The comforting touch: Tactile intimacy and talk in managing children’s distress

The purpose of this study is to examine how caregivers in preschools respond when children cry.

The results show that the caregivers’ responses to the children's crying involve a number of soothing touch techniques such as embracing, stroking and patting. The caregivers could remedy the children's crying through close bodily contact and verbal contact with the children. Moreover, the authors find that the caregivers understand the children's crying in three different ways: (1) as the child's response to an effective response, for example soothing touch, i.e. children can respond by crying when touched in a soothing manner, (2) as the child's need to express a certain emotion, and (3) as a way of mitigating and relieving negative emotions. According to the authors, the caregivers acknowledge the children's crying through soothing touch, and can thereby make the children feel better.

The study is based on situations in which children cry, and focuses especially on soothing touch. A total of five preschool teachers and 20 children aged 2½-5 years from two preschools took part in the study. The empirical material is based on 20 hours of video recordings gathered over a period of two months. The data material was reviewed, and a total of 50 crying instances were identified. These instances were transcribed and systematically compared in terms of why the children were crying, how the caregivers responded to the children crying, etc. In all 50 cases, the caregivers responded verbally to the children, whereas in 33 of the cases, the caregivers responded with soothing touch. In 12 of the cases, the caregivers used intensive soothing touch. These cases have been analysed and are presented in this article through four examples which, according to the authors, are representative of the different variations in soothing behaviour.

Cekaite, A., & Holm, M. K. (2017). The comforting touch: Tactile intimacy and talk in managing children’s distress. Research on Language and Social interaction, 50(2), 109-227.