Is Your Child Struggling Academically?

Is Your Child Struggling Academically?

Reflexes are a part of everyone's primal instinct for protection, maintaining balance, and overall survival. Babies are born with reflexes to help with everything, from the birthing process to the necessary survival skills of sucking, swallowing, and breathing. Over time, these reflexes mature or integrate, and in turn, create a path for higher-level cognitive thinking skills to develop. These higher-level cognitive thinking skills are crucial for academic success in the classroom for children. 

So what happens if the process for these primitive reflexes of babies is interrupted? Traumatic births, damage to the baby's central nervous system, and being born prematurely can cause a disruption to the development of a babies neurological system. These events, and others, can cause a pause or interruption to the integration of the primitive reflexes. When a child is permanently stuck in an immature pattern of movement due to reflexes, the higher functioning cognitive skills do not develop. 

How does this translate into success in the classroom? When a child's primitive reflexes are retained and not integrated, children have difficulty focusing, sitting still, and even reading. The good news is that specialized pediatric therapists can help by evaluating a child to determine if retained primitive reflexes are present, designing a specific treatment plan, and educating families on how to improve the child succeed in the classroom. Children's brains are amazing, and with the right intervention, these reflexes can be integrated to help children be successful in school.