The Vital Touch: How Intimate Contact with Your Baby Leads to Happier, Healthier Development

Bought for a baby development course I'mEnrolled on. Would recommend for new mums, nursery nurses or anyone working with babies.

Beautiful book. Essential for all parents

This book is interesting to read, i've not finished it as yet but from the start it's kept me wanting to read more! It is informative and researched, I would recommend it to any new parents, and proffionals too. It was in the recommended reading for an infant massage course, but now I'd read it just for pleasure.

A wonderful must read for a mother to be

I loved this book I passed it onto another new Mum once I'd read it.Very interesting. Very loving. A warm book promoting and reminding us how important loving, conscious, attachment parenting is.

I like the book very much. I like how the author enlighten the subjects and how the book is written. The one negative thing i can think about is the layout. The text is small and hard to read. Other than that it's perfect.

This is much more than a parent-baby guide. It spotlights and points the way out of the pathology of touch deprivation that among many other things underpins the epidemic of pedophilia. Heller dedicates the book to the memory of her father “and his tender touches.” “By restricting good touch to avoid bad touch,” she warns, “we throw out our very best deterrent. Ultimately we increase the very thing we wish to eliminate—unhealthy touch.”

My child development professor from UC Berkeley recommended this book. Initially, I thought this book was a little too hard to read, because this book included almost every single developmental research in the field. When I finally sat down and started reading it, I immediately understood why it is such an excellent book. This is an insightful book for any mothers or mothers-to-be. When many parents are reading the sleep training books, I almost wanted to scream at those mothers; "please throw those books away, and just think a moment with common sense. If you were a baby, what would you want from your mommy and daddy who suppose support you needs (your trusted the most) ?" Let us be a mother with humanity and mothers' instincts. Your grandmother probably can tell you better than those sleep training books. This book "the Vital Touch" is for all the loving mothers who wanted to raise their children in a more natural and humanity and loving way. I have also studied Watson's learning theory that emphasized on independence and how you can spoil your infants by touching and hugging them or sleeping with them. Most mothers followed his book and Dr. Spock for decades, but do you know that Watson's own son killed himself? Do you also know that Watson's daughter suffers from all kind of depressions?? Do you know that Dr. Spock admitted that he knew very little how to raise infants because he did not involve in much with his own children?Since Dr. Spock and John Watson-two MEN have dominated our mothers' minds for more than three generations. Many mothers let men tell them how to raise their children. Many American mothers and even newer immigrants mothers adopted and believed children's independency should start from day one ever since they were born. Americans often struggled with co-sleeping concept, because the media and infant's beds' companies have told us that we can smother our babies to death by co-sleeping with them. I looked at those records and there wasn't any research revealed those mother's conditions, and whether they were on drugs, smoking, drinking, or obese. Co-sleeping was a key for human race's survive for 200,000 years, and those infants did not sleep with their caregiver were eaten by wild animals. In the article Cultural Variation in Infants' Sleeping Arrangements: Questions of Independence, Morelli et al, researched the difference between Americans and Guatemalan Mayan infants sleeping differences, which we studied in our lecture. Morelli emphasized that the middle class U.S. practice of separating infants from their mothers is unusual to compare with the practice in most communities around the world. Mayan mother reported that co-sleeping was not a problem, because they just rolled over to make their breast accessible vs. most U.S. families' mother reported having to stay awake during night feedings or even go to another room for feeding. American mothers were more exhausted. Mayan families are lacking bedtime routines vs. US families has long routine of putting infants to bed such as book reading etc. When we are struggling with terrible 2, Mayan mothers reported that they could trust their young children not to put objects in their mouths and not to touch prohibited objects vs. US parents watch over their children around small objects until age 2 or 3. Mayan mothers would sooth their infants' vs. that American solitary sleepers had to sooth themselves through the night. American infants are falling backward with their arms loosely flump into the air, but the infants in third world countries do not have this movement. Those infants grew up with slings and swaddling and co-sleeping are more secured sleepers. Even though our American culture wanted our children to be independent and tough, but a helpless infant still needs a lot care and can not simply grow up on one's own.We used to believe that pesticide helps veges and fruits growth, but we forgot those are also harmful to our own bodies. This book is a wake up call, and hopefully it can wake up more and more American' mothers-to-be. Maybe a natural way and instinct are the best way to raise our children. If we are going back 100,000 years ago, we would be dare to not breastfed our children, and we would be dare to leave our infant in another room, whom may got eaten by wild animals.I absolutely highly recommended this wonderful book, and every mother deserves to have one!

I read this book during my sons first few weeks of life. He's now 4 months old and there hasn't been a day that's gone by with out me reflecting on and implementing the lessons I gained from this book. I highly recommend it to anyone expecting a child - but I think it will be even more fascinating to those who are interested in cultural anthropology. If I could only keep one book from my already extensive library of parenting resources, this would be it. Neither preachy nor overbearing - rather than being a "how to" guide, this book speaks about our culture in contrast to other societies around the world. Through moving examples of the effects of touch (or lack of), readers are able to take away the gentle wisdom found in this book and use it however they wish.I found this book much more enlightening and powerful than Dr. Sears' Attachment Parenting Book. Oddly, although it was way more intellectual than Dr. Sears' work, I also found it easier to read - probably because it was so much more compelling.

This book brought me back to the core of what's most important during the first stage of development to a human and the impact of our actions, primarily around our society and touch.

Sharon Heller writes with the wisdom of an anthropologist and a heart of pure love. This book is a must read for every American parent. I had tears pouring down my face as I read the introduction. So much of what I intuited about mothering was put into words. She totally transformed how I see the way we collectively raise little ones in America today. There is so much need for healing, touching, and holding our children close. Heller writes a healing book. This is worthy of your time.