Attachment Therapists on NeuroDevelopmental Movement® in Attachment Work

by Denise Best

Symptoms of a Child with Developmental Trauma Disorder

Relationships With Others

poor eye contact
rejects affection from parents (stiff, rigid, pushes away, squirms)
acts overly charming to get their way/affectionate only on child’s terms
affection towards strangers (disinhibited type)
acts incredibly innocent, even when caught in the act
demands things instead of asking for them
limited ability to accurately read and appropriately respond to social cues
gamey; try to get people in their service, make them mad (like they’re feeling)
difficulty developing emotionally reciprocal relationships
difficulty being able to trust adults/parents to meet their needs
difficulty respecting authority figures, and adults in general

Mood and Biological Regulation

temper tantrums lasting up to two hours, can argue for long periods of time
difficulty sustaining or regaining (age appropriate) emotional regulation
nonstop chattering or asking questions for which they know the answers
extremely high anxiety, therefore a need to control others and environment
impulsive, hyperactive, inattentive, but
can also be hyper vigilant/attentive to all sounds and movement around them
high pain tolerance and/or refuses to let anyone help or comfort
daredevil, risk-taking behaviors and/or accident-prone
food issues: hoards, sneaks, gorges or eats very slowly
under high stress defaults to “fight, flight, or freeze” states, dissociates

Behavioral

deliberately breaks things – then doesn’t appear to miss them
steals – often things for which permission would have been given
false allegations of abuse/maltreatment does “paybacks” (revenge) for perceived wrongs/not getting their way
sneaks things – even when would’ve received permission had they asked
lies – crazy made up stories, to get out of trouble, get others in trouble
in more severe cases, lack of remorse or lack of capacity to experience victim
empathy: harmful to animals and smaller children, sexual obsession
and/or predatory behavior, preoccupation with fire and gore

Mental

doesn’t appear to be able to learn from mistakes (poor cause & effect)
behavior typically good at school, but poor academic effort/progress
intellectual, emotional, and physical developmental delays (often 2-4 years)
learning disorders: receptive & expressive language processing problems
mental health disorders: depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder
fetal alcohol syndrome or
alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder (without facial features)

Self Concept

feels alone, sad, worthless, and unlovable
filled with shame and a deep sense of “not belonging”

PART ONE

What happened to make my child the way they are – STILL?

One of the questions I hear the most from parents at the onset of treatment is “How can my child still be experiencing trauma-triggers? She’s been in our home for five years and we have never once hit her!”

From the child’s perspective, I once told an eight-year-old boy who had been adopted at birth that it made total sense to me that he was “still getting used to these parents” and with pause and deep thought responded,

“How come nobody ever told me that?”

Indeed. It IS that hard for some adopted children – even those who were adopted at birth, and it IS our responsibility to acknowledge that. Then it is our responsibility to provide an environment that allows for a child to feel the way they do, conducive to saying out loud that they feel that way, and asking what it is we can do to help them feel whole and right about how they feel and experience their world. Few would argue that their experience of childhood is different than how we experienced childhood, and we owe them the acknowledgement of knowing the difference. Out loud.

Common Causes of Developmental Trauma Disorder

unwanted pregnancy (fetus’s developing brain bathing in stress hormones)
substance abuse by mother while pregnant (alcohol more damaging than drugs)
traumatic birth/premature birth
separation from birth mother (lengthy hospitalization for mother or infant)
infant illness requiring long hospitalization/unresolved pain
uneducated parent (young)
depressed mother
substance abuse by mother after birth, environmental exposure to drugs
lack of attunement between mother and child
physical, emotional, sexual abuse
multiple caregivers
frequent moves and/or placements
harsh & inconsistent parenting
institutionalized care (particularly 0-2, but more damage the longer in orphanage)
early trauma; witnessing or experiencing physical, emotional, sexual abuse
extreme neglect – lack of basic needs of emotional, physical and intellectual stimulation for healthy development (0-2)

Experiencing only one of these common causes can literally alter how the brain develops structurally and how well (or not) neuropathways grow. The bad news is that this cannot be healed with traditional therapy; the good news is that it is not your fault. Your child came to you with brain injuries and while this may sound like too strong a term, this is what it is. Yes, it is very different from traumatic brain injury. They are minor in comparison. But the effects are profound, deep, and impact every aspect of a child’s functioning.

