Talk, Touch & Listen

Social workers and Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) helpers need practical, relationship-based clinical tools to support families experiencing stress, separation, and loss. Research reveals key parenting behaviors occur during hair combing interaction (HCI) – lively verbal interaction, sensitive touch, and responsiveness to infant cues. This book explores how the simple routine of combing hair serves as an emotionally powerful, trauma-informed, culturally valid therapeutic tool.

HCI offers a low-cost opportunity for IECMH helpers to engage families and sustain attachment relationships. In this book, case studies illustrate the use of HCI with diverse families of color. Each chapter includes questions for reflective supervision to understand sociocultural factors that may shape behaviors during HCI. Topics included in the text:

The Observing Professional and the Parent’s Ethnobiography
Introduction to Reflective Supervision: Through the Lens of Culture, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
A Case Study in Cross-Racial Practice and Supervision: Reflections in Black and White
Tools to Disrupt Legacies of Colorism: Perceptions, Emotions &Stories of Childhood Racial Features

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“This timely gift to the field of infant and early childhood mental health urges practitioners to question and transform dominant paradigms of practice and knowledge offering tools to effectively recognize, elevate and prioritize non-dominant ways of knowing, sources of strength, and pathways to healing in Black, Indigenous and Other People of Color (BIPOC) families and communities. . . The reflective questions woven throughout the book challenge practitioners to engage in critical self-reflection about race, racism and the formation of internal working models of relationships, the origin of personal values and beliefs, their impact on who we are and what we do and on our responsibility in changing practice to promote liberation.”

Carmen Rosa Noroña, Child Trauma Clinical Services and Training Lead, TheChild Witness to Violence Project – Division of Developmental and BehavioralPediatrics, Boston Medical Center

“It is a pleasure to write an endorsement for this important book. This book introduces many new and important perspectives related to racism, colorism, and ways to understand the impact of historical trauma on early parent-child relationships. Dr. Lewis, over many years of work, has developed an evidence-based intervention to address racial disparities and support the relationship within African American families through the important cultural routine of combing hair. . . I highly recommend this book to social workers and to infant and early childhood mental health providers as they will gain important perspectives about culturally sensitive ways to support early relationships.”

Joy D. Osofsky, Paul J. Ramsay Endowed Chair of Psychiatry and Barbara Lemann Professor of Child Welfare, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center

“Contributors to this volume present case studies and ethnographic approaches conforming the power of Talk, Touch & Listen hair combing interactions for reducing mother-child stress and enhancing interpersonal resilience in families affected by historic trauma and continued contemporary racism and discrimination. Talk,Touch & Listen, a culturally and historically anchored process, is a valuable relationship-based clinical intervention for enhancing mother-child mental health and well-being and should be read by everyone who works with marginalized families.”

Hiram E. Fitzgerald, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus, MichiganState University

“What a wonderful account of the ‘magic of everyday moments.’ This book, filled with refections derived from close attention to the care of children’s hair, is sure to stimulate creative thinking about the ways we can improve our loving attention to each other in our daily lives. Thank you all for sharing this work with us.”

Paul Spicer, President of the Board of Zero To Three and Professor of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma