. Changes in shape and tactile qualities of a nipple were found to be actively explored by one month of age. Such exploration increases over the first four months of life, with the developing ability to grasp and take objects to the mouth. Mouthing is very important for the development of oral sensations and activities, including eating and talking. Some parents prevent mouthing out of fear that the object the baby puts in his mouth is dirty or can cause choking. Instead, it is better to encourage mouthing, while making sure there are no dangerous things in baby's surrounding.

Interacting and the sense of touch

The most important aspects of your baby’s world are your way of touching and holding her, as long as your voice and your face. From the very beginning, your baby learns to recognize your special way of handling her, and it gives her comfort and feeling of security. Parents and the baby are involved in a mutual journey of learning about each other.

As your baby reaches four months old and she is able to reach out her hands, and to open them and grasp, she will actively explore your face, hair, and body using her sense of touch. It is an exciting feeling of bonding when she explores your face. Until this time she used other senses- like vision, hearing, or smell, to learn all she can about you. Adding touch to the other senses, will enable her to create a more complete picture of you. All elements combine together to teach your baby who you are.

At about eight months your baby is fascinated by hair, glasses, and facial features. As she explores your face, she will pull your hair, pinch, poke and scratch your face. Although she has no intent to harm, it can be painful. Let her know that you like the exploration but you do not like the pain. It is important to remember that although it might seem aggressive, it is a normal developmental step. Another developmental step is at the age of eighteen to twenty four months, when your baby may try out biting, hair pulling, or hitting other children. She is trying to learn about other children and how to get their attention. Interacting with other children is a new experience, and she might be reacting to the stress of not knowing the other child, and how to initiate an interaction. try not to overreact. The biting child is as terrified as the bitten one. Comfort both children, explain that it hurts, and the bitten child did not like it. Offer your child other ways to approach children.

Do I spoil my baby ?

You may ask yourself, as many parents do, how much holding is too much? Can I spoil my baby by carrying her around? The first months are time for acquiring confidence in the parents, and helping your baby to feel secure. In order to feel secure, your baby has to learn that you will attend her needs. Picking your baby up to play with, or to calm her, does not mean spoiling. Spoiling is when a parent responds to every whim, hovering over the baby and not allowing her time to relax herself, or try out new abilities.

Differences among babies

While you as a parent adapt yourself to your baby it is important to learn about his intensity of reaction, his threshold for utilizing stimuli, his motor style, and ways of self-soothing. You can do so by watching your baby’s activity; the way he responds to touch, to being undressed, to movement, or to sound.

Babies experience sound, sight, touch and movement on different levels. There is a normal spectrum of sensitivity. Some babies are overly sensitive to one or some sensory realms, and might increase their cry while you cuddle them. Others are under-sensitive, and might crave touch, and would like to spend the whole day in your arms. Especially in the first three months your baby is learning how to regulate his daily cycle of waking and sleeping hours, of feeding times, and how to regulate the many stimulus in the surrounding. Everything is new, and the baby’s sensitivity plays an important role in the process of learning how to manage the surrounding world.

Oversensitive babies

A baby who is overly sensitive is likely to find many experiences overwhelming. The barrier to the outer world is not well developed, because of the tendency to over-react to sensations, and having a hard time distancing himself from these sensations. This baby will respond to playful attempts, to soothing, to cuddling, or to daily activities- like bathing or changing a diaper, with frantic activity and crying. An overly sensitive baby might pose a tough challenge to the parent and be frustrating even to experienced ones. Nothing seems to help - parents might try to rock him, cuddle him, pat him on the back, or talk to him. It is a situation that can be solved, and parents must learn subtle techniques of swaddling and gently playing in a quiet nondistracting atmosphere. Here are some hints you might find useful in carying for an overly sensitive baby:

• Every change in the routine is difficult for an overly sensitive baby ; introduce changes gradually.
• Approach your baby slowly while talking softly. Step by step gently touch him, pick him up and simply hold him. When he begins to relax you can start rocking or caressing him very gently. Run through the same slow steps every time, and do not add any other stimuli until the baby tells you by his relaxed muscle tone, eye contact and cooing, that he is ready to move on. Add more stimuli very gently, and respect his response.
• Help him get used to startling situations, like his daily bath. First wet his feet, then dip them in water, let him enter the water with a shirt, or wrap him with a receiving blanket or a cloth diaper, and undress him very slowly. He needs to be able to anticipate the next step.
• Monitor signals your baby gives you. If, while playing he turns away, he may be signaling that he needs time out from the situation.

Undersensitive babies

Alternatively the baby who is undersensitive to touch may crave contact. In other words, the baby who does not respond to touch may need a lot of touching. For this baby a normally effective amount of stimulation will not be sufficient. The parent has to readjust their own behavioral repertoire and stimulus level to match the baby’s needs. He may like to roughhouse, or may go out of his way to test different things. In search for stimulation this baby can be very active.

Because of his high activity level, the intensive exploration of his surrounding and search for stimulation, this baby can get more easily into trouble. Make an extra effort to keep his surroundings safe. Let him explore and experience his environment in different ways. Provide different objects and activities, to satisfy his needs.

Do not overload. Monitor the amount of toys and events. When he gets restlessness and overly active, he will signal to you that it is too much for him.