Jason was a charming and clever 5-year-old, but like many children, born with slight complications that were resolved in the hospital and ultimately sent home as a healthy baby.
But Jason had a diagnosis.
In fact, Jason had not ONE diagnosis, but SIX significant diagnoses.
Following a string of evaluations with various medical and educational professionals, Jason’s parents were told he had:
- Tourette’s Syndrome
- O.C.D. (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
- Auditory Processing Disorder
- Social Anxiety Disorder
- ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder)
- Dyslexia
Two years later at the age of 7, Jason, whose parents consulted the BrainNanny for an intervention, was symptom free for all of these diagnoses.
How could they possibly do this?
Working with the BrainNanny Jason replicated the developmental stages that he had missed in his first months of life and as the family did the neurodevelopmental program daily, with frequency, intensity, and duration, they watched the symptoms that made up these diagnoses shift, then disappear. They watched their son mature, enjoy life, reduce his anxieties, and learn to read.
BUT – what could his parents have done to intervene sooner? Could anything have prevented the 5 years of constant challenges?
There are things we can do to help any infant who comes into the world fully healthy or those with minor to moderate and seemingly transient challenges that predict later learning and behavior problems.
I want to share with you
THREE THINGS THAT JASON’S PARENTS MISSED
so that you do not miss them in your children.
Jason never crawled, but rather he rolled, then scooted on his bottom. He never put his tummy on the floor to mobilize, and preferred to be in arms constantly. Since there were older children in the home and everyone wanted to cuddle the baby, he never did this critical brain building activity.
- Jason did not make comfortable eye contact and pulled away from anyone seeking to gaze into his eyes. He would become squirmy and look away when parents or siblings tried to engage him.
- Jason startled at loud, but frequent and ordinary household noises, including the toilet flushing, the coffee grinder, and the vacuum cleaner. He would go into a panic and was hard to sooth.
We love our babies so much and want the absolute best for them throughout their infancy, so the question that you might ask is
What could Jason’s parents have done differently?
I’m going to give you three of the many steps you can take to help any baby be more calm, integrated, and functional in any environment as they move from infancy to childhood. These are steps Jason’s parents did not have until they sought our support. But you have them NOW.
Babies NEED Tummy Time and here’s one measure of how much. The brain is designed to be a reciprocal system that needs to spend 50% of the baby’s waking hours deeply engaging in their sensory world and 50% of their waking hours testing their strength against the floor, using all limbs to mobilize, which feeds information back to the growing brain and trains the sensory system.
Forget the model you may have heard from your pediatrician of 20 to 30 minutes of tummy time, starting on a blanket spread out on the floor. Wrong time limit; wrong environment.
First, get rid of the blanket. A baby will try to move, get caught up in the blanket and will start the neurodevelopmentally unhelpful task of rolling to get across the room. If you have worries about a cold floor, a smooth gym mat (not a sticky yoga mat) under the baby will give them the environment they need for this critical activity.
Second – whenever you are not holding the baby, put her down on her tummy on the floor. Tummy time should be the default position for any baby in order to reap the rewards of this wonderfully brain engaging and brain shaping activity.
Quiz:
Do you have a good place to put your baby on the floor so that they can experiment with crawling?
Yes ___ No ____
How much tummy time does your baby get every day?
Check box 20 minutes or less ___
Many times throughout the day up to several hours ___
- Eye contact is the beginning of the development of Mirror Neurons and the understanding of others non-verbal communications. How can we work with eye contact in a young baby?
If your baby is already crawling on their tummy you are stimulating the visual system and you can begin to focus on tiny moments of eye contact that grow over time, always with love and always with focus. A baby who does not make eye contact and does not enjoy eye gazing can be neurologically prompted to develop this skill that is critical to social and emotional development.
Quiz:
While you are holding your infant are you focused on a screen, or a book you are reading, or do you make visual contact with your baby a priority?
Yes, I make eye contact a priority. ___ No, I have not focused on eye contact. ___
- Auditory overwhelm is a huge problem in children that can be avoided if your infant goes through the motor activities of infancy that prompt the brain and is ALSO entrained with the parent’s body whenever they are not on the floor or otherwise occupied.*
Because the infant who is entrained with the parent experiences the parent’s sensory responses to the world through their contact with the parent’s heartbeat, breathing, and general metabolism, the baby learns what is safe and what is a danger or stressor. Holding the neurotypical baby against your body gives them the feedback they need to evaluate the sensory world.
Quiz:
Do you hold your baby in arms against your body or do they ride in strollers and other carriers when you move about with them.
Yes, I hold my baby and do not use carriers. ___
No, I don’t carry my baby as much on my body as I do in a carrier. ___
There you have it.
Three things to do to help your baby’s brain.
At every stage of development there are secrets to helping your baby’s brain, and prevent what can seem like a plague of childhood mental health disorders. By preventing these through the understanding of an infant’s brain development needs we can create a better future for your children.
Here’s a quick summary of what you can do that Jason’s parents missed:
- Make sure your baby has an environment and many opportunities to crawl on their tummy.
- Create time to engage the baby in eye gazing. If they are reluctant, ‘woo’ them with gentle prompts in a loving, focused environment.
- Provide body to body contact with your baby so that they can learn from your body how to process the sensory environment around them.
Raising a brain-healthy baby requires knowledge and conscious behaviors at each of the three levels of development.
I invite you to join me, and learn about all sensory and motor development during these three stages in our online program Birth to Brilliance. https://www.neurodevelopmentalmovement.org/birth-to-brilliance-course/
Most people know that the first year of life sets the stage for everything that is to come in that child’s journey over the years. But what most people DON’T know is that in that first year of life the brain learns 50% of EVERYTHING it is EVER GOING TO KNOW!
That’s huge!
Birth to Brilliance is designed to educate parents and caregivers about the three stages of development in the first year or more of a baby’s life.
Birth to Brilliance will help you gain unwavering confidence in your ability to shepherd your child through these three earliest brain stages, ushering in a joyous childhood leading to a successful future.
- Note that some children who were injured before or during birth by exposure to toxins, biochemical imbalances, early loss of the birth mother may have more sensitive nervous systems that cannot overcome their sensory avoidant behavior without more intervention, but entrainment is a good start.