Infants and Sleep

The main concern for each of us as parents is to ensure our children have the opportunity to be their healthy best. Research tells us that achieving our best as adults, on physical, mental, social and occupational levels, is in large part shaped by the windows of opportunity opened to us during childhood.

Patterns established early in life may persist and limit a child’s future growth and development, on a number of levels, throughout their lifetime.

Until recently, a child was considered healthy when he or she had no symptoms. Research now suggests that health is better defined as the child’s ability to interpret, and then appropriately adapt and respond to, environmental and lifestyle stresses.

In fact, the World Health Organisation defines health as, “…a state of optimum and complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.

It is within this greater context of health that we look at learning and behavioural problems in children and adults.

The highest priority of all living things is to survive! From the moment of conception the ability to sense and interpret changes in our internal and external environments are essential to our ability to adapt and survive.

There is one system in your child’s body that is responsible for accurately interpreting messages coming in from the environment and deciding how to respond to them appropriately. That system is the nervous system.

Our nervous system controls and coordinates every organ and system of our body. Messages are continually being sent along nerves from our brain to our body and back to our brain. Interference to this communication prevents the proper function of our body and hence the full expression of our potential.

When a child is born, he enters a world where he is assailed by an overwhelming volume of sensory information. To survive, he is equipped with a set of primitive reflexes designed to ensure immediate response to this new environment and his ever-changing needs.

Primitive reflexes are automatic, stereotyped movements, coordinated and controlled by the nervous system. They are essential to the child’s survival in the first few weeks and months of life. They are not under voluntary control.

Primitive reflexes should have a limited lifespan. Having helped the child survive the first few months of life, the primitive reflexes should be inhibited and controlled by higher centres of the brain.

If primitive reflexes remain active beyond six to twelve months of life, they are said to be aberrant, and they are evidence of a structural weakness or disorganisation within the central nervous system. Movement or motion is fundamental to the optimum function of the human body. Movement of blood through arteries and veins, air in and out of the lungs, electrical impulses along nerve fibres, and of muscles to create movement of the body, all allow us to function effectively in our world. Movement is our primary means of adaptation and survival.

As specific movement patterns are practiced over and over again by the child, more mature patterns of response supersede primitive reflex responses. The movement patterns are believed to contain within them a natural inhibitor to the reflexes.

If, however, the child has never made these movements, in the correct sequence, the primitive reflexes may remain active. Hence, the neurological equipment necessary for learning and mature behavioural control will be faulty or ineffective, despite adequate intellectual ability.

To assess whether a child has a properly functioning and organised nervous system, we must ask:

• Can the child receive information through the senses?
• Can the information be processed properly by the child’s brain?
• Can the child respond appropriately, either through language or movement?

One of the most stressful events that we all go through in life is the process of being born. The circumstances that surround most births set the stage for the development of birth-related nervous system disorganisation.

Research performed by chiropractor Dr Reza Samvat, in Adelaide, Australia suggests that about 70 percent of cases of learning and behavioural problems have had some type of head injury, sustained either before, during or some time after the birth process.

Neural Organisation Technique (N.O.T.), is a treatment protocol created by eminent chiropractor and kinesiologist, Dr Carl Ferreri. N.O.T. offers a unique understanding of the function of the human body in relation to its innate survival systems.

N.O.T. perceives the human body as a bio-computer with specific programs designed to ensure optimum capacity for adaptation and survival. These survival programs are the fight or flight, digestive, and reproductive programs. These programs are each coordinated by the central nervous system.

When one or more of these systems fails to operate, or operates inappropriately, our capacity to adapt and survive is compromised. The result is improper function at the physical, emotional, mental, or social levels.

Chiropractic is the science of locating interference in the nervous system and the art of correcting this interference to restore health.

The chiropractor will carefully apply a series of chiropractic adjustments to correct structural imbalances and neurological disorganisation.

An adjustment enables the body to more accurately process information passing between the brain and the body, and hence make the appropriate corrections to begin healing and restore normal function.

Optimum nutrition is essential to support the correction and healing process, and prevent inappropriate reactivation of the survival reflex systems. Elimination of food and chemical sensitivities, intestinal infections and nutritional deficiencies form a vital part of the treatment program.

Correcting structural and neurological disorganisation in children is a process, not an event. The process of correction takes time. With regular corrections however, when required, the child is guided towards expressing its full health potential. Think of it as re-opening their window of opportunity.