Mums and Dads
Mums
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Having worked with babies and children for many years, it has become clear to me that there's a general lack of understanding about how important mothers are. In my experience, they are central to the health and well-being of the entire family, but unfortunately, they don't often see themselves that way, and often place the needs of their partners and children above their own.
Conversely, in cases where I have treated ONLY the mum, the entire family dynamics change for the better. The stress and anxiety level within the family is regulated, and unsurprisingly the children are more settled and begin to sleep better, even though they themselves have not had treatments!
Infants need a strong parental safety system; our earliest relationship develops within the womb, where it's hard to distinguish the separation between us and our mother.
And once born, this extremely close connection continues to be intense, especially during the baby's first nine months when they continue to be closely linked to their mothers; acutely aware of, and connected to, her feelings.
Our emotional sense of who we are and what the world is like arises out of this most formative of relationships. Our essential beliefs about our sense of self-worth and how safe we are in the world emerge out of this deeply sensed connection.
It is generally agreed that closeness and intimacy are vital for the child's health and growth.
Through having her own treatments, the mother will be able to let go of tension and some the difficult experiences that she's been through, and once she is holding less tension and unprocessed emotions, she will find it much easier to create a stronger connection with her child.
Parents
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Since the Coronavirus pandemic allowed more fathers to spend a lot more time at home, the relationship between fathers and their children has had the rare opportunity to flourish and grow.
Science tells us that fathers make a unique and important contribution to their children's early development and life-long success.​
It has been shown that dads who are involved, nurturing and playful with their babies have children with higher IQs and better language and thinking skills compared to children who don't. A father's involvement is also associated with less behavioural problems at school and greater career success.
They push children beyond their comfort zones and teach them how to take calculated risks and ways of overcoming obstacles. Dad's style of playing helps children to learn to regulate their feelings as they tend to be more physical during rough housing, which introduces excitement and unpredictability and helps children learn how to manage their emotions.
Many fathers who have also been through the emotional stresses and strains of conception through to the birth, or even those who have very demanding jobs, find that having their own treatments help them to relax and be more present with their children.
Treatments can also help fathers to release any older, deeper, more emotional layers that they may be holding, and so allow them to open into a deeper bonding relationship with their children. This secure attachment provides your child with the basis for a healthy life with healthy relationships well into their adulthood..
Parents
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When children are first brought for treatments, there is often a degree of stress and helplessness on the part of the parents. They are under a lot of pressure from having attempted over a period of time a variety of strategies, but without success.
The expectation is that treatments should be mainly directed towards relieving the child's symptoms, eg crying, sleeping and feeding problems.
And while clearly babies do have physical tensions and compressions in their systems following their birth story, it is my experience that the parents and family dynamics play a pivotal role in the child's emotional health and well-being.
By the time I see them, parents have often undergone many difficult and stressful challenges - many of them even before the child is born - difficulty with conception, stresses and anxieties during pregnancy both from outside factors and concerns for the baby; then there are the fears concerning the birth, and often the births themselves are not what was hoped for.
Added to this a child who is not eating, has difficulty sleeping or has bouts of endless crying, the parents will probably be holding a lot of tension, overwhelm and exhaustion. And where the parents are already emotionally overwhelmed because of their experiences, it is much harder for them to be emotionally available to the child, especially in the evening when they are all tired, In these situations it is more helpful to treat the unresolved trauma of the parent than working solely on the child.
Babies and children organise themselves in relation to how their parents are doing. They are very sensitive to the 'relational field' and will often wait until the parent has worked through a traumatic issue before beginning to resolve their own. In the infant's perception, their parents are their way of thriving in the world - they provide food, nurture, and safety. So the child needs the parents to de-regulate their own stress level first, before he feels it's safe to deepen into his own story.
In other words, when we are anxious, or in crisis, we need the emotional and physical support from those we consider capable of providing us with a sense of safety. The emotional availability of the parents allows the infant to self-regulate their emotions, and physically relax and let go. And in turn it becomes easier for them to show what they need.
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Having their own treatments allows parents the space and support to work through their own stresses and increase their parental confidence, which in turn enables a deeper bonding to happen. The more parents can release their own emotional tension, the more they become available and tune into their child's needs. Parents are then able to react with calm and serenity to the various behavioural modes of the child. And instead of getting caught up in the child's distress they now have the emotional availability to calm his agitation.