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Happy May, everybody. Hopefully, you’re enjoying a beautiful spring. Elizabeth is ready to rock and roll out there and spend some time, tummy time on the grass and all those natural elements. But today, we’re going to talk about 1, 2, buckle my shoe, 3, I can do it, 3, 4, out the door, 5, 6, pick up some sticks, and oh my gosh, my brain’s on overload.
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So what are we going to talk about? We’re going to talk about dyspraxia. But first of all, I want to thank ChiroSecure for giving us this opportunity to share this information with you and the world on the benefits of chiropractic neurodevelopment. Creating an optimal life for everybody. So Elizabeth is going to take a nap while we hang out.
How’s that? Okay. Dyspraxia. What is it really? It’s something that a lot of parents come into because their child has a label of dyspraxia and they’re stressed out and one of the biggest things we can do is help parents understand their child. When they understand what their child’s brain is or is not doing it’s easier for them to connect and bond with that child.
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So dyspraxia, it is a sophisticated word for another label that I cannot stop, called Developmental Coordination Disorder. Long story short, The brain isn’t talking to the body and the body’s not sending the right signals to the brain. And there is this disconnect between the brain and the body and the brain.
And what does that show up like? This is where it’s it’s key to understand what a child or a person’s manifestations, what their neuroexpressive behavior is telling you about the integrity of their nervous system, about their brain function. So in other words, they cannot carry out.
motor skills very effectively because their brain isn’t getting the Proper 4 1 1 from their body parts, from their, the muscles, the joints. Where is my arm, my right arm in space compared to my left eye or my left hand? How do I want to move both hands together? Where do I put them so they can move together to catch a ball?
Okay, all those things and we need to have that computer information that to the brain Come in link up fast and furious so we can do that proper motor response one thing with dyslexia the kind of pinhole that I want to focus on today is carrying out multiple motor steps. That’s a big thing with this practice dyspraxia is being able to Carry out a sequence of motor events, because think about how frustrating that would be, is if you don’t even have the connection between the body and the brain to reach and pick up a pen or a pencil and hold it and write something, let alone one, two, buckle my shoe, three, four, shut the front door, five, six, go pick up sticks, multiple commands, that require multiple motor stops in a sequence.
You’ve lost the kiddo at 1 2. Okay. So how does this look for parents? This is an analogy I often ask parents when I’m in consult with them when they’re, when we meet. I like to meet with the parents, the caregivers, before I meet with the child because I want to make sure I’m the right fit for them and they’re the right fit for me.
That we can, I don’t want to just be another therapy that doesn’t work, okay? But chiropractic pretty much works every time, okay? You might not see it right off the bat, because the body’s innate intelligence is going to prioritize what what symptoms or things go away or change first. But there’s an underlying magic that happens.
when we create this connection between the brain and the body brain. So I sit with the parents and one of the things I’ll ask them and I’ll look at their intake paperwork first, but I’ll ask them. So does Samantha have troubles or do you mom or dad get frustrated when you tell her, okay, I want you to go brush your teeth.
Get dressed feed the dog, grab your lunch pail, grab your coat and meet me at the car. Because we got to go. Time’s clicking. We got to get to school in five minutes and we’re already late. And then Samantha shows up at the car and she doesn’t have her lunch pail. You’re like, did you feed the dog like I asked you to?
Where’s your coat? And this happens over and over again. And they think the child is misbehaving or, not listening, they would just pay better attention and listen better. Okay. We do this every day. It’s these multiple tasks. Just think about it. And I tell the parents this, just think about this.
Think about how many steps it takes to get dressed, right? You put your undergarment on, you put your pants, take, lift one leg and put it through one pant leg, lift your other leg, put it through the other pant leg. You gotta pull them up, you gotta zip it up, you gotta button your jeans, you gotta put one sock on, then the other sock, the other shoe, try to, how many steps are involved in tying a shoe?
Why do you think we have more shoes nowadays that don’t tie, they just have the Velcro? It’s because more and more kiddos are struggling with these tasks. A couple things we can do to help parents ease their frustration and stress load. Because when they’re stressed out, those little fiddle farts pick up on the caregiver’s stress and their stress goes up too.
We know that in any relationship we’re in, right? When we’re when we’re a little tired and a little bit more under stress and our partner or somebody in our families ramped up, our threshold goes up as well, right? It’s a common denominator. How can we help parents, A, Understand what’s going on in their little fiddle fart’s brain.
B, help decrease their stress load. And C, maybe make things more effective in this overall functioning scheme. Alright? One thing you can do is, depending on the age and the functional capacity of the little fiddle fart. We’re going to just focus on kind of the morning routine because that’s a big one that, that, that sets the day off into a potential spiral of negativity, right?
A frustration on both parties, on the child’s party and the parent’s party. And then it displays into work for the parent and school for the child. So we’re talking about just morning routines and getting ready for the morning. Depending on their functional capacity, you can either use written words or pictures or both.
