Retained Primitive Reflexes: What Every Parent of A Uniquely Wired Kid Needs To Know

Hey friends, I’m so excited to be talking about retained primitive reflexes today. Specifically what I think every parent of a uniquely wired kid needs to know. Again, when I say uniquely wired, that is kind of a huge umbrella term for our kids that have sensory needs for our kids, that have big emotions. For our kids that have ADHD or autism, all of these things are connected.

Whether your kid has a diagnosis or not. If they’re struggling with that focus, following directions, they can’t transition. Well, they freak out when they go to the doctor. They don’t wanna get dressed. All of these things. Can be caused by, or at least retained primitive reflexes may be playing a role. Now, if you listen to episode one, you heard me talk about kind of what these are in a nutshell.

I’m gonna do a quick overview and then I wanna get into. How do you know if your kid does have these retained reflexes? And then what exactly can you do about it? And there’s a lot that you can do now. Retained primitive reflexes, remember, are a set of reflexes, let’s say around 10, give or take, depending on who you talk to.

And these reflexes should. Go dormant or therapy word integrate. So you all hear therapists say, we’re working on integrating their reflexes. They should all be quiet by the age of two. But studies have shown over and over again, especially with super strong links to ADHD, that these reflexes have not gone quiet.

They are retained. That means they are still signaling in the brain when they shouldn’t be. And if they’re still signaling, it is causing certain movements, actions, emotions to be affected. Okay? Let me give you an example. Uh, this reflex you all know you have seen in your kids, and it’s called the grasp reflex.

When you have a newborn, if you put your finger in the palm of their hand, what does that baby do? Ideally, they should wrap their little hand around yours and it seems so sweet, but it is not conscious. It is not intentional. It is a reflex at work. Okay? A reflex happens automatically without us thinking. It is this incredible design in the brain to help babies develop, to help them get out of the birth canal to help them find food.

Just like if you stroke a baby’s cheek, they turn towards it. That’s them looking for their mother’s breast. That’s how babies were developed so that they would be, they would be safe, they would get what they needed. That little hand grasp helps them develop hand strength in their hands that they need without them having to think about doing that.

There are a series of other ones that help babies start to talk, help them start to crawl. In particular, a lot of movement based ones. There is one reflex. You may have heard of it. We talk about it a lot around here. It’s called the moro reflex, MORO. You have seen your child do this as well, but when a baby hears a sudden noise that scares them, they will flail out, tip their head back, and then curl into a ball to protect themselves.

Okay. Again, this is like a protective measure. Guess what happens if that reflex is still firing? And to be clear, the reflex can be firing super strong, or it can be firing not so strong at all. And so you are getting some little side effects from it, but it’s not really obvious that this reflex is still firing.

So if that Morrow reflex in particular is still firing and that baby is all like, think about that baby is like reacting out of fear. If that is still firing in a 7-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 20-year-old, a 40-year-old, ’cause yes, this happened, can happen through adulthood. That child or individual is going to be more hypervigilant.

They are going to be more on guard. They are going to likely struggle with some type of anxiety. There’s a whole slew of signs that are connected to each reflex. And yes, there is some overlap because reflexes sometimes are working on similar skills. Same thing if that grasp reflex is retained, the one where they wrap their little hands around your finger handwriting is going to be affected, and if that baby is still.

Having, or that child is still having that reflex fire that’s called the rooting reflex, where they turn towards the food. When their cheek is touched, they’re likely going to struggle with eating more and different types of food. There’s going to be this connection, okay? The list goes on and on, and basically every reflex.

Affects all areas of development because it is the first thing that develops in a baby’s brain. While they are still in the womb. It is foundational to all development. Now, of course, not every child has a retained primitive reflex, but again, are uniquely wired kids. When we see these kind of behaviors and we’re like, why the heck do they have this?

Why are they doing this? Oh my gosh. They have a bunch of these signs. Under this one reflex. It is important to consider that, hey, they may have this reflex still firing. The challenge is that even amongst occupational therapists, which tend to be the discipline that work on this the most, is that we are not all trained in it.

I remember when I started my first job, I had an incredible first job in Washington DC working for a private practice with a woman that was semi-retired who had started the practice and she was a guru. For any of my OTs listening, she was an apprentice to Jean Ays, who is the founder of Sensory Integration Theory.

