Move2Connect Primitive Reflex Integration
Primitive Reflex Integration and Safe and Sound Protocol UK Provider
Browsing Category
So, what is the Safe and Sound Protocol?
Need a brief, simplified explanation of Polyvagal Theory and the science behind the SSP?
Look no further…
You might also find the websites www.whatisthessp.com and www.safeandsoundcoaching.org useful.
In the years I’ve been working with neuroplasticity and primitive reflex integration, I’ve lost count of the number of parents who want to know the % their child’s reflexes are retained, as well as EXACTLY which reflexes are retained.
It is really important to know that we are not JUST looking at an exact percentage! We’re looking at the full picture. In fact, I do not even NEED to test a child’s (or their parent’s) reflexes in order to start working with them – I can see what I need to do by the time they’ve sat down in the room. The reflex tests are really only for the benefit of watching progress – but we also do that by watching behaviour, emotions and cognition from the time a child heads off with a new set of movements to work with.
Additionally, it’s important to understand that if we do not see a reflex reaction when we test, it doesn’t mean it’s not there: we also look at whether a body is compensating and trying to hide the presence of a reflex (very common in children with a strong fear paralysis reflex). It’s also possible that a reflex has not even emerged yet, which is why I rarely test for a huge range of reflexes initially.
Also, while a programme of movements is important, it is useful for parents to know that by co-regulating with and working WITH your child, you’ll almost certainly see the best results. If you push your child through a programme of movements that are impossible for them to grasp, all you’ll do is stress yourself and your child.
A few years back, I was contacted by someone who was concerned their child wasn’t making progress with another practitioner. After doing some delving, I discovered that this parent was putting their child through around half an hour of movements every single day. Rather than progressing, this child had “regressed” significantly – massive meltdowns and zoning out at school – due to the parent working ON rather than WITH.
Obviously, we all want quick fixes, but neuroplasticity is NEVER a quick fix, and it really isn’t something you can force on someone without attuning to their nervous system.
I love it when parents are fascinated by my work and want to give it a go too. By jumping onto my mat and experiencing passive movements for themselves, they are learning how it feels, which in turn helps them to deliver those movements more effectively for their child – asking for feedback while working with.
There are some children who simply cannot go through a primitive reflex assessment. That is fine! As I mentioned above, I do not need to test reflexes to know what we need to do. Very often, I have my gym ball with me. This is a great piece of equipment because children instinctively know how to use it to integrate their own reflexes. Sometimes they’ll sit on it and bounce, and other times they’ll use it to propell themselves around. This gives me a lot more information than merely getting a child to go through reflex tests: it gives me important information on how to calm their nervous systems.
The point of me writing this post is that in order to make the very best progress, the following factors need to be in place:
To find your nearest neurodevelopmental therapist, you can use this directory
The ultimate reason why I have ended up working to help struggling children (and adults) is because my own child was finding school such a challenge.
My youngest child doesn’t have quite the same challenges: he was teaching himself to read aged 2, could count into the thousands by the time he started pre-school and understood exactly what times tables are and how to apply them from before reception ages.
However, his handwriting…
Last year, before lockdown, at Parents’ Evening the teacher told me very subtly that he was almost, but not quite, cause for concern.
So when “lockdown” started, I decided that we should focus closely on handwriting – but from a developmental perspective rather than repetition.
Before you can expect a child to form letters correctly, they need to have solid neurodevelopmental foundations in place.
This was his starting point, back in April. I know, it’s not bad, but it isn’t automatic or effortless by any stretch of the imagination.
What did I do?
There was also a degree of reluctance to write: he’d seen the beautiful handwriting of the swotty girlies in his class, and had already started developing rather poor self esteem as a result. That is sadly a bit of an unavoidable by-product of being in a class of 30 and being a quiet child who just gets on with it rather than demanding attention.
The first thing we did, as soon as we had stopped going to school, was listen to the Safe and Sound Protocol. We played games and used clay to make little pots while listening. Because the situation was a little unusual, in terms of not being at school, we slowed down to half an hour per day, and just did days 3-5 as this was a repeat.
How does the Safe and Sound Protocol help handwriting? Well, in my child’s case, I know that he has quite deep-rooted anxiety and always benefits from an SSP booster. However, the incredible thing that I, and my osteopath colleagues, have noticed is how SSP can help strengthen the midline. We have noticed this on numerous occasions, so given that writing is so multidimensional and involves a lot of cross-hemisphere activity, it seemed like a good starting place.
The next thing I concentrated on was a few pivotal primitive reflexes that help develop a better relationship between intellect and body awareness. I say “pivotal” because these HAVE to be in place for a person to be able to master writing as an automatic skill, rather than something they have to labour over.
We concentrated on Babkin, TLR, STNR and ATNR. Yes, my child has all these. So many children and adults do.
Sometimes, people concentrate purely on hand reflexes for handwriting, but given that I know my child’s history intimately, I chose to start elsewhere. Handwriting is not ALWAYS about hand reflexes.
The next thing we did was some midline crossing movements, in time to music. He loves dancing, so it was pretty easy to build these movements into a dance. The dance moves became noticeably more precise and coordinated throughout the course of a few days.
Next, we progressed onto lazy 8s. This is a very important exercise for motor memory. We started lazy 8s on a large blackboard that we have nailed to the side of the playhouse, and progressed to a small old-school slate, before progressing to paper and pencil.
Here is a video showing the lazy 8 concept.
