Being able to read and respond effectively to your child’s state of consciousness sends her the message that she is in safe hands, that you’re there to help her to modulate her arousal level. No doubt you’ve already become an expert at reading your child’s signals…. and you’ve probably also noticed that those signals change over time as her nervous system matures. Often babies and toddlers need help transitioning between these different states and it can be challenging to know how to help. Here are a couple of movement-oriented ideas to add to your repertoire:
Notice the difference between outer attention and inner attention. You can use touch, movement, music, and rhythm to invite shifts from one focus to another. By supporting your child’s ability to transition between inner and outer focus, you just might be providing her with an important lifetime tool for self-awareness and self-care!
A general rule of thumb is that firm touch will calm the nervous system and light touch will excite it.
Containment – anything from swaddling your infant to folding your toddler into your arms and lap – often lays the ground for “re-grouping.” The idea is to provide a total body experience of being embraced, enclosed, wrapped, surrounded.
Music, singing, dancing, rocking, swinging, tapping, patting, bouncing, clapping, sounding – all have a direct impact on your child’s nervous system and can be used to support a change from one state to another. For example, swinging, rocking or bouncing can either “up-regulate” or “down-regulate” – cool terms for changing the energy and arousal level of a nervous system. Varying the speed and intensity of the movement will provide you with the opportunity to meet your child’s energy level and then, if needed, to shift it from one state to another.
Rhythm: From an early age infants are soothed by their birthmother’s heartbeat. There’s even speculation that the infant’s own heartbeat might be partly regulated by her birthmother’s heart rate. Think of how tuned into your heart rate your baby is from all that time in-utero - listening to your heart and growing in its rhythm. Influenced by this intrinsic experience, we rock and calm our babies rhythmically and we use various rhythms in our speech, song, and movement to communicate safety and love to our little ones. We take rhythm for granted, perhaps forgetting what a powerful tool it is for helping our children’s nervous systems to organize and function optimally.
Breathing: As you well know, our breath speeds up when we’re anxious or scared and it slows when we return to a state of calm and safety. In helping your baby to transition from stress back to comfort, start with your own breath. It’s one of the most effective and accessible tools we have! Take a few deep breaths. By making your exhales longer than your inhales, you will give your nervous system the message that it’s okay to slow down and become more inner-focused. Once there, you can use “sounding breaths” to communicate to your child: sighing, humming, oohing, ahhing, and exhaling against slight resistance are all examples of this kind of breathing. You can also exhale right into your child’s body by placing your mouth next to her skin and “sounding into” her so that she feels the vibration of your voice. You might be surprised by how much fun it is and how much she likes it!
Newborns in particular will react to stimulus according to their state of consciousness. When their state of consciousness matches the kind of stimulus offered, an intact nervous system will be observed. If their systems are overwhelmed by the stimulus, they will use a process called “habituation” as a protective response. It’s a way of closing down their nervous systems and is an essential capacity at this stage of development when their nervous systems are still immature and learning to adjust to the outside world. Sometimes you can see them doing this. They might turn away from face-to-face interaction, for example, or they might go to sleep in a more tightened state – flexed extremities with little movement except jerky startles and no eye blinks. In this state, they are maintaining control over their environment – different from relaxing into sleep. Looking for these cues can give you information about how your infant is responding to stimulation.