Baby massage sessions help psychologists learn about attachment

Head of Psychology at the College, Ashley Vallance, explains how the massage sessions marry up with students’ work in the classroom:

Students in the Psychology department have been taking part in sessions after College where they looked at some of the techniques new mothers and fathers are learning in order to help bonding in the crucial stages of initial attachments. In class, students have been studying the work of psychologists such as Rutter, Schaffer and Emerson, Bowlby and Ainsworth and looking at the different stages and types of attachment in humans and animals.  

Students learnt about the importance of early attachment on adult relationships and how these baby massage sessions can help to stimulate the growth in neural pathways of new-borns. Rachel Hilton from ‘Holistic Harmonies’ also spoke about the role of Oxytocin as a hormone and the influences it has on the mother’s and the baby’s brain during initial development and post-natal development.

Students also learned that baby massage is now being taught in prisons as part of offender rehabilitation in order to teach young fathers and fathers of expectant children the importance of healthy attachments in children. Once students had listened to the talk given by Rachel, there was the opportunity to practice some of the baby massage techniques.