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Brazelton Touchpoints model is resonating with health
and child care professionals because of its depth
of behavioral knowledge of children from birth to
age three. Carole Rogers, MPH, RN of San Leandro
Hospital, talks with Elmer Espino, RN, and his family. |
The infant wriggled helplessly on her stomach, in
full view of her 16-year-old mother's stoic, passionless
stare.
The 2-month-old couldn't look back at her mother as
she flailed helplessly in the crook of a worn couch
cushion. The distraught and depressed teenaged mother
offered no help, treating her daughter from an unplanned
pregnancy as an aggravation to ignore.
Both were trapped in a Napa, Calif., home for troubled
young mothers, and the duo represented another sad case
assignment for Maura Los, PHN.
"I was trying to pick up a way for her to bond
with her child and really make eye contact with the
baby," said Los, a maternal child health specialist
from the Napa County Health and Human Services Agency.
"So I said, 'I want to show you that if you talk
to your baby, the baby is going to react to you and
to your face.' "
The teenager relented, looking over to her daughter
while calling the baby's name. The little girl reacted
valiantly, Los said. "The baby used every ounce
of energy to turn her head and body toward the mom,
and the mom says, 'Oh my gosh, she does know me.'
"She picked up the baby, and she held the baby
for the first time in two months, skin to skin. She
started crying, 'I never knew she knew me.' "
Odds are, Los believes, the infant knew her mother
from their first moments together. Hearing her mother's
voice that day invoked a "touchpoint" reference
as the newborn formed the earliest emotional bonds with
her mother.
Los was employing one of the most effective demonstrations
she learned from the Touchpoints model, a training program
developed by noted pediatrician and child psychiatrist
T. Berry Brazelton, MD. Los has been trained alongside
hundreds of Napa County nurses, physicians, social workers,
day care providers and other child care-related professionals
to teach parents to recognize the nonverbal cues and
signals their infants and toddlers communicate to them.
Looking at more than baby's first steps or first words,
the Brazelton Touchpoints model is resonating with health
and child care professionals because of its depth of
behavioral knowledge of children from birth to age 3.
Touchpoints also is growing in popularity because it's
improving the relationship between health care professionals
and parents as it respects parents as the true "experts"
behind their child's development.
"I think nurses are so busy with things we have
to do, like the physical assessments and those 'nursy'
things we have to do, that we sometimes forget to point
out the wonderful, little incredible baby behaviors
that can make a parent zoom in on that baby,"said
Julie Smith, RN, a Touchpoints training coordinator
with Harris Methodist Fort Worth Hospital in Texas.
Fort Worth and Napa are among the 50 regional areas
where Touchpoints training programs are sprouting and
moving slowly into the nursing and education practices
of hospitals, social service agencies and universities.
For example, nearly 400 direct-service providers in
Vermont have adopted Touchpoints for nursing, child
care, early education and family support services.
A Houston hospital has incorporated Touchpoints training
into its nursing orientation, and the University of
Texas at Austin has received a federal grant to teach
Touchpoints methodology in the advanced practice nurse
degree program.
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