In response to a parent’s question about what particular activities help with speech, I offer this observation:
Speech, and indeed any particular area where we are looking for change, cannot be pinned down to one activity that makes that change possible. The brain provides mechanisms that support speech throughout the entire course of the developmental process. For some children, working at a pons level provides keys; for others, the midbrain, but many children have not accessed full speech potential until we started doing their cortical/walking patterns, and even some whose blocks emotionally were so profound due to pre-natal trauma, that we did not get some components of speech until we worked prenatally. Doing crawling, creeping, homolateral and cross patterns is a good introduction to brain work for some children, but it is only when you go through the entire developmental sequence from the first fetal patterns up through cross pattern walking that you get full recovery for most children with a history of trauma.
AND, I am now convinced that if the child’s biomedical needs are not simultaneously being addressed, we will have a reduced chance of full recovery. So, NeuroDevelopmental Movement® plus biomedical should put these functions into place.