It is never too late to begin massage. Evidence-based practice supports the use of infant massage. Whether your baby is a newborn or several years old, massage can bring immediate and lasting results. Expectant parents often take infant massage instruction in advance so they are ready to begin this wonderful loving touch right from the start.
Benefits for parents and primary caregivers include:
- Provides all of the essential indicators of intimate parent-infant bonding and attachment: eye-to-eye, touch, voice, smell, movement, and thermal regulation.
- Encourages pre-verbal communication between caregiver and infant
- Helps parents feel more confident and competent in caring for their children
- Helps parents to ease their stress if they are a working parent and must be separated from their children for extended periods during the day
- Provides parents with one-on-one quiet time or interactive play with their children
- Creates a regular time of intimacy between parent and child.
- Increases parents’ self-esteem by reinforcing and enhancing their skills as parents, and validates their role
- Gives parents the tools for understanding their child’s unique rhythms and patterns
- Teaches parents how to read their infants’ cues and recognize their states of awareness
- Gives parents a special way to interact with their children who may be hospitalized. Helps parents feel a greater part of the healing process
- Daily massage helps parents to unwind and relax
- Provides a positive way for fathers to interact with their infants/children