compassionate, healing touch for kids
OUR SERVICES
Pediatric Massage
Pediatric massage greatly benefits children of all ages, from infancy to the teenage years. Massage is a great way to help calm and relax your child. It also teaches them about safe,
positive touch and setting boundaries. Kids 'n Touch provides massage in the safety of your own home or healthcare facility. Sessions are performed with your child fully clothed and with a parent or caregiver present
at all times. Verbal or non-verbal, your child’s consent to treatment is very important to us. Even though we require parental consent for treatment, we also look for non-verbal cues and body language from each child to guide our session with them. Respecting your child’s decisions and allowing him/her to feel safe and in control is of utmost importance to us.
Pediatric massage can help increase alertness and concentration, reduce pain, anxiety, loniless and fear and have a profound effect on the body's overall healing process.
Additionally, pediatric massage can have beneficial healing effects for children with cancer, cerebral palsy, autism, cycstic fibrosis, diabetes, Down Syndrome, muscular dystrophy, spina bifida, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, asthma/bronchitis, attention-deficity/hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and terminal illness.
Infant Massage Instruction
Infant massage is a wonderful technique for parents and caregivers to learn in order to provide their babies with nurturing touch. Massage is not only beneficial to babies
Through touch, both parents and baby become more relaxed. Additionally, massage provides all of the essential indicators of intimate parent-infant bonding and attachment: eye-to-eye, touch, voice, smell, movement, and thermal regulation. Infant massage is a vital, dynamic interaction that promotes respect, attachment and bonding and forms the foundation of relationship building that lasts a lifetime.
but also to parents who are giving the massage.
Benefits for babies
• helps with healthy weight gain
• improves circulation
• enhances immune system function
• helps baby/child to sleep deeper and more soundly
• promotes growth and enhances neurological development
• improves respiration by increasing oxygen and nutrient flow to cells
• improves digestion and overall functioning of the gastrointestinal tract
• helps relieve discomfort from gas, colic, constipation and congestion
• promotes relaxation and helps babies calm themselves, which reduces crying
• provides a special time of communication that fosters love, compassion, and respect
Awareness & Education
In today’s society, children are faced with many internal and external stressors. Every day pressures and expectations, bullying, academic anxiety, life-changing events and even illnesses, injuries and disabilities are a few examples of stressors that children commonly face. Add to that the stress the digital age can expose them to, and it is not surprising that many children are unable to successfully develop vital, face-to-face interpersonal skills and are becoming more disconnected from their peers and the world around them. For many children, these stressors can also immobilize them and can easily interfere with their normal development and their ability to learn.
It is our responsibility as parents, educators and caregivers to help our children thrive, and this includes finding effective ways to help them manage and reduce their stress and improve their connection with one another.
Kids ‘n Touch offers a creative and interactive child-to-child, peer based, program that teaches children healthy touch. This program also focuses on enhancing children’s sensory perception of touch, helps children to define and honor personal boundaries, strengthens their intuitive and empathetic awareness with one another and builds trusting and respectful relationships. Research proves that stress can be dramatically reduced through touch, human connections and exercise. There are many other physiological, emotional, behavioral and relational benefits of touch, such as:
• relieves anxiety
• improves concentration
• reduces aggression
• elicits relaxation of the mind and body
• curbs behavioral problems
• increases confidence and self-esteem
• creates a healthy sense of boundaries
• builds trusting and respectful relationships
Physiologically, touch increases levels of the feel-good hormones dopamine and serotonin in the brain. Oxytocin, another hormone that relieves stress and is thought to help humans bond with one another, is also released. The hormonal changes result in happier, calmer and more focused children.
Children need healthy, nurturing touch just as much as they need air to breathe and water to drink.
It is our hope that through safe and healthy touch, children can reduce their own anxiety, and possibly replace peer pressure and bullying with respectful connections and compassion for one another.
Articles
& Resources
Healing Touch for Little Clients
by Tina Allen
Massage & Bodywork Magazine (Sept/Oct 2013)
Read how powerfully healing massage can be for traumatized children as well as children with autism and cancer.
Benefits of Pediatric Massage
Touch Research Institute (1992 - 2005)
Review research findings supporting the beneficial attributes pediatric massage has on over 15 different health issues.
Massage Helps Children with Cancer
Massage Today - February 2014
Pediatric cancer cases continue to grow in numbers and managing symptoms of both the illness and its treatment lead health care providers to seek affordable palliative treatment options. In line with that, complementary and alternative modalities, like massage therapy, are also increasing in popularity.
Massage May Alleviate Childhood Depression
Massage Today - January 2013
Pediatric touch therapy has been examined in numerous research studies. Upon review of studies performed using tactile stimulation for children, evidence has demonstrated that massage therapy consistently provides a reduction of anxiety, depression and levels of stress hormones.