Primitive Reflex Integration
What are Primitive Reflexes?
Primitive reflexes are automatic and involuntary movements that are present in a child at birth and during the early stages of development.
These reflexes are crucial to the child’s first year survival as they help the child respond to the world through basic actions such as taking his/her first breath, grasping, opening their mouth, curling/extending his/her toe and kicking.
Most of these reflexes gradually become integrated into the child’s pattern of movement, making way for more mature and voluntary movements to emerge.
However..
When older children still actively display these infant reflexes (“retained reflexes”), it can cause developmental delays in areas such as eye-hand coordination, balance, fine and gross motor skills.
- For example, when a child bypasses the crawling phase by moving from sitting to walking, this skip can interfere with the child’s future development which requires the right and left brain to coordinate and execute more advanced movement activities later on in life.
In addition, retained reflexes can contribute to poor sensory processing skills, behavioral problems, poor auditory and visual processing skills, poor attention etc. As such, it is crucial to address retained reflexes in your child to bridge the gap in his/her development.
What is Reflex Integration and how can it benefit your child?
Primitive reflex integration therapy or exercises are used by occupational therapists to help “reintegrate” the aforementioned “retained reflexes” if they are still present in a child.
As a certified provider of the Reflex Integration Through Play™️ (RITP) program that has been designed with kids in mind, we are able to create and implement a personalized treatment plan for your child consisting of activities designed to help integrate those reflexes and improve his/her neural pathway development. This will allow him/her to develop motor skills that may have been previously blocked.
To find out more about how Primitive Reflex Integration can benefit your child, you may contact us or visit https://www.integratingreflexes.com/ to find out more about Reflex Integration Through Play™️
