WHAT ARE THE PRIMITIVE REFLEXES
AND LINKS WITH FREE MOTOR SKILLS
The cornerstone of your child's neurological development!
Nowadays, we notice that many children experience various difficulties, such as learning difficulties, attention, concentration or motor skills. Stress, anxiety and opposition are also common problems. What if primitive neurological reflexes were the cornerstone of children's neurological development, thus providing unique avenues for reflection and action for families?
While some primitive reflexes are present from pregnancy, others will emerge in the baby's first months of life. You know several of them in babies; for example the sucking reflex, cardinal points (digging the baby to find the breast), the gripping reflex which makes their fingers tighten around our finger or our hair or the startle reflex. In reality, young babies have dozens of them working for them.
But what are they for? Reflexes allow the baby to survive and develop. They are completely essential. They will make it react to its environment by moving, first involuntarily, which will give the brain a multitude of sensory information which will in turn create thousands and thousands of neural connections. These connections will allow for the brain to develop nothing less than the bodily, emotional and cognitive schema of the child. When the neuronal connections are sufficient, the child therefore no longer needs the primitive reflexes and he can now use his inner resources autonomously and voluntarily to move and act voluntarily in himself and in the world . The role of reflexes is therefore to make the young child move abundantly and in all directions, and this tens of thousands of times during the first two years of life and until the brain becomes richly connected on both sides and hemisphere to hemisphere. At this point we will say that the reflexes become “integrated”. Is that they did their job primordial. They therefore retract temporarily ... and will emerge as needed in the child's life, for example the child who starts sucking his thumb again.
in times of family stress.
But what if a child cannot or cannot perform all of these movements at a very young age? Because, for example, it was placed in vibrating cradles, transport shells preventing it from performing ample movements with its head and arms, if it was installed in Bumbo-type seats before He was born the inner resources to sit on his own, if he does not crawl or crawl, for example, or if he is prevented from playing outside for fear that he will get dirty or that he hurts itself? In other words, what happens if you interfere with your natural process? The answer is simple: the child is deprived of some of the sensations and movements he needs to develop fully neurologically. And since it is in the brain that the seat of the development and the control of the body, the emotions and the ideas is located, well it is all the spheres of the child which can be more or less affected.
WHAT ABOUT FREE MOTOR SKILLS?
Because it's tens thousands of years that
the human baby crawls on all fours!
Free motor skills is an educational approach that encourages parents and educators to "let nature take its course" and allow children to move freely from an early age. This approach is often accompanied by critical reflection on the subject of equipment for babies and children. After all, before we really need all of this equipment to support the head, prevent rolling, straighten the body, rock, stimulate eyesight, make us sit, simulate walking or standing. so, in reality babies usually get to everything on their own at some point?
It is a very worrying and very Western idea which takes roots in an ideology marked by advertisements and the solicitation of parental insecurities that have ended. by making our culture accept that babies have There is so much need for objects and above all, for equipment, each more sophisticated than the next. That they have need to be "shown" to do everything, doing it for them rather than allowing them to learn on their own. Unfortunately, not only is this ideology very expensive for the environment and the wallet, it is also excessively expensive from a neural point of view.
What exactly happens when we do in the place of the child? In reality, the human baby is an animal baby, and like all animals, they come into the world equipped with what they need to survive and develop. The reflex program is a prime example. The primitive reflexes which act in him will indeed allow him to build one brick at a time, the foundation then the walls and the roof of his house which is his body and all that he contains: motor skills, emotions, ideas. And everything takes place in a very precise order like a computer program planned for tens of thousands of years ... as long as it is given the chance to be, to move and to develop and that it is 'surrounds appropriate care.
That said, it still happens sometimes that children, for all kinds of reasons, jump on their own. steps, like crawling or crawling, for example. What should we understand? That the child lacks certain preparatory stages, certain bricks, in its construction. Perhaps the ground on which it moves is too much covered with foams which prevent certain sensations. Perhaps he saw a small tension in the hip following a difficult birth which restricts him in his movements. Maybe it's never worn like millions of ancestors did before us, or maybe it's not enough leave alone barefoot, which limits the development of certain plantar reflexes that will be necessary for him to learn to crawl. Perhaps he is never "allowed" to get dirty, to be naked and to feel the fresh air, the rain or the heat of the sun.
Perhaps he is not sufficiently in contact with nature? Nature nevertheless represents its ideal playground with the panoply textures, elements, sensations, colors, sounds, smells and inclinations ... When we know that each of these reflexes and each of these steps in fact allow the creation of abundant and specific neuronal connections in specific regions of the brain ... which will one day have to perform much more complex tasks, we can no longer think about ourselves. to say that "skipping steps" is unimportant. To give just one example, it is recommended, from a cerebral and motor development point of view, that children crawl on all fours as long as possible, i.e. for a period of at least 4 to 6 months ... However, these days it is rare that parents or caregivers do not hinder this process by starting to place the child upright for him "teach" to walk ... as he walks, this child, when all the bricks necessary to hold his body upright are in place. Simply. And not before.
Want to know more and take action to ensure the optimal development of your baby, child or adolescent? Free motor skills and primitive reflexes affect all ages of life.
"To learn going back to basics allows you to regain power over your life.
Allow children to live in free simplicity in their bodies and in the world gives them the feeling of never having lost it ".
Julie filiatrault
