This week, I have heard the facepalmily avoidable story of unpleasant bullying of a nine year-old child, both at school and Cubs by the same child.
His school thoughtfully brought in a visitor to talk about “differences” this week. Wonderful idea in principle. However, poorly executed in practice because it has caused a bullying situation.
The visitor talked about the way people look different and see things in a different way. She talked about how some people need to wear glasses, others hearing aids, others are in wheelchairs, some need ear defenders, etc. She talked about kindness and acceptance. And then… she singled out one disability – autism.
The presenter gave the blinkered examples that if you say to a person with autism that it’s raining cats and dogs, they will believe that cats and dogs actually are falling from the sky. She also said that people with autism see things in a different way.
The same day, after going back to class, a child told this boy – who has dyspraxia and auditory processing disorder – “you have autism – hahaha”. The boy said “no I don’t”, so the child continued to say “yes you do! you’re autistic haha”. The same happened the following day at school, and later in the day at Cubs, resulting in his mother having to pick up an inconsolable nine year-old, half an hour early. After half an hour of tears and cuddles, he told his mum that it’s because “X keeps saying I have autism, but I don’t”.
In fact, the child in question doesn’t have autism, (it has been ruled out by a panel including an educational psychologist, an occupational therapist and a speech therapist), but whether he does or doesn’t is not the point at all: I am more astounded at the way the assembly was pitched than the bullying itself – or even the misconception and blinkered “diagnosis” given by the bully. Bullying goes on everywhere and sadly children need to learn to deal with this sort of thing.
My concern is that simply I cannot understand the ethos behind equipping 8-11 year olds with labels for people’s difficulties, hence the tools to come to conclusions that panels of specialists have dismissed. Why would it be deemed necessary or appropriate to mention names of conditions to children of this age? If mentioning names for disabilities and conditions really are necessary, why not go into the difficulties of living with postero-medial bowing of the tibia? Or cystic fibrosis? Or cerebral palsy? Or even dyspraxia – and if you’re thinking “what’s dyspraxia?”, I rest my case.
Adults are narrow-minded enough, and now this narrow-mindedness is being rolled out to children in assembly format too. In my opinion, singling out any condition like this is both discriminatory and inappropriate.
Differences, whether cultural, how we look or how we act, are VERY important to talk about. And yes, we need to be aware of autism and the sort of behaviours that may accompany it – BUT these behaviours can accompany any number of other conditions – not just autism.
What I’m saying is: It is really good to talk about differences, but for this age group, we should not need to give those differences a name. After all, a school works with a child’s NEEDS rather than their diagnosis – that should be the case.
I would go further and say that by highlighting differences to children who have them may even empower them to behave differently. For example, if I told my child “well, you have dyspraxia so you don’t have to do PE”, he’d probably love me for it – and it would validate his low self esteem when it comes to sports even further.
Of course, I’m a neuro-developmental therapist, who sees hundreds of children and adults of all kinds. I do not “do” labels at all – I look at the whole person and how we can remove challenges by developing the brain. I also have a child with hemisphere dominance, sensory, emotional and social communication challenges that have reduced dramatically through my work with him, so I probably have much greater perspective on inclusion and “differences” than the person who gave this presentation.
This week has been a real eye-opener in terms of how narrow-minded and ignorant people really are about disability and differences. It seems more work needs to be done to get muggles and schools to understand this.
I started flying in 2003. I had decided to have a career change, and went to South Africa to do an intensive course over around six weeks, which was about a third of the price of flying in the UK, and with the promise of better weather, dramatic scenery and incredible wildlife (views of great white sharks swimming like guppies from the air).
Initially, I found it fairly easy to get to grips with what part of the plane did what. I’m from a long line of aviators. My great-uncle was shot down in the Battle of Britain, and his brother, took me on my first ever flight in a light aircraft when I was 10 years old. I remember thinking at the time that if he could do it, anyone could. Probably not really a fair assumption, in retrospect!
A great deal of skill is involved in flying. It’s true to say that people can get to be good at something by practising a lot, but looking back to my blog post Could you be struggling because you are compensating for baby reflexes?, it goes to show that with a little bit of reflex integration work, things can become effortless.
It is around four years ago that I started working to integrate my own reflexes – firstly using brushing, and latterly using RMTi movements and isometric pressures.