Through the integration of the treatment technique called NeuroDevelopmental Movement, I have learned just how prolific the damage can be from en-uterine stress and exposure to substances, birth complications, and lack of movement and environmental stimulation in the first year of life. In my experience with families who have participated in NeuroDevelopmental Movement, I cannot ignore the fact that many of the drivers for behaviors seem to have been set pre-verbally (before a child can talk). Clearly this would make it impossible for a child to “talk it out” in traditional therapy. My treatment protocol is designed to enhance the emotional and relational aspect of our work together as it is imperative that the work be EXPERIENTIAL for genuine healing to occur. Traditional “talk therapy” is not an effective treatment modality for reactive attachment disorder or developmental trauma disorder, nor is traditional play therapy. however, i do utilize directed play therapy with younger children and those who are severely developmentally delayed. but total healing requires more than therapeutic parenting and attachment and trauma therapy.

It is true that some children can experience extreme violence and abuse and not seem to be as traumatized as a child who has experienced less. A child’s resiliency to survive the impact of complex trauma varies greatly from one child to the next. While there are many variables that likely contribute to a child’s resiliency, one thing is true: the impact of trauma is not directly correlated to the severity of the event(s). In other words, if someone could will themselves to simply “get over it”, they would. When it comes to trauma-trigger and neurological damage related behaviors, one must think of these in terms of a “can’t”, not a “won’t”.

The impact of en-uterine exposure, birth trauma, and early neglect/abuse in the first year of life effects how well a child will ultimately function on three different levels:

Brain Structure & Neuropathway Development
Neurochemical Composition
Emotional

Brain Structure & Neuropathway Development

I first learned about NeuroDevelopmental Movement (NDM) from another practitioner in Iowa City, and frankly it sounded too far outside the box, even for me. Less than a year later, my most skilled parents and I were presenting at the Attachment & Trauma Network Conference and they attended a daylong presentation on NeuroDevelopmental Movement. They came out of this training saying, “Denise, we HAVE to look into this, it makes perfect sense.” In the spring of 2008, the mother and I journeyed to Oregon to attend a two-day presentation and returned home with a whole different lens with which to view developmental trauma disorder. As a mental health counselor, it was humbling, to say the least. I changed many of my expectations, approaches, and interventions immediately.

For example, just before I left, I was working with a child from an Eastern European orphanage who had severe trauma and subsequently, behaviors. As the session went on, his head would drop and his upper body would slump down, seemingly disinterested in his own session. So I had him “just practice” sitting up and practicing eye contact while we were talking; he would do as I asked with every prompt, only to slump over again as soon as he started talking. I encouraged him to continue practicing between sessions. At the NeuroDevelopmental Movement training, one of the examples provided was delivered this way – “You know, especially those kids from Eastern European orphanages, who have such poor core strength that it really is impossible for them to sit up straight for any length of time, these are the kids that are constantly slumped over in their chair – that’s a ‘can’t’…not a ‘won’t’”. I cannot express how devastated I was when I made this connection. I had set this child up to fail. You can imagine that the parents returned reporting, “he didn’t even try”. I did that to him, and I was wrong.

So what was happening here? As long as he could access his cortex (higher order part of his mind: the thinking, organizing, planning part) he was able to override his neurology (how his body functions on its own) and do as I asked, but as soon as I started asking him to explore other things and his cortex got busy with that, he would go back to his basic neurological functioning. At face value it probably could look like a defiant child, or one who wasn’t even trying, but what a colossal error this was on my part.

Another good example explains why children appear to not “learn from their mistakes” or be deterred/modify their behaviors by consequences. When a young child is playing on the playground and another child takes their toy away from them, they may go into “fight or flight” mode (pons level response) and punch the child. What is going on in the primitive area of their brain is basic survival, and for a young child regaining possession of your toy may seem just that. You must get it back, or you may die. They will likely be escorted into the guidance counselor’s office to be talked to, and they will likely even make a plan for the next time. “Next time I will walk away, tell a teacher, or find something else to play with.” Problem solved, or is it just until the next time someone takes his toy away from him, and his traumatized brain reverts back to survival mode? Back in the guidance counselor’s office – and now able to access and work out of his cortex, he will be able to precisely regurgitate what he was supposed to do, and with all sincerity and intent, promise to do it next time.

