FEELING WELL
MAGNIFICENTCHILDREN.LOVE
GROW YOUR MAGNIFICENT CHILD
CHAPTER 43
LEVEL 7.
FEELING WELL. Baby’s sense of touch and tactile development.
Your child’s OMSDEP: Her sense of touch and tactile development intentions:
To have an excellent ability to feel fine variations in surfaces and to correctly identify any surface she touches.
The fine touch:
If all has gone well, and it most probably has, then at this Level baby has reached a point of considerable natural tactile ability: She now knows the positions of her limbs and understands the feelings in her feet well enough to confidently run over a variety of terrain without falling. She can recognise the difference between rough, smooth, wet, dry and other textures. She is now able to feel and know the temperature gradients cold, cool, warm and hot. She can recognise shapes and objects by touch. And she can do these things in the dark.
To reach Level 7 of tactile development your child identified one side of a coin from another. Her tactile development has come a long way since birth and her OMSDEP now is to be able to use her fine sense of touch to correctly identify any object she touches. She should now have an excellent sense of touch and the potential to correctly identify many of the objects she touches throughout her life.
During this Level provide your child with the opportunity for many touch sensations; especially the opportunity to feel the weave in many different fabrics and the surface level variation of coins and objects with similar surfaces. Begin a coin collection and play the game of identifying the head and tail sides of the coins by feeling them under a cloth until your child has identified every coin. Together with your child feel different fabrics each day for the next few months and ask her if she can feel the weave in them.
Now and in future years your child will be able to combine her tactile ability with her other abilities such as sight, hearing and balance to enjoy gymnastics, rock climbing, tennis, long distance running, motor mechanics, surgery or other pursuits as a result of being well developed. Whatever pursuits she enjoys in the future she should, on completion of Level 7, be developmentally magnificent in the tactile sense as a result of your commitment to her wellbeing. If you have helped her to reach a standard of natural excellence in all of the magnificent children.love areas then she should be able to reach a standard of natural excellence in almost any pursuit she chooses.
Activities for parents and children:
Feeling coins:
Three times each day do the following:
Cover a coin that is the next size smaller than the coin used in Level 6 with a cloth. Turn off the light or ask your child to close her eyes and have her touch the head side of the coin. Say, “You’re touching the head side of this coin.” Then turn the coin over and say, “You’re touching the tail side of this coin.”
After three, four or five days ask your child to close her eyes and feel both sides of the coin. Then ask her to put the coin down and place her finger on the head side of the coin. Remove the cloth to see if she has chosen correctly. Make a positive comment about how well she has done the activity (whether or not she chose the head side of the coin).
Then, under a cloth, in the dark, or with her eyes closed, ask her to feel both sides of the coin again. Then ask her to hold her finger on the tail side of the coin. Remove the cloth to see if she has chosen correctly. Make a positive comment about how well she has done the activity.
Do this each day until your child succeeds in correctly choosing the head and tail side of the coin. Discontinue this activity for a few days or even several weeks if you think your child will begin to lose interest and then recommence the activity.
Continue the activity until your child has identified 50 or more coins in your collection. You might like to give her the coin for her own collection each time she identifies it correctly.
When you have completed this activity your child should have excellent tactile abilities.
2. Massage:
Massage your child’s hands daily until she has identified both sides of a small coin by touch alone. Then discontinue massage unless you and your child prefer to continue.
3. Feeling fine surfaces:
Three times each day for three minutes do the following:
Draw your child’s attention to a variety of fine surfaces such as the surfaces of; paintings, fabrics, building walls and floors, furniture, papers, plastics, timbers, plants, skins, coins and others. Together with your child touch the surfaces without looking at them and ask her to describe what she feels; then describe what you feel. Play fine touching games in the dark. Be enthusiastic and your child will likely be enthusiastic too. Try to feel a different fabric at least once each day and ask your child if she can feel the weave in the fabric as she is feeling it. Show her what the weave is. Discontinue this activity when you are satisfied with your child’s tactile development.
4. Further touch development:
Increase the emphasis on activities (which she might already be doing) such as swimming, gymnastics, horse riding, craftwork and other activities that encourage her to use her sense of touch.
What your child should be doing at this Level of development:
Recognising one side of increasingly smaller coins from the other, by touch, when she cannot see the coin.
Expanding her ability to recognise fine textures by touch.