I had a revelation around six months ago, while working with an optometrist from Mississippi, during an RMTi course: I had been doing active RMTi movements for myself for a year or so, and yet a movement I’d done SO MANY times by myself (actively) made me suddenly tense up when she did the same movement passively for me. Not only that, but when I got up from the couch, I could not see! The entire room had gone blurry. Later that day, I realised that EVERYTHING was clearer, and it appears that my slight myopia in my left eye has evened up. Incredible!
Back to flying.
I went to do a currency flight last week, which, for non-pilots, means that I needed to do a minimum of three take offs and landings. I pay to belong to a flying group and have shared access to a PA28 based at Blackbushe airport, but I hadn’t flown it since last summer, and was lacking in confidence. I chose to fly circuits, as I thought I’d be rusty as anything after almost a year that it would be hard work – this has always been the case in the past. I also chose to take my husband (an instructor) as a safety pilot, just in case.
To my great surprise, EVERYTHING was as near perfect as possible. If it had been an exam, I would have passed easily and been congratulated on my smooth landings, perfect speeds at all times, etc.
Taking off in a light aircraft
Let’s fly a circuit and see how un-integrated reflexes might affect a pilot, making the task far more demanding.
The circuit at Blackbushe. We need to avoid the purple circles and the shaded area south of the M3 motorway. There may also be large birds lurking at the end of the runway, threatening a bird strike…
First of all, there’s radio work. This demands very rapid auditory processing. This is STILL not my strong point, because I’m left hemisphere dominant and left ear dominant – so I am not accessing the optimal ear for auditory processing. A more optimal profile for me would be left hemisphere dominant and right ear dominant. I manage, but there’s a bit of a delay and I often have to ask “Say again”.
Next, we taxy and line up on the runway. Using rudder pedals accurately requires a well integrated Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (ATNR), although I would say it’s easier to steer a plane than a car, because in a plane, steering is carried out by the feet.
A retained ATNR means there is still a connection between head movements and arms – so as the right arm moves, the head has to move too – nothing you can do about it. Having this reflex active in the system means that a person has problems crossing their midline because the connections in the corpus callosum are weak. This means a person will have problems understanding where left and right are.
On the take off roll, we need a well integrated Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex, in order not to feel motion sickness or disorientation, and an integrated Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex in order to glance down at the instrument panel and back to outside without feeling disoriented and to be able to switch from near to far vision and back again quickly without putting too much of a strain on the eyes. On take off, the main concern is gaining height at the right speed and rate of climb for the aircraft, so it’s important to be able to refer to instruments while keeping a good eye outside the aircraft as well.
To recap, the TLR helps a baby to adapt to the new gravitational conditions that exist after delivery. As the body lengthens and stretches when the neck bends backwards or forwards, proprioception is stimulated by the change in muscle tone, and the baby starts learning how to get into an upright position with balance and stability.
An active STNR often means that vision and hearing have not developed properly, as well as persistent poor eye-hand coordination. This reflex also plays a role in binocular vision and binaural hearing.
After take off, at 300ft above ground level, we do “after take-off checks” – brakes on and off, undercarriage up, power full, pitch set, mixture rich, fuel pump off, flaps up, landing lights off.
In order to turn onto the crosswind leg, the ATNR reflex comes into play again. The standard circuit direction is left, because the captain sits in the left-hand seat. But people an active ATNR tend to confuse left and right – not a good mix when in the circuit! Someone compensating for an ATNR will have to think really carefully about the direction of circuit traffic.
On crosswind, the plane is still climbing to circuit height, so the turn onto crosswind is usually a climbing turn to the left or right, which brings its own challenges. The Head Righting Reflexes come into play when banking the plane, as the head and eyes need to stay level with the horizon rather than the head being in alignment with the direction of the plane. If the Head Righting Reflex (a lifelong postural reflex) is not yet active, it can cause disorientation in turns – especially as the turns become steeper. This reflex allows the eyes and head to stay level with the horizon while the plane banks. Lack of HRR or an active TLR or STNR can cause motion sickness when flying (or on the sea/in a car).
On the downwind leg, the plane should have reached circuit height. This is a very busy leg, with the pilot needing to control speed and pitch in order to keep the plane flying straight and level, not gaining or losing any height. In addition, the pilot needs to carry out a series of “downwind checks” (brakes on and off, undercarriage down, mixture rich, reduce power to within the green arc, pitch set, check flaps, fuel pump on, hatches and harnesses secure, landing lights on). The pilot will then make a radio call “X-XX downwind”, and will then need to process and comply with a response from the radio, and respond to it, potentially repeating back information from the tower. If primitive reflexes are interfering, this can be a very challenging leg to fly. It is thought that spinal reflexes the Moro and the ATNR are responsible for auditory processing, so someone with an unintegrated system will get completely overwhelmed by the amount of tasks to complete and the information to process.