Unless your birth mother had a perfect pregnancy and delivery with you, and you have not had any trauma or head injuries in your lifetime, you have some neurological damage/deficiencies, too. We all do. However, most are minor enough that we have learned how to compensate – albeit some later in life than others. I had my own NDM evaluation and it explained every one of my deficiencies, so it was sad on one hand that I was pushing 50 before I learned that my eyes do not converge correctly. But I was also relieved to find out why it is impossible for me to read more than a few pages of a book at a time. I have run the gamut of “must be lazy, must have attention problems, not trying hard enough”, to feeling like there was something really wrong with me. I’m sharing this for a reason. My compensation for the difficulty I have in forcing my two eyeballs to land on the same point on a page for an extended period of time is obvious. Remember how I said I went on a training mission to some of the top treatment facilities to gain more knowledge? It wasn’t a conscious decision that since I couldn’t force my eyes to read lots of books, I better go everywhere I can to learn first-hand the knowledge I craved. I had intuitively arranged to compensate for my deficiency.

Regardless of whether you choose to have your child (or yourself) participate in NeuroDevelopmental Movement, the information about the damage that early neglect and lack of movement and stimulation has on developing neurological and biological systems explains SO much. I am not a NeuroDevelopmental Movement Practitioner, but I will explain the basics as I do in my presentations because it is critical to understanding the “why” of some of the behaviors your child is likely presenting. Please refer to www.neurodevelopmentalmovement.org for articles on NeuroDevelopmental Movement and resources for learning more about it or contacting a NeuroDevelopmental Movement Practitioner.

NeuroDevelopmental Movement is not a new treatment modality; it was originally used to heal stroke and traumatic brain injuries in the mid-1950s. In fact, several times after I have presented a retired nurse has come up to me and told me that “back in the day” they used to do patterned movements in-home with babies born with complications. Unfortunately there is still no valid research to prove efficacy, and the practitioners that I know and have worked with are traveling across the U.S. doing just that – providing their services. In 2009, when I had interns at my clinic, we began doing research on the changes in children doing NDM. What I can tell you is that for the children who have consistently participated in NeuroDevelopmental Movement that there have been changes that I have never been able to achieve – even with my skilled treatment protocol. It heals things that conventional treatments cannot. Empathy for example, is something that cannot be learned. You either have it, or you don’t, although I have met people who have “taught” themselves to appear they have this capacity. Some might consider them sociopaths or antisocial personality disorders.

I once worked with a boy who was participating in NeuroDevelopmental Movement. As he healed, the sibling issues with his younger sibling began to arise. This is more common than not. I have to say that I also had my concerns about the younger sibling because he appeared to be the type of child who was “flying under the radar”. I see this occur when they are truly shut down on the inside, and also have the shelter of another sibling’s acting out. When I attempted to do a session with the siblings, the younger one immediately was triggered and proceeded to trash my treatment room. I advised the parents that I wanted to start doing some work with him, as well. When I got him on mom’s lap and began exploring his internal working model, it was darker than I had expected. When I asked him who he felt love for, he said, “Well, no one, really.” Mom attempted to salvage the situation by identifying the one person he loved the most as his grandma. He thought for a moment, then replied “Well, no, I can just get her to do what I want.” This is a very damaging relationship for this child to have, as he perceived himself as much stronger and capable than the adults who were to provide his every need. This in turn creates tremendous anxiety for a child, and in turn, more controlling. So he went home and did his clean slate and repair with grandma and returned to therapy the next week.

The mother, holding her terror at bay that she may have TWO trauma-impacted children on her hands, reported that grandma was now on the treatment team, he’d done his repair, and that last week’s disclosure was more “shock-talk” than anything else. Being very mindful of the fact that I didn’t want to send this mom over a cliff, I just nodded. However, once he was on her lap and talking, again more very dark issues emerged. This was a very troubled little boy, much more damaged than his sibling who was acting out his trauma. He shared how he sometimes wants to kill his family, and in fact, kill the whole world, and how he had tried…“but it didn’t work.” Apparently the combination of orange juice, milk, and water is not a very explosive combination, but the intention, drive, and effort could be.

