Children’s Wellbeing Workshops are intended to inspire practitioners to help more children in their practices and the parents’ classes are to empower them to help their own children more at home, to maintain their natural vitality and to aid them when they have minor ailments.
Treatment of Children with Oriental Medicine are intended to inspire practitioners to consider the treatment of children as a valuable and important part of their clinical practice.
There is plenty to consider when presented with a child or baby who needs treatment, and in the words of Charles Chace in the foreword to Stephen Birch’s new Shonishin book: “Nowhere in clinical practice is the demand for fluid adaptability to changing circumstances more pressing than in paediatrics.”
Many people ask if the treatment of children is different to adults, or if it is safe. (The answer is yes to both!)There are many aspects to the treatment of children, and we will be looking at the topic from the basic question: “Why do we treat children with oriental medicine?” through needle and massage techniques, and on to other adjunctive therapeutic interventions, and reference materials. There will also be a look at some case histories.
You will learn how and why we should address digestive disorders in young children, in order to avoid more serious illnesses later in life. We will also look at the relationship of the practitioner to the parents, the child and the doctor, and the arrangement of the ‘child friendly’ clinic. The experiences of the workshop participants are always of value; so if you have any cases, please be prepared to share them. We can see how what happens to the child can influence future health and we look at some of the more common syndromes in adulthood and see their possible origins in childhood.
We start off by looking at why people have children / what they mean to their parents, what we need to bring to the treatment of children, and what do parents worry about. We then look at common ailments we need to be prepared to treat, the five elements, four humours, the importance of diet and why we need to start working with older children before we tackle the under 4’s.
We will look at many of the common (and some of the not so common) ailments that children sometimes have to experience, and how we can help them and their parents through some challenging times. We want to build a strong network of children’s acupuncturists and to make Oriental Medicine one of the first choices for parents when considering support for pregnancy, labour and post-natally. Life is complicated for parents (and children!) these days, so let’s see what we can do to help support them in bringing their young people to reach their potential in life.