When our daughter was born we were so happy about having this healthy and happy little girl. After three months she started developing an eczema, which soon covered her entire little body and even though we were quite concerned she still seemed to be fairly happy. We tried all the recommended cures like:

* only breast feeding
* evening primrose oil
* cumin oil
* allergy treatments

Nothing helped at all. Then we took a camping trip to the Mediterranean Sea. We were worried that her skin might get burned by the sun and that the sea water would burn in the wounds but instead of doing so her skin magically healed completely within only five days. So we forgot the suffering for nearly two years and believed that her immune system had successfully negotiated the problem. But when we had her vaccinated she got a very bad flu for six weeks and her skin started itching again.

This time she scratched her joints until they were bleeding. Her stockings and pullover got soaked with blood and got glued to the bleeding joints throughout the day or night and dressing her became a real hardship. Her face consisted of four scab planes and a nose. At the playground other parents took their children away from her as they couldn't believe that something which looks so terrible is not contagious.

Again we started our journey to doctors and healers. But again nothing worked and we had no chance to travel to the Mediterranean Sea until she would get well.

One day my husband stumbled upon EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). We tried it on several emotional issues we had and even though we were no experts it worked quite well. My husband became very excited and read many articles on the EFT homepage to see what you can apply this technique to.

The theory behind EFT is very simple. Gary Craig, the founder of EFT says: "The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body's energy system." The technique consists mainly of tuning in to a problem, emotion or an event and then tapping on certain acupuncture points until the issue is relieved or gone.

We decided to give it a try. Our little girl was scratching the hardest before falling asleep. So we assumed that she was then already well tuned in to the problem. When it was time to go to sleep I sat myself on the bed and cradled her and either me or my husband tapped gently the acupuncture points until our daughter slept. The tapping procedure relaxed her so much that she was allowing me to hold her arms, so there was no chance for her to scratch in the evenings. Usually it took only five minutes of tapping until she slept.

After just a few days the scab at her chin and forehead fell off, a week later the entire face had healed. We continued the tapping procedure for approximately two months until she disliked to be tapped. During that time all the big wounds had healed and the itching had reduced to nearly zero. Since then her skin continued to heal and has had nearly no signs of eczema since a year ago.

Meanwhile our daughter permits us to tap her when she feels really bad about something. And she taps us when she feels that we are stressed out or sick and that we could need some help.Skye Schachten