It was at this point that my child, six and a half, got his first ever wobbly tooth! I was probably more excited than he was.
Why am I mentioning wobbly teeth? If you look into Steiner education, which is 100% based on child development, children are not expected to start writing until they start to loose their teeth. This milestone is linked to brain development and myelination of the Corpus Callosum. If those connections between left and right hemisphere are not strong enough, it is pointless trying to get a child to sit and write letters because they are not developmentally ready to do so.
Next, we were ready to go onto lined paper. Lines are very important, because they show a child where the writing needs to go. This may seem obvious, but some schools hand out blank paper and expect 5 and 6 year-olds to figure this out for themselves.
The books have red guidelines to separate the very top and very bottom of letters. The next line up is for the body of the letters to go on, the next line is to set the size of the body of the letters and the top red line is to set the height of the tall letters. The bottom line is to set the length of the letters with “tails”.
I bought these books from Amazon.
At this stage, we are finally ready to start looking at letter formation. As you have now seen, skipping the earlier steps only frustrates children and can cause low self esteem.
In the UK, the majority of schools seem to learn print first and then progress to cursive. However, if your child has dyspraxia or is likely to have dyslexia, this is a very short-sighted approach, as corroborated by my Level 5 BDA Dyslexia training. Learning cursive from the start is so much easier for children. This way, they can apply the motor memory formed using the lazy 8 letters and you will see letters consistently the right way around rather than muddled bs and ds.
I split the letters into similar motor pattern groups and learn those together, followed by how to join between letter groups.
And this was the result…
If you would like to help your child with their handwriting, please do contact me for further information.
Twice this week, and several times in the past, I’ve come across people on social media arguing about “cures” for neurodivergent conditions.
The thinking by those opposed to doing any neuroplasticity work to support difficulties associated with these conditions is that ableist people are trying to make neurodiverse people fit into their ableist world.
I can totally see their point when this work is peddled as a “cure”, and cringe when I see people talking about “retained reflexes” being the answer to everyone’s “normals”: these are neuro-developmental differences, not a disease. People have learnt to compensate for their difficulties by working much harder than they need to in order to stay on track – as an adult with a few neuro-developmental differences myself, I would have hated to be told that I needed fixing.
However, I do believe that if challenges, such as not being able to pay attention, being so anxious that you can’t leave the house, or even having physical pain, are causing a person to be held back, it is good to try to attempt to reduce those challenges. Not just for the person with challenges, but also for parents/carers/friends/family.
I’m fairly sure that parents/carers or those with the spectrum of challenges that can be helped would love family members to be able to cope better with transitions, sensory input and situations that make them anxious.
Removing these challenges is not a “cure”. What we are doing is giving development a boost, and helping a person to be the person they were born to be. I, for example, used to wish that I could answer rapid-fire questions in class more easily, or even pay attention to an entire one-hour lecture or later, business meeting, without my mind wandering off to far-flung destinations.
A well-known therapy (which I have no personal experience of) has been heavily criticised, because what it does is to condition a person to behave in the way that society expects everyone to behave. However, the therapy mentioned does not “cure” at all, and neither does it claim to, as far as I know.
However, I suspect that, despite conditioning people to act “appropriately” by getting them to “fawn” (in Polyvagal terms), it causes recipients further anxiety, and is in complete contrast to the Polyvagal Theory (Safe and Sound Protocol), which works with physiological state. After all, if someone with has constipation (and those who live in a physiological state of freeze always have constipation), do you leave it untreated, or do you keep saying it’s part of them and can’t be changed?
What we do as neuro-developmental therapists is nothing to do with “cures”, and certainly nothing at all to do with conditioning behaviour. To us, diagnoses can sometimes be a bit of a mystery in the first place. “Neurodiverse” simply means that the nervous system and brain have developed differently from that of a neurotypical person (except hardly anybody is truly neurotypical in reality). What is wrong with trying to work with it, and give the system a second chance to develop?
It is also important to know that “retained reflexes” are not the be-all and end all. There is so much more to reducing these behavioural, emotional and learning challenges than that. Reflexes are just a tiny part of the picture and not the only thing to focus on – they are a “symptom”, not something you can simply snap into place.
When I had just started training, I was triggered by one of the exercises we were carrying out with each other: I went into a sort of non-verbal shock – I could no longer focus on what was being said around me, I felt as if I had tunnel vision and felt extremely on edge. I went home that evening feeling hypervigilant and didn’t sleep well as a result – in fact, I had nightmares – I was in fight or flight mode (flight, in fact). I then spent a few weeks in that very same state – I felt as if I wanted to shrink up and hide from the world. I avoided social contact with people and hardly left the house! This is a prime example of a “freeze” reaction, in terms of Dr Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal theory.
Using techniques to take someone out of fight/flight/freeze, we can make a person feel safe in the world and regulate their emotions and behaviour.
I get that people don’t like the idea of being fixed – I really do. As a special needs mum myself, I also really get that approaching people in special needs groups to tell them how incredible reflex integration work can be as anything other than a fellow parent is wholly inappropriate – I only wish people doing the hard sell would realise that they are letting the side down and making this work look cheap and not credible. So please don’t tag me in posts if the subject is mentioned in the future.
I am not a hard sales person. People find me via word of mouth and that’s how I want it to stay.
This is NOT about curing neurodiversity – far from it. The same person is still there, with the same superpowers and the same clinical diagnosis. However, what we do to remove the challenges and help them become the person they were born to be.
We are working with a person, not a medical label.