I had him return to the lobby while I met with his brother. I could hear a tinkling sound outside the treatment room door, and for the life of me could not figure out what he was doing or with what. When I looked he went scurrying, but nothing was obviously out of place. When we were done I discovered he had pulled the chair railing from the wall to be able to get a finishing nail. This child worked and worked until he was able to get a finishing nail to stand upright outside of my office door (since he was discovered in front of the treatment room door). Keep in mind that the purpose of a finishing nail is to not have a head showing once in place. That took some effort and determination.

Just like I teach in therapeutic parenting, I never go after the behavior at face value. I’ve lost a lot of property over this approach, but that’s not what is important, after all. So I simply acknowledged that he had to have worked very hard at that, but was wondering what he wanted to happen? He became very stuck, denying he’d done it, etc. I didn’t go after that by saying, “Yes, you did.” – as this is a lose-lose approach. Instead mom and I bantered about where they were going to go to dinner, and other unrelated topics. He finally screamed, “FINE! I wanted you to step on it!” I acknowledged that that made perfect sense to me, and asked, “so what were you wondering would happen next?” He firmly stated, “Then you’d have to go to the hospital and you wouldn’t be at this STUPID PLACE!!” I responded that it was hard here sometimes, and very hard to talk about feelings. “I don’t HAVE ANY FEELINGS!!!”

I would like you to take a moment to wonder yourself.

What was this child feeling – what was the need driving this behavior?

What should I do in response to this, give consequences?

This is a child who is absolutely terrified. He has just let us “in” and now we know what it is like for him, how hard he is struggling, and how out-of-control he is. He cannot hide anymore. How scary would that be?

I do not believe there is any type of consequences warranted for this child, other than he should put the nail back where it belonged so he could “repair” what he had done to restore his self-esteem. Giving consequences to such a terrified child whose pathology has just been unearthed would serve no healing purpose whatsoever, and we had bigger problems to deal with than that.

The mom sent me an email the next day, that could have been hysterical if not so tragic and telling about just how terrified this little boy was. She reported that on the interstate a semi-truck full of chickens went by, and the older boy (now healing with NeuroDevelopmental Movement) commented that they were probably on their way to the chicken farm. Mom, still holding onto her sense of humor reported, “And stupid me, having grown up on a farm said something really dumb – ‘No, honey, I think they’re on the way to the chicken nugget factory.” He burst into tears and sobbed for 10 minutes….Houston – we have EMPATHY!!

On this same ride home, she looked into the rear-view mirror to see the younger boy had a DVD cord wrapped around his neck. She, of course, asked him what he was doing, and he told her he wanted to kill himself. When she asked him why, he stated, “I want to die so I can come back as a ghost and haunt Miss Denise!” He was trying to eliminate the “threat”, – which was me – from his perspective. Keep in mind that at no point did I bully, threaten, or even get into a minor power struggle with this boy – and there was no punishment! Yet he was terrified and felt threatened that I was “in” and knew how to get there.

Needless to say, they had him start NeuroDevelopmental Movement the next week.

It IS that hard for most of these children. When I present, I always confirm with the audience that it is agreed that we are all healing people, here for the right and same reasons, and therefore all “safe”. Then I ask them to think about their deepest, darkest pain for a moment. I advise them that all of us healing people are going to support a volunteer who will come up and lie on a table in our safe hands whilst we dredge up, explore, and process this pain. “Can I have a volunteer, please” is a real showstopper. In fact, there has only been one person who ever managed their way out of freeze-state to say anything out loud. “You’re joking, right?”

But this is what we are expecting of our children? If so, we truly need to be practicing “therapeutic” everything, because when the pain comes out, it isn’t going to come out in a daintily-laced package. And if the big people are standing ready to dole out punishment if it doesn’t come out in an “appropriate” manner, how hard would you try to keep them out?

What is NeuroDevelopmental Movement?

