'If I wanted to go to sleep as a child, I would go cuddle with my mom and she would give me piojito,' says Joe Grajeda, age 40, who was born in northern Mexico and now lives in Alpine, Texas, with his three young children (Joe owns a coffee shop in Alpine and is a good friend of mine). It's all about avoiding frustrations in the child and enhancing the pleasurable connection.'īut in Latin America, parents may just have the best name of all: Piojitos, which literally means 'little lice.' 'This type of touch is so ingrained in our culture. Sarika Chaturvedi, who studies infant massage practices at Dr. In India: 'we have different languages in different parts of the country, but in Delhi, it's called malish,' says Dr.

In Korea, parents call this type of touch yakson. 'If I wanted to go to sleep as a child, I would go cuddle with my mom and she would give me piojito,' he says - Spanish for 'little lice.' The late Peruvian linguist Martha Hidlebrandt described piojito as 'gently scratching the scalp of a child as if he were being relieved of the itching of imaginary lice' - hence the name.

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