All right. And have this for the kiddo, wherever they’re going to see it, whether it’s taped to their bedroom door, to their mirror, where they brush their teeth, where to their what, whatever they’re going to see when they wake up in the morning. Okay. And they get a routine down and I just made a little chart to example, right?
So I have a picture of a bed and I have the words make bed. Then the next step would be go and eat breakfast. Okay. Then after that, brush your teeth and get dressed. If we break things down into little tidbits for them, they can handle it. It’s one step at a time. Think about yourself. When you know that you’ve got all these things on your list to do, okay?
All these things on your checklist to do, your to do list, and you’re thinking about all of them and you just become so overwhelmed that you go into shut down mode. That’s what’s happening with these kiddos. All right, they don’t know how to do the, all these steps are too much. Another activity that’s very common is cleaning their room.
So you can make this little chart. Okay. And so they can either read the words and or visually see the task and they just do one step at a time. And within those steps though, there’s a lot of sub steps, a lot of sub motor steps. So you mom or dad might have to be satisfied with them nailing down one activity at a time, meaning they get really good at making the bed.
Okay. And they get that motor memory, that muscle memory. They can do that really good. And that might take several weeks or several months. And then they get, that becomes automated and then they can get the next step commanded. Now, the other thing you can do is on these little charts, you can make them, you can make a, across the top, you can make a little checklist for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Okay. So make an activity chart and then they can check off Monday I made the bed, Tuesday I went and ate breakfast. Okay. And they can see their progress. as the months, as the days, weeks, months go on, okay? And then maybe they get a little golden star or sticker or something at the end of the week when they’ve attempted at least Those activities.
And once that chart gets filled up over a month’s time, there is some kind of play date with another friend, a date with mom or dad, whatever that is, to acknowledge that they’ve made these strides and that they’ve even made progress. Attempted to make these strides because we don’t want to make everything about a pass or fail kind of thing.
We want to see, look at how good you did. See that progress. Okay. Because they like the progress. They like to see, they like to know when they can do things better. Now from, so that’s how from the parents end, how we can simplify things and simplify steps. for these kiddos at home so that they can be more successful.
Now let’s flip that around. And in our practices, what do we need to do? We need to understand that our visual commands, showing them steps is going to be better than telling them steps. Don’t expect them to do it. So don’t say I want you to jump on my adjusting bench and lay on your belly and put your arms to the side off it.
They can’t do that. Okay get on your, you get on the, on your bench and you show them what position you want them to be in. If you’re asking them, if you want to check motor milestones and you’re asking them to march or cross crawl or do any of those things, you do it with them and you show them. I often start them out.
Let’s say we’re doing marching. I’m going to say, we’re going to march. Okay. And I will show them and then I’ll go, Oh, I’m old and tired. I’m going to stop it. You keep going. And I want to see if they can keep doing the motor action. Okay. So vision, showing them things, giving them examples is going to be key for you.
Don’t expect them to understand. Your motor commands, help them lay side posture on the pelvic bench. If they’re in that, if they’re old enough that you’re doing that, whatever positions you want to get them in. Another frustration, this is really a small thing, but I see it on social media. I’ve had people say, how do you manage this?
We have a quite fun, extensive play area and in kids area for in our waiting room. How do you get kids to pick up? Just like cleaning the room thing. Okay. The more stuff you have out there and the more steps and things that they have to pick up, it might become more frustrating for them. So I’m seeing lately on social media, a lot of docs saying, I am tired of cleaning my kid’s room and in the office, the kid’s waiting area.
I’m tired of books and toys being strewn all over and nobody’s picking them up and stuff. Yes, you may have a situation where they’re not well, Children, but you might also have situations where these kiddos really have a hard time doing those things that require multiple steps to pick up one block after the other and put them in this bin and puzzle pieces and whatever that sort of thing right there.
And don’t be afraid to set rules within your. in your office structure about what is expected of families and kiddos when they come in. Likewise, have your parents set rules and structure for their kiddos. Kiddos want rules and structures, but these kiddos are also so incredibly smart, they’ll know when they can start bulldozing and pushing boundaries.
So just because they might have special needs doesn’t mean they really don’t understand how to follow boundaries for the most part. So hopefully that helps out on dyspraxia. We’re going to cover more in detail about different things related to dyspraxia, dyslexia, other things like that, and the power of chiropractic.
And here the power of chiropractic is if we have vertebral subluxations, And it’s disconnecting the information, the motor information, motor sensory information that’s coming up to the brain. Okay. And letting the brain compute, what do I need to do to move this arm properly, or that arm properly, or this leg properly?
Then that there’s that disconnect. So the power of chiropractic is is clearing the pathway from, especially from the spine and the stabilizing muscles and so forth around the spine and that nervous system. So that brain can pick up on cues and really really process that somatosensory information coming into the brain.
So there you have it. We’re going to buzz out right now. Elizabeth, what you got to say? Happy rest of May. And we will see you in June. ChiroSecure, we appreciate you so much. Patrick’s show to the children was brought to you by ChiroSecure.
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