The brain develops from the bottom (brain stem) upward, and in a sequential manner. For the brain to go “on-line”, the neuropathways must be mylenized. Mylenization is the white, fatty substance that coats the nerve endings that allow information (neuronal movement) to flow to other areas of the brain. It is similar to the coating on an electrical cord. If there is no mylenization, there is no ability for signals or messages to be transferred further.

The medulla, pons, and midbrain develop in approximately the first year of life. This is the most important year of life, as humans acquire fifty percent of their lifetime skills in this first year. The brain develops sequentially and skills are gained in a cumulative fashion.

When a baby is born they have mylenization to the medulla, or the brain stem, and all functions such as pupil contraction, the startle response, and turning their head to reach a nipple when their cheek is stroked are all automatic. The whole medulla level is reflexive movement.

The pons level develops in an infant between 1 – 7 months old.

From here, mylenization develops from the medulla to and through the pons level of the brain, often referred to as the “primitive brain” because it is all about survival. Mylenization of the neuropathways happens when a baby naturally does patterns of movements that all babies, across all cultures do. A “pattern” can be described as full body movements done in a sequential pattern. The other type of movement necessary for mylenization of the pons level is crawling on their tummy. When I see a child with scars on their ankles from being restrained in a crib (common in Chinese orphanages), this causes great concern because not only were they clearly not able to do the (output) of crawling on their tummy, but were also not able to do their patterned movements (input) as they require movement of all four limbs.

The midbrain level develops in an infant between 6 – 14 months old. Average is 7 – 12 months, but certainly many infants are doing midbrain work as early as 6 months and some well beyond 12 months. But, typically we say 7 – 12 months is midbrain. For mylenization of the neuropathways to occur from the pons to the midbrain level, there is another set of patterns that babies all do, but now they are creeping on their hands and knees.

It is really important to note that these parts of the brain develop before a child learns how to communicate, so any trauma that occurs during this time is occurring pre-verbally. You cannot communicate with these levels of the brain with language or reasoning. The functions of these areas of the brain are performed automatically.

NeuroDevelopmental Movement focuses on completing any unintegrated stages at the medulla, pons, midbrain, and ultimately, the cortex. This is accomplished by retracing the developmental sequence and doing the activities that are critical for the development of a healthy brain. When the brain is developmentally whole you then have a capacity to sustain healthy emotional, behavioral, academic, and motor function throughout one’s life. The NeuroDevelopmental Movement practitioner utilizes a model called the developmental profile that summarizes and traces the developmental sequence. This profile highlights the neurological soft signs that are to be tested at seven levels of the central nervous system. The tests address visual, auditory, tactile, gross motor, fine motor, and language functions at those seven levels. Where there is a gap in the profile, it is the goal of NeuroDevelopmental Movement to design a program of activities to fill in that gap. When all functions at a given level have been integrated, new skills and behaviors become available to the child. The developmental profile summarizes normal neurological function from birth through age six to eight. It is divided into two primary sections: sensory and motor. The developmental profile allows us to insure an individual meets all benchmarks. Where there are deficits, the child will replicate the developmental sequence to trigger new function.

A NeuroDevelopmental Movement evaluation involves evaluating a wide range of skills at seven developmental levels. Amongst those, for example, they would assess how a person walks, skips, jumps, crawls on their tummy, creeps on their hands and knees, senses pain and light touch, and many other motor activities. I have heard Nina Jonio state that watching a child crawl or creep is like a window into what was going on at that developmental stage as an infant. In one evaluation I heard her state, “Well, at least when they weren’t taking care of him they left him on the floor.” She could tell this by how well he did his tummy crawl. I have had the opportunity to observe a healthy tummy crawl (picture an infant mobilizing their body across a smooth surface floor) and I have also watched some of the more severely damaged children do the tummy crawl. One child will always stand out in my mind – he did not use his arms or legs, but rather “wormed” his way across the floor

From the results from the functional neurological profile they are then able to treat the lowest level of dysfunction, with daily programs of neuromotor activities. As that level becomes more organized, the program addresses the next level, then the next, until there is no longer evidence of a central nervous system factor in the child’s profile.

