Cathy Meehan: Hello everyone and welcome to part two of our three part series on reflexes with Dr. Laura Hanson. So in part one, we covered withdrawal reflexes. Those are the earliest proactive patterns that begin wiring the nervous system in pregnancy. And today we’re gonna talk about primitive reflexes. These help with birth, feeding, bonding and early movement. These ones are meant to integrate in the first year of life as the brain’s maturing. But what happens when they don’t? Those might show up later as anxiety, sensory issues, learning struggles, or even poor coordination. So let’s break it down with our special guest, Dr. Laura Hanson.
Cathy Meehan: Hey everyone and welcome to part two of our three-part series on reflexes. And we have back again, Dr. Laura Hanson, who I absolutely love your mind. I love how you educate. And we talked about withdrawal reflexes in part one. So if you haven’t seen that yet, people go back to that episode. But right now we are going to talk about the second one, which is primitive reflexes. So let’s talk about, you know, this little neurodevelopment in our little bitty babies and our little children and how that influences the rest of their life. So take it away, Dr. Hanson.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Well, thank you so much for having me back. I love to talk about reflexes. So just a very brief recap. This is a sequence of events. And I really believe, too, over time, we will even discover more reflexes that are actually available to that central nervous system. But the majority of them have a tendency to be put into these categories.
Cathy Meehan: Yes.
Dr. Laura Hanson: So the withdrawal reflexes are the earliest defense system. So the first thing that we learn is how are we gonna survive. And that is going to influence how we see ourself in the world. Do we see ourself safe in the world? And it’s not like somebody’s doing something to the child. It’s literally their own little internal compass. But then after that gets laid down, My favorite word, and I use it all the time, is transition. That’s a really big word for the central nervous system. So you go from defense mode into, I just want to be with everything. I just want to go towards everything. So if you did listen to the first one, we talked about how that withdrawal reflex is part of how the inhibitory pathways in the brain get built. So you either go towards or you pull away. You have to learn everything that you are able to do. You have to learn it somewhere. So that’s what we’re unfolding for you is where these things come from. So this transition, we’re now gonna learn how to go towards something.
Cathy Meehan: Right.
Dr. Laura Hanson: and be part of it in order to make that part of our central nervous system. Now, the three reflexes that I want to highlight in this little segment are Moro reflex, ATNR asymmetrical tonic neck reflex, and tonic labyrinthine reflex. These are three that typically are very connected.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: And typically, if you have one that didn’t integrate, all three of them didn’t integrate. So one of the things that I’ve noticed in 30 years of practice is that is a very true element of how I was taught. And sometimes people will tell me that, well, we got that one resolved and we’re still working on this. And sometimes we have to understand how they overlap.
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Dr. Laura Hanson: And there’s just no way for one reflex to be able to disappear when their timelines for coming on board and their timelines for integration are very connected. So it’s important to really kind of get that background. But let’s start with the word transition. So you go from being in the womb
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Dr. Laura Hanson: to the outside world. That’s a transition. So it’s not just, it’s a big transition. You go from being a newborn to laying on the floor. You go through a transition on how to be a toddler, how to learn how to be potty trained, how to go to kindergarten, how to be apart from your mom longer and longer to being school age.
Cathy Meehan: Big transition. Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: to adapting to an environment, to transition to college, to adult life, to a career, to buying a home. Transition is through our whole lives. So it’s a big one and it’s connected to either that if you go forward at that time, you’ll go into Moro, ATNR, palmar, all of that.
Cathy Meehan: Wow, and those are big milestones.
Dr. Laura Hanson: or you could get locked up in fear paralysis, meaning that there’s so much stress that’s going on, you don’t know how to go forward. And so we can have kids that are kind of stuck in that transition. And so that’s an element of the reflex world, okay?
Cathy Meehan: Mmm. Mmm.
Cathy Meehan: Wow. just keep thinking of all the problems you hear now with young teens and kids and anxiety and depression and they can’t go forward. mean, kids that they don’t want to get their driver’s license at 16. I mean, that one, I’m like, how do you have a child that doesn’t want to get their driver’s license at 16? it’s like, wow, it’s almost like you’re connecting dots that I’m thinking of some of my friends’ kids and grandkids and
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yes.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yes!
Dr. Laura Hanson: All right, next.
Cathy Meehan: Wow, Dr. Laura Hanson. Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: And remember what we said in the first one. They don’t know how to tell you that that’s what’s going on inside because their library got stuck. They only have what they have, right? And that’s why looking at it, looking at brain maps, looking at stress response tests, all those pieces.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah. Wow, this is fascinating.
Dr. Laura Hanson: are so powerful when it comes to helping somebody understand what they’re going through. I mean, I’ve even seen it in adults where I go, you know, how long you been struggling with this? Well, I can remember it ever since I was a kid. So this can get a person really stuck in life. So let’s realize that we can have fear paralysis.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: But then let’s focus on Moro. Moro is the first primitive one, and it is going to set up in central nervous system, arousal, CO2/O2 reflex, and the sympathetic nervous system. So now if you know what sympathetics are, fight or flight, now you can understand the timeline that if I didn’t go forward, I could get stuck there and stay in fear paralysis because
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: That’s what’s coming up. And if you can’t handle that, you get stuck. Okay, so arousal means will that baby wake up rhythmically and feed? Will the baby wake up? So there could be a kid with a little heart monitor. There could be a little kid that’s more of, you know, sleeping way too much and they’re not getting that signal.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Unfortunately, the scariest one is SIDS, sudden infant death. So a child that this system is under aroused, they’re not getting the message that you’ve got more CO2 than O2. And if I have more CO2, then I don’t have enough oxygen. So to put that in the right framework,
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Let’s look at what this reflex actually looks like. So we’re a baby, we’re tight in flexion. If I am going to have a Moro reflex, I go, I take a deep breath and I open myself up so that oxygen can rapidly go inside. So if that mechanism is under aroused, then the CO2 climbs.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: And unfortunately that baby will drift off into a deep sleep and unfortunately they won’t make it.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah. And I’m going to put in a little piece right here that I did an episode with Nick Holcher from the McCullough Foundation and talking about the P450 enzyme, which helps break down toxins in the liver for infants. And our talk was about how it’s not developed in infants, which disrupts their respiratory, so which it all goes into that. So just.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Mmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: you
Cathy Meehan: that ties in there. I mean, it’s like, SIDS happens people, but there’s reasons why SIDS happens. So do your research, but yes, continue on that.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yeah, well, I love that you brought that up because that may be a very medical approach, just looking at the enzyme in the liver. And I don’t mean medical bad. I like to just think of it as chemistry, chemistry.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Right, right, that there actually is a mechanism of action that’s disrupting the sleep, that’s screwing up their oxygen load, yet you have to watch out because if they can’t wake up, then it’s all tied together, is basically what I wanted to say, was it’s all tied together. it’s, SIDS, yes, it’s a breathing issue. The baby stops breathing, but there’s,
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yes, yes.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yes! Thank you. That’s where I was going too, is that it’s tied together.
Cathy Meehan: there’s so many things, it’s their reflexes and it’s actually the mechanisms of action in their bodies that’s causing that.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Well, and that’s a really important part. It’s the mechanisms that then are sending the signal to the reflex. It’s literally, that’s the chain reaction that is going on and why we can learn about these chain reactions and understand what has happened in this situation and then process that.
Cathy Meehan: Right, right, exactly.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: say, wow, isn’t it important for us to check primitive reflexes and make sure that they’re actually working? That’s our diagnostic into the system to get like a little peephole, hey, how are you doing in there? Because you can’t ask them, right? As babies, you can’t ask them, hey, how you doing in there? So that’s
Cathy Meehan: Yes, yes.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Right, right, right. Well, it’s just like for the people that say sudden infant death syndrome, we don’t know what causes it. Well, well, we do. So anyway, well, we do. And our reflexes are part of that.
Dr. Laura Hanson: well, we do. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes, we do. And then just just the sympathetic nervous system. I mean, that alone, if I have a reflex that is literally charging up and I’m counting on it. Now, here’s another piece I can tie to the respiratory system. When you inhale,
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: That is your sympathetic nervous system. When you exhale, it’s your parasympathetic nervous system. So this is actually to the beginning of heart rate variability. And what heart rate variability is, you have a breath. So you breathe in, you breathe out. And then there’s a certain number of heartbeats in that breath. And then if you watch,
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: train of them, you’re literally seeing what’s the variable of how many heartbeats do you have in each of those breaths. So somebody that may be breath one, let’s say they had 16. Let’s say breath two, they had 12. Breath three, they had 14. That’s good variance. That means that you have flexibility in your system. Whereas if you have somebody whose heart is more like a metronome, you’re going to have 888, that they have no flexibility and they have much higher cardiovascular stress on them. And children are demonstrating this today. So that’s why I love when you brought up, you know, what’s going on?
Cathy Meehan: Hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: with so many of the kids long-term. If we don’t check this stuff, you don’t know, right? So, Moro is all about, do I have arousal? Meaning, can I pay attention? I like to also connect the dot to ADHD and ADD, to arousal. So, arousal.
Cathy Meehan: Right. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Over arousal would be ADHD. You can’t, you just can’t really focus in on anything. You’re just all over the place. Yeah. And ADD under arousal, you’re just like in dreamland all the time. Okay. So think of arousal, not only from the newborn’s perspective, waking up to feed rhythmically about every two and a half to three hours, but long-term,
Cathy Meehan: all over.
Dr. Laura Hanson: What does the person, what can the person do? You know, in any given situation, can they rise to the occasion or do they like flip out or do they just don’t even come? I can’t do it, I can’t do it. That’ll kind of put that in perspective how far reaching you can look at a word and see where it could.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: impact somebody and especially with kids, how does it impact their learning? Right? And since COVID and everybody wearing masks, when that first was going on, we do a lot of aerobic activity in our office. And I wanted to keep that going. But I literally, because we will measure, we’ll measure their pulse and their oxygen saturation rate.
Cathy Meehan: Exactly.
Dr. Laura Hanson: And these kids were hovering at 95. And everybody should be at 99 for oxygen saturation. So we were literally dampening these children by putting these masks on them and not letting them breathe. Now, think about how we’re building these reflexes. If that became…
Dr. Laura Hanson: the influence to the system, we could drive that system right back into those reflexes because their library is not very extensive. They’re doing what everybody’s telling them to do. They only have one way to go and that’s back into the brainstem.
Cathy Meehan: That breaks my heart that breaks my heart that they put kids in masks. Yeah, I know. No, we actually at our office We wrote mask exemptions like you wouldn’t believe and we would actually bring You know people that wanted a mask exemption. Sorry, they would come into the office we had a walking treadmill and We also had a device to measure co2 behind the mask
Dr. Laura Hanson: I know.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Mmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Great.
Cathy Meehan: and we would show, you know, heart rate, oxygen saturation. And what was interesting is sometimes to the heart rate would be going up, but that’s to increase the blood pumping to get the oxygen saturation to keep that up. And it was just it was just really crazy. But I mean, we wrote mask exemptions left and right because everybody should have been
Dr. Laura Hanson: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Wow, that’s great.
Cathy Meehan: have a mask exemption. Yeah, so we, Jim, my husband actually wrote an ebook on why masks make us sick and we shouldn’t be wearing masks. that’s, but yeah, that I never want to go back to those days, everybody. Never. yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: That’s great that you can do that.
Dr. Laura Hanson: That’s wonderful. No, but there’s a generation that’s really been impacted. these are kids that are about like four and a half, five and under because of everything that’s going on. And we think about like the explosion of autism. We know there’s…
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Every kid typically gets labeled some kind of attention issue. And now we’ve got a generation of kids that have been truly influenced by stress. And it has, it’s made an impact. I have more toddlers in my practice today than I’ve had in years. And these are kids four and a half and younger. And
Cathy Meehan: Mmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: They, some of them have a really hard time learning. A lot of them have trouble with their vestibular system. And all of them are just really, we could use a simple word like anxious, but I would tell you they’re all back in their Moro reflexes where they are. They have heightened responses. They’re not breathing correctly. And they’re always in a sympathetic mode.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: That hurts me. So what I want to know is how do we fix it? But then I know that we have some other primitive reflexes to go through too. Do you want to go through the different reflexes?
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yeah, but it has, it’s impacted.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yeah, let’s go through these other two and then I can give just a couple little ideas of what we can do to really help all three of these. So we mentioned in the first part about asymmetrical tonic neck reflex. That’s the baby turns its head, the arm and leg go out reflexively. This is where we’re setting up the lateral columns in the brain that will eventually communicate to each other.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: all the different functions that we do. Okay? So this one has to integrate before the child crawls. Imagine what it would look like if I’m still split down the middle. What would it look like to try to crawl? One of the things that your audience of parents may see is that they may only drag one side of their body versus being on Hands and knees. Any crawl that isn’t a typical crawl is a red flag. So if I’m hands down, but I’m walking on my feet, the bear crawl. Now the army crawl comes first. That’s actually the word crawling is army crawl. Creeping is up on your hands and your knees, but most people just call it crawling. Any atypical posture of crawling is a red flag. especially the one where the person is shuffling on their bottom. And there was a diaper commercial a while ago that the little girl was a bottom shuffler. Now, she was smiling. So it’s not that this is going to be reflexive in some kind of pain, but why couldn’t she put her hands down and her knees down? What do you have to be able to do to do that? You have to be able to pick up your head. So that’s gonna lead us to head righting, which is part of postural reflexes for the third part. But it’s a classic thing. If there’s any interruption in a birth of the baby going through the birth canal, the little bones in the back,
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: can get locked up so easily and the child cannot lift their head without pain. So what do they do? They just avoid. So anytime a child is supposed to be doing something and they avoid it or it looks atypical, that’s a red flag. Again, they can’t tell you that and it’s not about pain, okay? So this one is really gonna mess up how the eyeballs work.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: And remember we talked about the withdrawal reflexes and how that influences peripheral vision, 94 % of your vision. Okay. If you’re still split down the middle, lots of times, we call it a hemi-neglect. I’ll have the child write the alphabet and I’ll tell them specifically, go across the page. And so they’ll only do like half a page. So if you were to fold the paper, you should see,
Cathy Meehan: for a field, yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: equal alphabet on both sides. When it’s all crammed in on the left side of the page, they’re not paying attention to the right side of the world because your eyeballs work like this. So when you go from left to right, you are using a part of a nerve on the left and a part of the nerve on the right. And so where do they interchange is at the midline. So if I can’t get past the midline with ease, red flag. If a child can’t work their body in the midline, red flag. If a kid is avoiding anything that they have to use one side of their body one way and the other side of their body another way, red flag. That’s riding a bicycle. Now, riding a bicycle is also another good one to talk about with TLR, but when you are pedaling, you push forward, you pull back. So one side is working one way and the other side is working the other way. You’re interchanging information through the midline. So what could we do that would work on not only midline crossing, but it would also even help the Moro reflex? It’s midline activity, like a dead bug or quadruped. So let’s say a dead bug, I’m on my back. I’m gonna put my right arm down, my left leg down. I’m gonna bring them back up and then I’m gonna do the other side. Those are wonderful brain activities. But if your child can’t do it with ease, you don’t wanna sit there and have headbutting going on. No, that’s not the right hand. That’s not the right foot. You reach out. That’s one of the things that I love to do is to talk to parents. to help them understand, okay, here’s some ideas of things that you can do, more personal to the individual. Now, TLR is tonic labyrinthine. This one splits you right across the middle of your torso. So when the baby head goes forward, whole baby will go into flexion. When the baby’s head goes backwards, the baby will go into extension. So this is forward.
Dr. Laura Hanson: and backwards, okay, where ATNR splitting you into two halves, right? So these are the kids that walk on their tippy toes. This is gravitational security. So I have to be able to navigate my body in space and I have to feel like I’m safe. So a child that walks on their toes, they’re afraid.
Cathy Meehan: Hmm, Okay.
Dr. Laura Hanson: If I put my heels down, I think I’m going backwards. Yep.
Cathy Meehan: Going backwards. Very interesting, because you see lots of kids tiptoeing. Yes. Yeah. Okay.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Lots of kids are up on their toes, absolutely. So again, all of these reflexes have a particular role. Gravitational security is absolutely essential for that third part of the reflexes to function. You have to feel okay being on top of planet Earth. We are all on top of planet Earth.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: And there is a force that we have to continuously fight to know where we are. And our eyes go directly to the horizon so that we know exactly where we are. So again, this is not just about kids. What happens to the elderly when this is their idea of standing straight up? I am, I’m standing straight up. Pick up your head and…
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: They have no flexibility. And what happens to the elderly a lot is they fall. Okay? Think of a newborn baby. If I were to take my hands and put them underneath a newborn baby’s little armpits and put their foot on top of a hard surface, they’d put their foot down and they’d immediately come up. That stepping reflex is hardwired into baby human.
Cathy Meehan: And they’ll fall.
Dr. Laura Hanson: But if I move my hands away, what happens to the baby?
Cathy Meehan: I think the baby’s gonna fall down.
Dr. Laura Hanson: That’s right. And how long does it take us to learn how to stand up? A year. I mean, think about all the things that are going on and how long it… Yes. I mean, I just think it’s one of the most fascinating things in the world. And if you really look at it, you can actually see where a child is struggling. A kid that doesn’t want to ride a bike,
Cathy Meehan: Yeah. Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah, it’s miraculous actually when you think about it.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: They’re scared they’re going to fall. And they probably did. Somebody probably got them out there and they didn’t think anything of it. Great. We got this thing now. And then they fell because they had no idea what they were doing. And then they never wanted to get back up on the bike again. Those little toddlers that I was mentioning, they cannot go backwards to save their life. And that is the posterior part of your vestibular system.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah, so true.
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Dr. Laura Hanson: They go back and it’s, I mean, they literally have a Moro right then and there. But then watching them gain that control, that confidence. So one little patient, I’ve had her for a little while, her eyes were turned in. And before the mom met me, they had surgery to cut them. If anybody is going through that, please reach out. Don’t cut immediately.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: When you cut, you can’t glue it back together, okay? They cut the eye muscles. This is really for cosmetic purposes. It’s not for function. So a child whose eyes are turned in, that’s what the brain is seeing. And if you don’t change the whole configuration, it will literally, even after you’ve cut them, they’ll go back in, because you didn’t change the brain. So when she came, she was very stressed out.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: Mmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: She was walking on her toes. She couldn’t go backwards. Anything that I tried to get her to do on any unstable surface just rattled her. Well, I sent her to one of my favorite eye doctors in Chicago who’s fabulous. You should definitely interview her too. You’d like her. I will get you connected. She does marvelous work. It’s not like any eye doctor you’ve ever gone to. My glasses are even from her.
Cathy Meehan: Okay, yeah, connect us.
Cathy Meehan: Hmm
Dr. Laura Hanson: But we got her the right lens to communicate to her brain. And then all the work that we’re doing, she goes backwards. She’s three. She walks on the treadmill for 10 minutes with ankle weights. And then she’ll turn around and walk backwards without holding on. Because when you walk backwards, your brain goes, what?
Cathy Meehan: that’s great.
Dr. Laura Hanson: You really get your brain’s attention because it thinks you should go forward. So when we get to that part where we’re trying to tell people what should you do, it really is what’s going on for your person? What is it that they need so that we can push that domino back into place? And if you do that, if you get these things going,
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Sometimes you don’t have to go through all the reflexes. If you go back far enough where the original domino got pushed out and put it back in, the rest of them go, hey, that’s the information I was looking for. Now I can go forward.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so all of these primitive reflexes, how do I as a young mom with a young child make sure that they stay where they’re supposed to be and we are doing everything correctly so that we don’t have any disruptions in their reflexes?
Dr. Laura Hanson: Well, you want to know what your child should be doing and when. So I have an app called, everything about me is called Connect My Brain. It’s a free app and it will literally tell you what your baby should be doing. If you’re interested, you can also write to me and I will send you, or we could even put it up on your post, whatever. We have Dr. Hanson’s guide to developmental milestones. It’s watching those milestones.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: and making sure that your child is hitting them when they’re supposed to. That is the key. So you wanna know when that’s supposed to happen.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Yes, yes.
Cathy Meehan: Absolutely. Yeah, and we’ll definitely make sure that we connect our people with your Connect My Brain and everything, but you talked about milestones, and I just have to hit on one of the podcasts that you and I did together. We talked about the CDC changing milestones, so do you change your milestones or do they stay consistent?
Dr. Laura Hanson: Hmm
Dr. Laura Hanson: No, I didn’t change my, and in fact, that’s what made me, I got so fired up when they did that. That is what made me build the app. And I’m gonna tell you, that was a very expensive project, because one developer went MIA and I had to redo the whole thing. But it’s, to me, it is what God has gifted me to make sure people know about. These do not change.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: Good. Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Dr. Laura Hanson: They only change if you want to normalize developmental delay. And that’s our struggle right now. That is our struggle. Too many kids are just falling into cracks and it impacts. And if somebody doesn’t know what they’re looking at, I hear these stories all the time. And sometimes it’s about milestones and sometimes it’s about other things. Like maybe one day we’ll talk about strep infections, but…
Cathy Meehan: yes, yes, yes, yes. Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: You know, people tell me all the time, why didn’t anybody tell me this when he was little?
Cathy Meehan: Right. Well, yeah. And I’ll just throw in my personal experience with my, you know, five kids who, while growing up, had eczema, asthma, pneumonia, gut issues. Macy didn’t talk until after she was three years old. I mean, all of these things where the pediatrician said those things were normal. They weren’t. Now I know better. I mean,
Dr. Laura Hanson: Right.
Cathy Meehan: You know better, you do better, and you help educate other people. That’s the path I’m on. But it wasn’t normal. It was common because all the… It was common. It was common. You see that since the 1990s, the rise in chronic disease among children has gone from 12 % to well over 50%. And so these pediatricians, which…
Dr. Laura Hanson: That’s right. That’s what we’re doing.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yes, yes, yes.
Cathy Meehan: Here’s my little rant again. Not all pediatricians are very smart. They’re not critically thinking. So that’s my deal on milestones. Do not change and they do not regress. They do not regress and they do not progress. So there we go. So we just really want to make sure that our children are reaching milestones consistently. And if they’re not,
Dr. Laura Hanson: No!
Cathy Meehan: that’s when there may be an issue and we need to figure out what’s going on. Absolutely. And yeah, I just keep thinking about all my kids growing up. I was like, what did I do?
Dr. Laura Hanson: Exactly right. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Well, we do know better today and thank goodness for these platforms so that parents that really want to get information, they’ve got resources to do it.
Cathy Meehan: Yes.
Cathy Meehan: Yes, yeah, yeah, that’s our goal. That’s our goal. So we went through the primitive reflexes. Obviously, its influence on the brain and the development of the child and what we can do as parents. Do you have some final words to wrap this segment up?
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yes, let’s give like a real pearl on each one quickly. So, Moro, attention issues, fearful issues, just kind of in a panic mode all the time, a lot of emotional unrest, I would really put into that Moro category. ATNR, their handwriting is affected.
Cathy Meehan: Okay, would love that.
Cathy Meehan: Mmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: their vision is affected. You may even see them when they’re writing that they have to turn and lay their head down in order to write something. So it has a posture to it as well. TLR, I’d really focus on kids that are walking on their toes. They’re not comfortable in any kind of unstable balance.
Cathy Meehan: Interesting.
Dr. Laura Hanson: They avoid a lot of things that would make them need balance in order to do that. Think about those pieces and just remember those are only three of the primitive reflexes. There are several.
Cathy Meehan: Okay, those are the main ones. Well, that was a wealth of information, Dr. Hanson. I loved it, loved it. And of course, people can find you at ConnectMyBrain.com. So people, please check out her site. She is a wealth of information. And we will have part three coming out soon. And so we’ll talk about some more reflexes and that’s going to be our
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yes, ma’am.
Cathy Meehan: postural reflexes. So until then, everyone just stay educated, be the scientist of your own health. Check out episode one, part one. This is part two and we’ll see you for part three. Thank you.
Dr. Laura Hanson: That’s right.
Dr. Laura Hanson: I like that.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Thank you.
