Pediatric Chiropractic Care
A difficult birth can cause trauma and underlying injury to your newborn’s spine and central nervous system. As your child continues to grow and develop, their spine undergoes various levels of stress as they learn to walk, crawl, play and become involved in sports and activities. Many of these experiences result in interference to the nervous system of your child, making pediatric chiropractic care important for their developing spine and nervous system.
Pediatric chiropractic involves gentle, specialized techniques for the tiniest of newborns throughout all stages of childhood to create higher levels of health expression.
Benefits of pediatric chiropractic care include optimal brain development, achieving developmental milestones appropriately, a strong immune system, a balanced digestive system, improved sleep, and the prevention of injuries.
During a pediatric chiropractic checkup the doctor will evaluate spine and brain development by testing for subluxations and primitive reflexes.
- Subluxations are the misalignment of spinal bones disrupting the communication of messages being sent from the brain to the body and back (nervous system dysfunction).
- Primitive reflexes are reflexes that are normal in infants and diminish as the frontal lobe develops in the growing child – and should be absent by around 12 months of age.
Older children, and even adults, may retain these reflexes if there is abnormal neurological development.
Research has shown “retained primitive reflexes can disturb natural development and involve difficulties in social and educational children’s life. They can also impact on psychomotor development” (Gieysztor, 2018).
Other signs of subluxation and/or retained primitive reflexes may include:
- Trouble with hand-eye coordination or fine motor skills
- Bed wetting after the age of 5
- Mood swings & poor impulse control
- Attention issues, difficulty with reading/writing
- Toe walking or W-sitting
- Difficulty adapting to stress (stuck in fight or flight)
- Poor posture
- Heightened sensitivity to sounds, smells, and textures
- Colic
- Poor digestion
- Headaches or back pain
- Abnormal crawling/walking patterns (i.e. scooting, toes in/out, etc.)
In the instance of subluxation or retained reflexes your doctor will provide specific exercises and chiropractic adjustments to help remediate the reflex and restore proper nervous system function.