compassionate touch
Healthy compassionate touch is so important to our health and well being.
It's a basic vital need for babies and toddlers. From this young age they respond to touch that feels good to them by relaxing and softening their bodies.
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The reverse is also true, they are able to communicate when touch does not feel good to them by recoiling or showing another sign of distress.
The Healthy Compassionate Touch Extension Program is available for free on the Jesse Lewis Choose Love website. Below is the introductory video for this program.
Touching a child where their boundaries are respected allows for a healthy “conversation” between the child and their care giver.
Unfortunately, it is all too often that babies and young children are not respected in regard to touch. Children instead learn to “put up with” or submit to touch that does not feel good. This begins the process of being educated out of this innate understanding we are born with around the language of touch.
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I have worked with my friend, Scarlett Lewis, to create an extension program for the free Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Program created by the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement.
With this program we introduce the idea of healthy compassionate touch in school, teaching children to recognize touch that is nurturing and helpful, and to know the kind of touch that isn’t. There are easy ways to talk about touch and bring Compassionate Touch safely into the schools.
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Students and teachers alike have found Compassionate Touch to be a very effective way of increasing pro-social behaviors in the classroom, and an important component of any SEL curriculum.
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