This is like a big deal in the OT world. It was a dream job. I learned so much. But I remember the first week of work that I started, well, I should say once we started the school year, you know, we were doing assessments on the kids, and I had this, I had this checklist in front of me, and it had all of these retained reflex positions to put kids in, see how did their body move when we put them in this positions.

Based on how their body move was pretty indicative of whether they still had one of these reflexes retained. But I had no idea. I had not learned that in grad school at all. And had I not worked in that job, I would not have gotten training in it with any of my jobs after it. She knew because of the intense work that she had done and uh, being on the forefront of cutting edge research, she knew.

Where treatment was headed. Unfortunately, while that was way back in 2004, not a whole lot has changed. There is definitely more understanding. It’s become a little bit more common language around these reflexes, but, but there is not enough clarity among professionals around. Checking for these and then what to do about them.

Okay, so I want you to understand that that is part of what is going on and part of why you don’t know this. Even though we have some really good research, we of course need more that are showing that when kids work on these reflexes, we see an increase in those executive functioning skills. We also talked about that in the last episode.

That we see growth happening. We see kids are more emotionally regulated, that they’re not as anxious, that they’re not moving into fight or flight as much. Their coordination may improve, and so you can target different reflexes, but what’s really cool is because of that overlap, often when you’re working on one reflex, you’re often simultaneously working on several others at the same time.

So that’s a bonus for sure. So let’s talk about what does that testing look like and is it essential? Well, as I mentioned, to do the official testing, you put your child in a certain position and you ask them to move their bodies in a certain way, and then you look for a response. Now sometimes kids, especially as they get older, they learn to compensate or they’re not good reporters on what happens.

For instance, uh, there is a reflex called the TLR that is an abbreviation. It stands for Tonic labyrinthine reflex. One of the testing positions that you can check for this is you have your child just stand up and look up at the ceiling. If they start to sway, it’s a very good indication that this reflex is retained, like very strong.

Often kids need to close their eyes and so close their eyes while they’re looking up at the ceiling. Was there any swaying. Well, kids often will override that. They know they can kind of like lock their knees, keep themselves from swaying. Sometimes if that reflex isn’t firing super strong, they might just feel a little dizzy, and so it does take a little bit of detective work and sometimes even checking a few times.

But here’s the other thing. You don’t have to do the testing. Also knowing that, oh wow, all of these signs under a reflex, my kid has, or they have a lot of them. It’s a sure bet to go ahead and try reflexive movements and activities because it’s just going to be helpful for them. The other thing is that when we do reflex activities to help integrate or make those reflexes go away, they’re super regulating.

So even if you aren’t integrating reflex, because it’s already. Regulated, it helps improve strength coordination. It regulates, they’re just all around beneficial. So it’s, it’s really a win-win. And so I don’t want you to get caught up or feel like, oh my gosh, I have to do the testing. You absolutely can.

If you’re listening and you’re in the connection hive. In our yearly bonus, we have detailed testing videos that show how to do that, or for my therapist, we have the Primitive Reflex Foundations course that show you how to do that. And so, especially for my therapist listening, it’s absolutely a good skill to have knowing how to do these testing positions and what responses.

To look for, but there are for sure times where I will test a kid and we don’t see the response, but they have so many signs underneath, and we’re still gonna work on those reflex activities. Now, I do want you to be aware that besides all OTs not knowing how to do this, even if they work in pediatrics, the other issue is that.

Some OTs are resistant to doing it because they can’t make a goal around it. And our goals should really be what guide our treatment. So for instance, your OT may have a goal for your child that is, will be able to write a sentence. While staying on the line of the paper with proper spacing or something that’s super, super, super generic.

There’s a lot more that goes into it than that. But let’s just say that that’s the goal. So some therapists do, do wanna just focus on the actual handwriting and the actual, uh, mechanics of writing and fine motor skills. All of that is so important and what we should be doing in our OT sessions. But. I think that we should be doing some of these reflex activities.

First. We kind of call those preparatory activities to help get the brain ready. We can do those in just a few minutes, and it’s helping to prepare the brain. Now the thing that’s tricky is even if you have an ot, and sometimes chiropractors work on this as well, some specialized chiropractors, sometimes PTs.