Principles on Which NeuroDevelopmental Movement is Based

1. Sensory input and motor activities are essential for the development of learning as a manifestation of functional neurological organization. Learning is a sensory process that must be reinforced by motor functioning. As stated by Doman and Scott: if input is nonexistent, limited or confused, the sensory pathways will be similarly undeveloped, underdeveloped, or incorrectly developed, and learning will not exist, will be incomplete, or will be incorrect to the same degree.
2. By increasing the duration, frequency, and intensity of sensory and motor activity appropriate for the development of neurological organization from birth onward, the neurological organization of injured brains can be improved. Treatment programs are therefore based on increased stimulation in six sensory and motor areas: visual competence, auditory competence, tactile competence, mobility, language, and manual skills.
3. To influence the organization or reorganization of injured brains, it is necessary to make a fresh start beginning with activities and sensory inputs that have proved beneficial in promoting effective neurological organization from early infancy on. In other words, it is necessary to retrace steps in the normal process of neurological organization going back as far as possible.

What Information Does a NeuroDevelopmental Movement Evaluation Provide?

Children who did not adequately complete the developmental sequences, tasks, and tummy crawling and hands/knees creeping, can have some of the following disruptions in functioning:

Pons Dysfunction

head juts forward, hunched shoulders, pigeon-toed
inadequate hunger-full switch; either hungry all the time or poor appetite
bed wetting in older children
poor horizontal eye tracking; skips letters and words
severe anxiety and fearful most of the time.
fight-flight-freeze response to minor stressors; fall apart under stress or not getting their way
avoidance of eye contact
difficulty bonding and trusting
controlling and manipulative
risk-taking behavior (jumping or diving off high structures)
overly affectionate with strangers; poor personal boundaries
superficially charming
rages for long period of time, may include violent rages
a deep sense of not belonging, feeling unworthy, and alone
poor deep pain perception; commonly referred to as ‘high pain tolerance’ – This often correlates to a lack of conscience and empathy, harming animals, and risky behaviors (as they truly don’t feel the pain the way others do).

These children are the ones who might laugh after hurting another child, because they do not experience pain the same way as the other child, and may consider it drama. I have heard practitioners Bette Lamont and Nina Jonio liken this to feeling the effects of Novocain all over your body, creating a need/urge to feel – anything. Children with pons-level damage often “stir things up” with others (you can observe them sitting back with a little sense of relief that they are finally able to feel some sense of excitement or interest). They often pick scabs or do self-injurious behaviors. They are also the children who will insist that they do not need a coat because they are not cold; they do not have the capacity (neurology) to appropriately feel deep pain, cold, and heat. The same child may have three layers of sweats on when it is now afternoon and 80 degrees outside; they require extra supervision to assure that they do not have too few, or too many clothes on for their health. One child would be outside playing hard on a hot day and never sense the need for water, another high-risk situation.

This reminded me of a little girl who was in treatment with me prior to learning about NDM; the end of her finger had gotten crushed in a car door. She was able to take fingernail clippers and clip away chunks of raw flesh and fingernail so that it was smooth. Caught off-guard, I foolishly asked if it hurt, and her response was very telling; a calm “Oh, yeah.” Not like it should have, darling.

Another typical example where a mother just asked the doctor treating the other sibling if he could just look in her ear or listen to her heart (to even out the attention) only to learn that the child had a burst ear drum and severe infection that required many trips to a specialist and several rounds of antibiotics. She felt so bad, but when a child is unable to feel deep pain appropriately, it is hard, if not impossible to know that a child is experiencing a serious medical condition. There have been many, many stories similar to this. Note that poor deep pain perception CAN be accompanied with hyper-sensitivity to light pain (paper cut, needing 10 band aids a day).