Turning onto base leg involves a descending turn. I tend to put one stage of flaps down at this point to help me descend. We control airspeed with attitude (using the elevator) and height using power (the throttle). Constant attention to speed and height of the plane is required. Once again, head righting reflex, TLR and ATNR come into play.
Turning onto final approach, we put flaps down as necessary (or not). This can give us quite a steep attitude down to the runway – or a very flat attitude with no flaps. I once landed into Calais with no flaps – not intentionally, but because I was flying a Cessna 182 and the flaps are motorised. For some reason, they didn’t work, which I discovered fairly early on, so had plenty of time to plan for a flapless landing (which is very easy in Calais, as the runway is 1,535m long).
To plan for a smooth landing, we have to judge whether we are established on the glide slope. In airports like my home base, Blackbushe, we have special lights called PAPI lights to guide us down – we are looking for two reds and two whites when we are descending accurately. However, on smaller airfields or farm strips, there is nothing like that, so we have to be able to judge speed, rate of descent and distance accurately by eye. This is extremely hard, because for up- or down-sloping runways, there is an optical illusion, which makes the runway look narrower, shorter, longer or wider.
Final approach into Dinard – note PAPIs to the left of the runway
On final approach, we need our TLR well integrated in order not to feel vertiginous. We also need our Fear Paralysis and Moro reflexes under control so we don’t freeze or panic with the runway approaching! In addition, approaching a runway tests our distance vision, and being able to glance back down at the instruments tests our close vision – more STNR.
Unless you’ve landed a plane, you won’t know quite how thrilling it is. But it can also be extremely challenging for an unintegrated system! When we are integrated, or unintegrated but well practised, we look to the end of the runway, fly down to it and try to stop it from landing. We hold off until the wheels touch down in a satisfying way.
When we are unintegrated, the rest of the circuit may not have gone to plan either, and the plane will be flying ahead of the pilot! When this happens, it’s difficult to land in a controlled manner, and the plane might bump down roughly.
“Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing”.
additionally
“There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots”
Flying light aircraft is seriously the best fun one can have with their clothes on – if you have integrated reflexes.
I would add that I’ve never tried flying in the buff.
Some of our children – indeed, some of us – find it extremely hard to switch off. Our brains work overtime, processing what’s happened that day, worrying about what might happen… Some of us wake up at 3am and can’t get back to sleep. Some of us are almost asleep when we suddenly jolt ourselves back to wakefulness, having had a sort of dream that we are about to fall off a cliff or down stairs or similar. And worst of all, some of our poor children suffer from night terrors: episodes of extreme night-time distress, thrashing about screaming and crying, eyes open, but fast asleep.
What causes all these disturbances?
When we are in a constant state of fight/flight or freeze, we are living in survival mode: our brains are on alert for perceived threat. Our primitive lizard brains are active, rather than our rational upper brain (cerebellum). This means it’s very hard to switch off a racing mind and fall asleep.
This fight/flight and freeze cycle (think rabbit in headlights freezing with terror and then racing away to avoid danger) is caused by unintegrated Fear Paralysis and Moro reflexes.
The Fear Paralysis reflex is the first reflex that a foetus develops. It is thought to develop at around 5 weeks in utero, but there is research to show that it may even develop earlier than that, given that Fear Paralysis is a reaction at a cellular level rather than a neurological reaction involving the central nervous system. A foetus will react to threats, such as loud noises, by shrinking and withdrawing in order to protect itself.
The Fear Paralysis causes the foetus to stop moving, restricts peripheral blood flow, lowers the heart rate, reduces exposure to adrenaline and reduces the absorption of cortisol (the stress hormone).This is similar to a mouse feigning death when caught by a cat: heart rate and breathing slow right down so it can protect itself and zoom off and hopefully escape when dropped.
The Moro reflex starts to develop in the second trimester, and gradually takes over from the Fear Paralysis reflex. However, if something stops the Fear Paralysis reflex from integrating effectively, the Moro reflex will also be retained, and a person will live in a constant cycle of fight, flight and freeze. The Moro reflex will cause racing thoughts.