Some speech therapists we’ve even found come through who are learning how to do this, which is awesome because there are ones that can, again, that rooting reflex can affect speech and eating. So as we, as we learn, uh, how to do these activities, it’s so important that they’re done on a regular basis. And this doesn’t need to be forever, but the brain has to make a new pathway.

It needs. To make new connections and to do that, it needs to get strong. If a kid is just working on this once or twice a week, it’s not gonna be enough for that new pathway to get formed. Now I can already hear the alarm bells going off because I know that you’re just like me. I know that your life is full, and I know that you might be thinking, oh my gosh, I really wanna know if my kid has retained primitive reflexes, but I don’t have an ot.

Or I do and they’re not working on it. Or I do and they’re doing it, but I don’t know how I’m gonna fit this into my life. I promise you that. There are very doable ways to do this. Some of our members and the connection I have, ’cause this is one of the things that we work on a lot and we talk about a lot for parents that are interested.

We have ways to do this in a play-based way, which is really awesome for younger kids. And we just released this month an adult slash teen tween way to work on this and kind of a little exercise routine that is just a couple of minutes. Kids don’t even really need to know, eh, I’m working on retained primitive reflexes.

They can. I did tell my son that, uh, after he got his ADHD diagnosis, I really wanted to work on the executive functioning piece in particular, and so. We spent, uh, several months working on them a couple of different times, saw a great progress, but I know what it’s like to fit this in every single day, and we really started off with 30 seconds.

It is that doable. And so again, some of these things can be very play-based even when you’re batting a balloon back and forth with your kid. Believe it or not, you are working on certain retained primitive reflexes. If you have them do it while they’re on their knees, you’re even targeting more. So playing with your kid can be that simple.

And knowing that you’re doing some of these activities, it can also be really direct and specific. Like, Hey, we’re gonna do these exercises again with a lot of kids that don’t use that word. Just depends on their age and how they’re vibing. But we’re gonna, we’re gonna do these together. And it’s gonna be two minutes, and we’re gonna, we’re gonna pull our body into a circle, and then we’re gonna pop out.

That’s a great one for tomorrow. Now there gets to be some specifics. If you really want to hit it hard, like we’re gonna hold it for this many seconds. We’re gonna stretch, we’re gonna tilt our head this way, but it can be super duper simple to start working on these reflexes. And when you do. It really has a massive ripple effect across development.

Some of our families in the connection hive have seen really significant progress decreases in meltdowns on a daily basis. That is life changing, kids being able to do new experiences that they could not tolerate before because of their sensory sensitivities or because they couldn’t. Kind of track all of the steps that they needed to do to be able to do that activity, but now they are doing with my own son.

I saw a huge boost in executive functioning skills and just kind of the way he was maturing and communicating. It was really incredible to see. This month I’m recommitting to working on them again, uh, with another one of my kids because emotional regulation is really tricky. And that’s actually our focus in the hive this month because it is so important and it is so important to me that you know that this is doable.

That you don’t have to be an expert, that it doesn’t have to be a cumbersome thing or another thing on your to-do list. So we’re doing a 30 day challenge in the hive because I believe in that and I know what it’s like to live this daily. So I just want you to know if you’re curious, if you’re thinking about these, then.

It is worth entertaining. I promise you that you are capable. It’s just finding the right little step for you. So what is that step now as we wrap up this episode, I want you to just think about the challenges specifically in your kids’ life. What are the really hard points? Is it possible based on what you’ve heard here today, that they may have some retained primitive reflexes?

Just thinking through that awesome first step, I would love to hear how this helped or is helping. So let us know if you have questions. Reach out, reply to our email, get on our list. We’re here for you if you wanna take those next steps, the link for the connection Hive is in the show notes. We walk you through one little step at a time.

I am so grateful that you are here and that we spent this time together. This is a huge piece of the puzzle and just listening is a step, I promise you. So, you’re doing great. I’m gonna be back in the next episode and we’re gonna dive into sensory. Really the different sensory challenges we see and so that you can understand those and what’s really going on with your child so that you can support them in the best way possible.

Alright, friends, I’ll see you next time. Okay.