Midbrain Dysfunction

feet which point outward
prehensile grasp: uses whole hand to lift objects (past this developmental stage-shoveling)
since vertical eye tracking should be developed during this time, a child may skip lines
when reading, subsequently causing deficits in reading, comprehension, and math
may reverse letters and/or numbers
has difficulty differentiating detail within detail (can’t find one item in a pile)
poor proprioception; knowing where one’s body is in space (touches everything in the
store or at other people’s homes, runs hands along walls when walking)
which are too loose or too tight; extremely double-jointed and limber
disrupted or inconsistent sleep patterns
sensory issues: sensitivity to textures of food, difficulty chewing, tags, seams, etc
digestion problems; heartburn, stomachaches
allergies and autoimmune disorders
auditory processing problems
may have speech issues
issues with balance and depth perception (skipping a step on a stairway)
can be easily distracted or hyperactive, with a short attention span
can have filtering system problems and have difficulty prioritizing and filtering out
sounds they don’t need to attend to at the time (meaning they are attending
to all sounds around them)
hyper-focusing (have to shake the house to get their attention when watching TV)
poor impulse control (difficulty applying brakes to stop inappropriate impulses)
difficulty remembering multiple directives; unable to remember/follow through on tasks
difficulty perceiving and appropriately responding to non-verbal social cues
difficulty establishing and maintaining appropriate emotional and physical boundaries
neurochemical imbalances
mental health disorders: depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, obsessive
compulsive disorder, autism spectrum disorder
bladder and/or bowel issues
difficulty with temperature regulation, always wanting to bundle up or never wear a coat
may be characterized as a drama queen, blowing everything out of proportion
hypothalamus issues: plays a role in the sleep/wake cycle, internal and external temperature regulation, digestion, bladder and bowel function, and chewing and swallowing food
poor corpus callosum functioning: the super-highway of communication between the two hemispheres of the brain
may have difficulty accessing words, know a task one day – but not the next
poor emotional regulation within the limbic system: limbic rages over minor issues and
difficulty calming down

The cortex, or the smart, thinking part of the brain from which human intelligence derives, develops from approximately age one to age six to eight. The cortex is the part of the brain most people think of when they say “the brain,” as it is responsible for intelligence, abstract thought, and higher emotional functions.

Visually, a child develops convergence, or both eyes working together at near point. This is a critical skill for depth perception, reading comprehension, and concentration. Studies have linked poor convergence with the diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

By age six for girls or age eight for boys, the child should be lateralized, or one-sided.
A left-handed child should use left ear, left eye, left hand, and left foot in consistently dominant manner.
If not lateralized, it’s like having two vice presidents in the brain: one side of the brain will do a task for a while, tire of it, and hand it off to the other side. When this happens, the way the child takes in, stores, and retrieves information is random and inefficient.

When the child is lateralized, the way she takes in, stores, and retrieves information is effective and well organized. Laterality most significantly impacts higher abstract thought, sequential reasoning, and advanced academics.

How does NeuroDevelopmental Movement Heal my Child?

I never sugar-coat how challenging completing a NeuroDevelopmental Movement program can be for some families. The most difficult part is getting your child to do the patterns, creeping and crawling, vestibular, brushing, etc. every single day for a good two or more years (more for the level of severity I treat). Re-evaluations are completed approximately every three months, so when progress is being made the child will be given the next level of patterns. It is difficult, particularly due to the fact that it is hard to keep the program interesting for your child, and some days they just don’t feel like doing it. This means that some days it can take a couple of hours to get it all completed due to resistance – the child may be tired, being triggered by the patterns (remember, they are doing the very patterns that they missed as an infant, so it is touching on areas with injuries or that are undeveloped), hungry, or simply wants to do something more fun. However, I have also had children who, after doing program long enough for the children themselves to see the changes, WANT to do their program. In these situations, programs should take about an hour a day, and can be divided into two separate times.

In addition, the parents need to be prepared for regressions. A regression may be in the form of raging or increased aggression – and in these cases you are strongly encouraged to call your NDM practitioner, as the assigned number of patterns may be too much for your child and need to be temporarily reduced. One regression that I have seen more than others is a true regression in age. These have been intriguing to say the least, and have allowed me to guide the families through some incredibly healing remedial bonding activities. For instance, a child may suddenly start baby talking and asking for a bottle, or better yet, wanting to “play baby”. The regressions are temporary and always lead to a higher level of functioning for the child.

Total commitment and persistence is necessary to be successful. However, out of the families who have been able to commit to the degree necessary, every single family believed it was worth every ounce of effort. I have had at least three children able to cease the use of psychotropic medications, with the knowledge and support of their psychiatrist.