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Elizabeth and I wanna thank ChiroSecure for giving us this platform and always having our backs to cover the profession and to teach the world about pediatric chiropractic. So Elizabeth is gonna take a bit of a nap while we continue on. You get to go over there I’m Dr. Monika Buerger, and I have an amazing show for you today.
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We are gonna talk about neurological collapse in the school-age kiddo. Ah. What’s neurological collapse? We’re gonna break it down and make it super easy for you. Here’s the scoop. School’s starting we’re in August, some schools have started already. But what are we looking for these little fiddle farts that might not be having such an easy go of transitioning back to school, or school is just not their deal?
Couple things I want you to be mindful of. A child’s, a person, their expressive behaviors are a window into their neurological integrity. The way all of us act, react, respond to our emotions, which are primed by our sensory experiences, it tells a story. It tells us a story of how well we are processing information from our external environment, sight, smell, sound, taste, touch, and from our internal environment called interoception for the chiropractic world, what really is a big, important thing to understand for this interoception are two systems, one called vestibular, that is the movement of where our head is in space, knowing where our head is in our space, movement, moving through space, and proprioception, information from movement of our joints and muscles.
Okay. But there’s other systems within. There’s c- s- sensory information from our internal environment that comes from our hormones and immune cells and the microbiome and our viscera, our liver and our kidneys and our heart. So all this information from the outside world and from our inner world come up to the brain to make a story for the brain, and if that story is one of being afraid, being insecure, not being able to do things good enough, task-driven negative consequences, we will be reluctant to participate in that environment.
Okay, so that’s the groundwork for our neurological integrity. So when a kiddo is expressing themselves, maybe in a manner that as an adult, as a teacher, as a parent, as a counselor, as an, an aide in the class, whatever, isn’t matching what we think should be their response, their behavior, especially we’re talking now in a classroom setting or a school setting, they might get labeled as having behavioral issues, having learning issues, having attention issues, having respect issues, you name it.
So let’s dive into two scenarios. We can have a hypersensory paradigm. A little bit of input goes a long way in my brain. I am hypersensory to my environment, or you can have a hyposensory response. So hypersensory, think of it as a big glass, a big cup of coffee. As an adult, we’re trying to fill our caffeine cup, right?
Okay. So a big cup of coffee filled to the brim, and one more drop sets us over the edge. So I’m gonna give you a scenario. Five-year-old Comes into your office, parents bring them in, and the parents say, “You know what? We’ve noticed that she fatigues easily when we’re out and about as a family and when walking and so forth.”
So you ask, “What does fatigue mean? What does fatigue look like to you, mom, dad?” And they say she’s got a little brother that’s three, and we can be out and about, go walking through the fair, the circus, go on a hike or whatever, and she just poops out faster. She just, ‘I don’t wanna do this anymore.'”
Okay? And the little brother’s just “I can keep going.” She seems like she’s tired more easy. She’s reluctant more easily, okay? And they notice that when this ha- starts to happen, she’s not your typical toe walker, tiptoe walker, but it’s like her heels come off the ground a little bit more. She’s not quite doing a heel-toe flat foot walk.
So what could be happening there is this little fiddle fart is neurologically collapsing, fatiguing because it takes a lot of input. There’s a lot of input going o- going around when you’re simply walking through space. There’s three sensory systems in particular that play a big role here: vestibular, visual, and proprioceptive.
We’ll leave those for another time, another day as far as digging into those individually. But those three go together a lot for us to navigate walking through our world. So if some of those sensory systems fatigue faster, a little bit of input goes a long way, and I start to… My nervous system starts to…
It can’t adapt. It can’t adapt anymore. I start to neurologically collapse. Do I wanna keep moving and navigating through space and doing things when it’s maybe making my brain crazy brain? No But a little five-year-old can’t say, “Mom, Dad, I’m feeling overwhelmed, a little anxious. It’s hard for me to pick up my feet now and to move through space.
I’m burning extra energy,” ’cause these kiddos will burn through fuel a lot faster. So that’s why I’m behaving in this manner. I’m throwing a fit. I’m sitting, I’m crying. I’m saying, “No, I don’t wanna do it. This is dumb. This is stupid.” Whatever that expressive behavior might be. And then to compensate, to try to help her body be able to get more of this input that she needs to try to navigate the world, she might start coming up on her toes a little bit.
She… W- when you do an evaluation in your office, you see she has a a still active moro response, okay, because she is constantly on threshold, constantly on fight or flight, and that moro, when we can’t self-regulate, we automatically get… go back to that primitive part of the brain, and that’s why you see these primitive reflexes active.
So there’s a good moral of story here is if you s- if you’re looking for primitive reflexes and they’re active, ask yourself why. What’s the underlying neurological story in that person’s brain that is driving them to keep those reflexes active? So in this scenario, she’s a five-year-old little girl, fatigues when being upright, walking around in environments too much, starts to come up on her heel a little bit, and doesn’t want to participate anymore.
So the other thing, the other reason why she can c- be coming up on that heel a little bit is because the moro reflex keeps the extensor muscle tone very tight from the f- from the calves t- through the hamstrings, all the way up the spine to the cervical spine. You’re gonna see this whole extensor chain activated, and so then the Achilles might get too tight, and they can’t heel-toe.
