The Comforting Touch: Tactile Intimacy and Talk in Managing Children’s Distress

Čekaitė, Asta; Holm, Malva Kvist

doi:10.1080/08351813.2017.1301293

Cited by 96 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Adults' affectionate haptic interaction with young children (frequent in Swedish preschool settings) also involves haptic comforting and soothing. The adults use stroking or envelop a crying child in temporally sustained embraces (Cekaite and Kvist Holm 2017). Various functions and the complex features of touch have been demonstrated in a study on haptic interaction in a U.S. child-care institution.…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adult-initiated touch and its functions at a Swedish preschool: controlling, affectionate, assisting and educative haptic conduct

Bergnéhr

Čekaitė

2017

International Journal of Early Years Education

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The present study examines adult-child touch and its functions in a Swedish preschool (for 1 to 5-year-old children). The data are naturalistic observations and video-recorded data of everyday preschool activities. The study describes the frequently occurring functions of educators' haptic conduct (control, affectionate, affectionate-control, assisting and educative touch), discussing them in relation to the children's age, gender and type of the preschool activity. It reveals the complexity of touch, demonstrating that physical contact is used for a variety of purposes in the educators' daily work. The educators employed touch without force, and the children did not respond with explicit and forceful resistance (such as pushing back or otherwise protesting). Adult-initiated haptic behaviour served a continuum of social purposesfrom social-relational work, such as establishing and building affectively positive, caring, social relations, to practical and educative organisational efforts to manage the complex and busy preschool life. The distribution of adult-child touch categories brings attention to the bodily aspects of the early childhood educational setting and highlights some of the ways in which the requirements of the Swedish curriculum for Preschool and its focus on educare are actualised in the educators' embodied conduct.

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Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adult-initiated touch and its functions at a Swedish preschool: controlling, affectionate, assisting and educative haptic conduct

Bergnéhr

Čekaitė

2017

International Journal of Early Years Education

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“…It is also important to recognize that affectionate touch conduct may also exert some (albeit veiled) control over the child's body. Affectionate touch can serve as an act of care aimed at regulating and mildly, non-coercively controlling the child's conduct (Cekaite and Holm Kvist 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Caring-for is interactional in that the person being cared for ubiquitously responds to the care and must accept the care if caring is to be effectuated (see also Buber 1953Buber /1993. Caring acts are multifaceted: They can provide emotional support and compassionate soothing/emotion regulation; they can also involve guidance and, especially with young children, embodied and verbal acts of monitoring and control (Cekaite and Holm Kvist 2017;Goodwin and Cekaite 2018).…”

Section: Relational Perspectives On Care Intimacy and Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such soothing practices were differently organized and involved various degrees of physical contact (e.g. Cekaite and Holm Kvist 2017). Recurrently, emotion regulation of children's distress was accomplished using temporally sustained embracesactive, mutually responsive and intimate, intercorporeal acts of compassion.…”

Section: Affectionate Touchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The teacher consoles (shows her compassion with) the boy with talk and an embrace that envelops the child, who is experiencing pain and distress, in a close and supportive bodily contact. By using embrace, the adult also diverts the boy's gaze from the others and creates an intercorporeal hub for the child's immersion in and experience of soothing and crying (Cekaite and Holm Kvist 2017). The boy leans toward the teacher, accepts her embrace and bodily accommodates the adult's soothing touch, and the educator and the boy together establish and sustain an intimate caring interaction.…”

Section: Affectionate Touchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Affectionate touch and care: embodied intimacy, compassion and control in early childhood education

Čekaitė

Bergnéhr

2018

European Early Childhood Education Research Journal

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Relational care, interpersonal intimacy and emotional attunement are crucial for children's development and wellbeing in ECEC. The present study examines how they are enacted in a Swedish preschool (for 1-5-year-olds) through recurrent adult-child physical conduct, i.e. affectionate and affectionate-controlling touch. The data consist of 24 hours of video-recorded observations of everyday activities. The study shows that educators' Affectionate-Comforting touch was used for emotion regulation as compassionate response to children's distress; Amicable touch engaged children in spontaneous affection; and, Affectionate-Controlling touch was used to mildly control and direct the child's bodily conduct and participation in preschool activities, or to mitigate the educators' verbal disciplining. The study demonstrates the emotional complexity of ECEC enacted through the practices of haptic sociality. It supports the holistic policies arguing that embodied relational care should be integrated in ECEC, contrary to ideas that connect professionalism with emotional distance and lack of physical contact.

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Human Touch

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2023

A New Companion to Linguistic Anthropology

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The Comforting Touch: Tactile Intimacy and Talk in Managing Children’s Distress

Cited by 96 publications

References 20 publications

Adult-initiated touch and its functions at a Swedish preschool: controlling, affectionate, assisting and educative haptic conduct

Adult-initiated touch and its functions at a Swedish preschool: controlling, affectionate, assisting and educative haptic conduct

Affectionate touch and care: embodied intimacy, compassion and control in early childhood education

Human Touch

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