Fear Paralysis is responsible for the emotional well-being of a person, and retaining it means that there are likely to be anxiety, phobias, brain freeze under extreme stress, a lack of adaptability and potentially panic attacks and night terrors. Signs of a retained FPR reflex are:
– anxiety / withdrawn behaviour
– low stress threshold
– rabbit-in-headlights-like freezing when there is a threat
– sensory processing challenges
– hypersensitivity to light/sound
– finds change difficult
– clingy behaviour
– extreme fatigue
– selective mutism (also in adults)
– breath holding when worried/upset/stressed
– obsessive behaviour/OCD
– fear of not being in control
There’s another pesky reflex that I usually find in those with sleep disturbances: the Babkin reflex. This is a reflex associated with separation anxiety.
When I started working to integrate my children’s reflexes, we noticed a dramatic improvement in my son’s ability to switch off at night – it used to take him around two hours to wind down and fall asleep! From a month or so after we started working with his reflexes, he was able to switch off and drift off to sleep within minutes.
I was one of those unfortunately to be jolted awake with a falling-off-a-cliff type dream just as I fell asleep, almost every night, but a couple of weeks after I’d started working with my own reflex integration, I noticed that I had stopped having this experience – and I haven’t experienced this again since, in around 6 years.
If you don’t plan on working with reflex integration to resolve these common sleep issues, here are some other things you can do to calm your autonomic nervous system down:
humming
take deep breaths in to the count of 4 through your nose, push breaths out through a small “o” (as if you are whistling) through your mouth to the count of 8
take deep breaths in to the count of 4 through your nose, push breaths out through a small “o” (as if you are whistling) through your mouth to the count of 8
yoga is extremely helpful and will teach you to breathe to help you self regulate
take yourself back to your lizard brain, and pretend to be a mermaid, separating upper and lower body as well as you can and rock your lower body from side to side
leave mobile phones downstairs, and don’t have a clock by your bed, especially if LED
use spray magnesium oil on the soles of your feet
use an eye mask to block out light
However, if none of this works, or if you have an inconsolable child with night terrors, reflex integration work – or even the Safe and Sound Protocol, depending on the person – might be a sensible next step, in which case, please do get in touch to find out how I might be able to help.
Are you new to the subject of retained primitive reflexes and wanting to learn more? Or have you just started seeing a practitioner and are full of enthusiasm and wonder at how it works?
I’ve read just about every book available on the subject, both as a parent and as a practitioner. So I have collated this hopefully useful book list for you so you can decide which to read first!
No 1. Beyond The Sea Squirt: a Journey with Reflexes by Moira Dempsey
This book was published in May 2019. It is a collection of anecdotes by therapists all around the world on how reflex integration has helped clients of all ages. I helped with an initial edit of the book, and two of the anecdotes are provided by me!
In my opinion, this book is a brilliant introduction to the concept of retained reflexes and how working with reflexes can help people of all ages and with a variety of conditions/challenges. It’s a very accessible book, and should be on your bookshelf if you are starting to learn about reflex integration.
The book shows a few of the rhythmic movements that we use to integrate primitive reflexes. That said, doing it yourself won’t be as efficient as working with someone who has the experience to unravel the individual.
This is a go-to book for anyone with a child with one of the dys- diagnoses – for example, dyspraxia, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia. It is also useful for auditory processing disorder, given that this is often a left and right hemisphere dominance issue. The book explains how to work out what dominance profile a person has, and explains the relevant learning profile. It is a MUST read for SENCos or anyone working with specific learning difficulties.
No 3 Attention, Balance and Coordination by Sally Goddard-Blythe
Sally Goddard-Blythe is the most well-known author on the subject of primitive reflex integration.
This is one of many of her books. This is aimed mainly at teachers and professionals, but is a fantastic introduction to this fresh look at child development.
No 4 The Well Balanced Child by Sally Goddard-Blythe
This book is my go-to for parents to understand primitive reflexes and child development. It’s a brilliant read – very clear and informative.
No 6 Movements that Heal by Harald Blomberg and Moira Dempsey
Authored by both Moira Dempsey and Harald Blomberg, this book is a concise explanation of how Rhythmic Movement Training can be used to integrate primitive reflexes. It is, however, slightly outdated now, as Moira Dempsey has taken RMTi to a new level since this book was written, and modified a few of the movements slightly.
No7 The Symphony of Reflexes
Symphony of Reflexes is a beautifully accessible book, explaining each reflex in detail. This book contains insight you won’t read anywhere else.
No 8 Is that my child? By Dr Robin Pauc
This is an extremely interesting read, once again containing insights about primitive reflexes that you won’t read anywhere else. This is an accessible read for parents to understand what primitive reflexes are and how working with them can help.