So what does that look like in the classroom? She gets to the classroom, and motor activities like reading, that’s fine motor with the v- the eyes, writing, typing being out on recess, sitting upright All those, she fatigues and collapses quicker, and so she can zone out, she can check out. Or it can be, “I don’t wanna do this.
This is dumb. This is stupid,” or she just zones. Just zones out, and the teacher’s like Jenny, pay attention. Jenny, why aren’t you doing your work?” She doesn’t have that neurological energy to do that. Okay, so that’s your hyper kiddo. Now, your hypo kiddo might be one who’s Jimmy. He’s eight years old.
Man, that kid’s a great athlete. He is great on the ice doing ice hockey and on the football field, and man, he… You should see him. Great. When he gets to school, not so great He has to kick the chair of the kiddo in front of him all the time. He’s getting in trouble for constantly kicking the chair of the kiddo in front of him.
Or he’s gonna have to move all the time, and he sits on one leg and then sits on another leg, and then he has to get up and sharpens his pencil all the time. I don’t think they sharpen pencils anymore, but anyway, get the story. He’s gotta move and groove all the time, and he’s getting in trouble for being disruptive.
“Jimmy, you need to sit still. You need to pay attention. You’re not paying attention.” The only way he can pay attention is if he’s upregulating that sensory information to his brain. He’s moving, he’s kicking, he’s getting vestibular, proprioceptive from kicking. Proprioception is again deep compression, deep joint muscle stimulation.
So he’s kicking the kid in front of him. He might get in trouble on the school ground for being a bully ’cause he can be the pull, punch, push kiddo. He’s getting that input when he’s playing football or on the ice rink playing hockey or whatever. But in the classroom, he’s expected to sit still, pay attention, and behave.
But his neurological system isn’t… His integrity isn’t where it needs to be, so he’s innately trying to upregulate the story to his brain to be able to pay attention. But now he gets labeled as ADHD or behavioral issues or inattentive or whatever. Okay. So the chiropractic story in all this Where chiropractors fit in is when we do a specific adjustment to a vertebral subluxation, we are restoring information to the brain, especially vestibular and proprioceptive information.
So the kiddo who’s hyposensory, they might have a big coffee cup, but they’ve only got a few drops in there or a little bit in there. They need a lot more input, a lot more for the brain to have a proper story. Likewise, like we talked about the hypersensory kiddo, the cup is already full. So when we restore proper information from the spine, from the muscle spindles, from the muscles into the brain by correcting a vertebral subluxation, we’re rebooting the story to the brain We’re rebooting that input to the brain.
So now Joni can go to school and sit in the classroom without be- without being overwhelmed, and Jimmy can go to the classroom and have the information he needs upregulated in order to pay attention. So what this looks like on paper, literally could look like on paper, is this The vertebral, the, the specifics chiropractic adjustment reboots and allows the brain to have a different story about their experience.
So Joni’s story might be Joni’s school experience at– in kindergarten. Jimmy’s story might be Jimmy’s eight-year-old school experience, whatever. That’s the title of the story It’s written in a Word document, okay? “I went to school when I was five. I hated it. The classroom was really loud. I would get stomach aches,” because this can create anxiety, right?
And can create dysfunctional sensory input in the gut. “I got headaches. I got in trouble all the time,” whatever. Whatever the story starts happening in their brain, so they don’t wanna go to school because the brain says, “Oh my God, when I go to that this is what I feel like.” All right?
Jimmy’s story might… it’s an story of I can’t instead of I can. It’s a story of I can’t. I can’t go to school and learn well. I can’t go to school and sit still. I can’t go to school and write for a long time. I can’t keep up with my peers, either scenario. So when we do an adjustment, we allow that sensory motor loop to be healthier, and we rewrite the story.
It’s like going into a Word document. Joni’s experience starts to change. So instead of, “I went to school when I was five, and I had terrible anxiety, and my tummy would hurt, and I would cry, and I wouldn’t wanna leave my mom, and they said I had separation anxiety disorder and ADHD and blah, blah, blah, blah,” we do an adjustment.
We allow that experience to be different, recalibrate in the brain, open up that Word document, and now we can start to change the experience. I close and save that document. Now, instead of, “I went to school and I can’t,” it was like, “And I went into this chiropractor. I got adjusted, and my tummy felt happier at school, and I could keep up with the other kids.
I didn’t have to move all the time,” in Jimmy’s case. And we rebuild, we reprogram, we reboot that story in the brain, and now the story– the brain has a better map and is more tolerable about going into these situations. So there’s a lot for you to to navigate through in there, but this is what we need to look for those kiddos that are struggling in school.
And you’ll see that their behaviors, they don’t wanna go to school. They don’t feel good. Parents get called. Jimmy’s got another stomach ache. Joni says she has a headache. They might even start breaking out in fevers ’cause their immune system becomes so stressed out because the nervous system is the immune system.
So if you wanna learn more about how to look at these cases, how to look at these kiddos, what does hyper versus hypo mean and you can be hypervestibular but hypoproprioceptive. It’s a mix and match duel, okay? If you wanna learn more about this, scroll down, brr, scroll all the way down. Join our six pillars, our foundations of neural development, and you will learn so much on what’s going on in these child’s brains and bodies and how to help navigate them Once again, ChiroSecure, me, and Elizabeth want to thank you for allowing us to have this platform, enlighten the world about kiddos and chiropractic, and always having the profession’s back.
Until next week, next month, we’ll see you then
The After It Show: Look to the Children was brought to you by ChiroSecure.
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