How Touch Affects Your Children

The Devastating Effects of Child Abuse and Neglect

Telling your children you love them is not as powerful a reassurance as demonstrating your love for them, and depriving your children of genuine physical affection can have devastating consequences. Years ago many motorists had this sticker affixed to their bumpers: Have you hugged your child today? Many of those stickers have disappeared, along with their message. We become so wrapped up in our own lives that we don't have time to show our children affection anymore. We come home exhausted and we still have to cook for them, bathe them, clean up after them, and shop for them. We use grueling work hours as excuses for not stopping long enough to just hold them and hug them for a few minutes - "Not now - I'm busy." Do we really need to spend more time showing them affection?

In a word: Yes. We can't afford to ignore our children's need for physical affection. Here is why:

While much research has been devoted to the visual, auditory, and olfactory senses, very little research has been conducted on the subject of touch, specifically, its neglect. Volumes have been written on physical and sexual abuse, and many books and articles have been written on the healing properties of touch, but the consequences of its absence can be glimpsed only in sporadic sentences in college psychology texts. More has been written about neglect of touch on monkeys than on human beings, despite the infinitesimally small amount of human research indicating that more needs to be conducted.

Before our eyes see clearly, before we understand what we hear, and long before we identify taste or smell, we feel. Touch is one of the first sensory foundations from which we gain knowledge about life.

We are as affected by touching others as we are by others touching us. If exercised sensitively and wisely, touch in the form of affection and nurturing heals us.

But abusive (physical and/or sexual) touch, if exercised to its fullest expression, may result in our death, either physical or spiritual.

Being deprived of touch can drain us of life, too - physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually.