Saturday, April 21, 2012

Primitive reflexes getting in the way

I've been concerned about my son's primitive (or infantile) reflexes for some time now. In the past, I had searched the internet to find out what are primitive reflexes, the kinds of therapies that work on it and if there are such therapists here. Problem is that there are no specialised therapist in KL that work on inhibiting those reflexes, or at least, none that I've come across.

His CST therapist had attended a workshop on Primitive Reflexes recently in Kuching, conducted by an Australian therapist and realises that my son has a lot of them retained, not just a few.

Lately, I've been very very concerned about my son's difficulty on several essential school skills like focusing, listening skills, writing, handwriting, comprehension, reading. I've been getting feedback from his teacher that he has difficulty in those areas (except for reading - he reads at a level above his age group, but he isn't progressing at the same rate as he was in the past). I've tried ways to help him but am not seeing the progress that I expected.

I raised the question to his CST therapist on whether working to inhibit those reflexes would mean progress not just in his motor development, but in those areas I'm very concerned about. Her sms reply was "Yes yes yes!"

So I'm back on the internet again searching and trying to understand more about primitive reflexes beyond mere descriptions of what it is. I wanted to know why it was important that those reflexes are inhibited because I failed to see the link.

I came across this short video that I thought was pretty good even though it's only a very brief overview.



If the embedded video doesnt work, click on this link to the YouTube video.
http://youtu.be/oLBWHyhW1gk