Source: Stuff.co.nz
Hypnosis is a good way to stop children's bad habits, including thumb sucking and bed wetting, a child psychology expert says.
Ran Anbar, a professor at the SUNY Upstate University Medical centre in New York, is speaking at the Paediatric Society's annual conference in Nelson this week.
He believes a range of childhood problems, including asthma, headaches and abdominal pain as well as psychological issues like thumb sucking and bed wetting, can be helped by hypnosis.
"What people think of as hypnosis can be misleading. It is not all about putting people to sleep and mind control. I can't make people do anything they don't want to do, I can just help them to change if they want."
Anbar became interested in hypnosis when his three-year-old daughter had to have surgery for a heart problem.
"She was very worried about having the bandages taken off so I developed a technique to help her– it is a bit like distraction," he said.
"I involved her with other things so she didn't notice the bandages being taken off. That is more what we are talking about in young children and then as they get older you can use different techniques.
"I would say 85 per cent of the young people I have treated have seen improvements in their conditions."
Anbar is hoping New Zealand paediatricians will be keen to include hypnosis in their work.
"It takes about 20 to 40 hours to learn the basic techniques so I hope people will be interested in looking into it," he said.
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