Peter Walker is the foremost international authority on developmental baby massage. A physical therapist, he specialises in massage and movement to enable a child’s motor milestones from birth to standing and walking during 1001 Critical Days. He gives a one-to-one skype clinic mostly for parents with children up to two years of age with developmental delay, and a certificated teacher training course in developmental baby massage directed at physiotherapists, midwives, health visitors, neonatal nurses and others working with mothers/partners and children from birth to standing and walking. He has written numerous books on this subject, his latest, the ABC of Developmental Baby Massage is due to be published in the Spring 2022. Peter has worked with mothers and babies for over forty years and has 25,000 certificated teachers worldwide.
OGMN: What drove you to choose your career in physical therapy and how did you get involved in offering developmental baby massage techniques?
PW: In the early eighties, I met, and was greatly influenced by the work of a renown psychiatrist the late, RD Laing, and renown French obstetrician the late Frédérick Leboyer.
Laing claimed many of his patients’ emotional problems went back to a traumatic birth and the way in which we are ‘welcomed’ into this world. Leboyer was the first to advocate ‘Birth Without Violence’ and made one of the first baby massage films, ‘Loving Hands’.
As a result of these meetings, which I was most fortunate in being able to continue with Laing for a number of years, I began to include developmental baby massage in the postnatal yoga practice that I was developing in London. Further practice with one-to-one sessions and my work with groups at the Active Birth and the Viveka centres in London added to my success and inspired me to start teaching my own teachers and form the Developmental Baby Massage Centre, which I did some forty years ago.
As a ‘hands on’ father to five children, I was able to get a good insight into the value of developmental baby massage to our family relationships and my own children’s health and development.
OGMN: What’s the best part of your job?
PW: Being of use to mothers/partners and seeing them help their children to achieve what they were told would be impossible. Receiving letters of recommendation and films from families that I work/have worked with. Teaching my teachers and receiving positive comment and recommendations from them regarding what I teach.
OGMN: What has been the highlight of your career so far?
PW: Being accredited with the free teaching of baby massage in childcare centers throughout the UK. Personally, teaching over twenty-five thousand Developmental Baby Massage teachers worldwide.
OGMN: Recently the Chancellor announced funding for early years programmes and spoke about the importance of a child’s first 1001 days. As one of the people credited with the inception of the idea of the 1001 critical days programme, can you tell us what this funding will mean?
PW: The mother and child relationship is the closest we ever get to another human being on this earth. It is a relationship built upon nine months of organic empathy. Birth itself, is one of, if not the most dangerous journey that we experience in our lifetime. To reduce birth trauma and its effects upon mothers and babies, we need stress-free midwives, to assist stress-free mothers to give birth to stress-free babies. These people are in the front line of community care and are in dire need of more financial support.
We know, and have known for many years, that serious investment given to reduce stress and increase the number of health visitors and midwives struggling with near impossible case caseloads, will have a huge effect upon safe childbirth and the happiness and wellbeing of mothers, babies, partners and families.
OGMN: How can your programme support parents and children from birth to walking during the 1001 critical days?
PW: From birth onwards is the time to relieve the effects of birth trauma and separation anxiety. Where a loving touch can encourage a closer bond between the mother and child and strengthen the mother/partner and child relationships.
These early weeks and months is a time when little gentle massage and movement can encourage children to attain head and neck control, and promote the qualities needed for further development.
Where a parent can combine massage and movement to enjoy and share in their child’s physical development and achievements, and to include ‘therapeutic play’ to assist the child make the most of the benefits that their ‘motor milestones’ have to offer.
During this time, introduced as a daily routine, developmental baby massage encourages early parental intervention and enables the parent to practice some soft massage and movement therapy that is known to reduce and even prevent developmental delay and disability.
OGMN: For those families that need more support, what techniques would you advise parents with babies with developmental delay or disability?
PW: Firstly, learn how to ‘calm down’ when you are feeling most anxious and distressed. Next, use developmental baby massage to help your child to do the same, and in so doing, teach your child to ‘self soothe’. This will make feeding, sleeping and periods of anxiety so much easier for both parent and child. It’s a huge step towards helping parents to cultivate emotional intelligence and in teaching children, how to do the same and ‘self soothe’, is a real ‘game changer’ to family relationships.
Understand how each motor