Retained reflexes.

[mummyloveslucy]

Hi, my 6 year old daughter has always had problems with her speech and language and even now it sounds very distorted and 10% of the time, my DH and I can't understand what she's said. She has been diognosed with a developmental delay of approx 2 years but the results were very spikey. She has poor baldder and bowel control, is easily scared by noise etc.

I took her to a private therapist who has found her to have retained reflexes. The morrow and the rooting reflex. I'd never heard of retained reflexes before, but it seems that these reflexes could be the cause of all her difficulties. We have been given some brain gym excersises, which seem to be going well, but nothing for the rooting reflex. (That I'm aware of anyway). Do any of you know an excersise for retained rooting reflex?

I've looked on youtube but can't find anything.

Also, ar there any books on retained reflexes that you could recommend?
It makes sence of so many of her behaviours, I'm hoping that it is down to this one thing so that we can work on this and hopefully one day she'll be up to speed.

We have been doing retained reflex therapy for 18 months and I wd highly recommend. Sally Goddard Blyth has written lots about it and if you google her her books will come up. I would leave it to your therapist to sort out the order to adddress the reflexes as it is all very specific to your child and needs to be done as instructed. Rooting reflex often inhibits once the moro reflex is inhibited anyway. It didnt for DS and we are doing specific ones for him but these may not be appropriate for your DD.
Another poster-Indigobell has also had lots of success with this therapy and I am sure she will come along to give some great advice too.
Dont expect instant results though-it has taken many months of simple but very effective exercises to see a difference in DS.
Good luck-let me know how it goes!

Thank you. She has imroved greatly with the crawling on the tummy excersises and she does a "sunflower"excercise for the morrow reflex.
Her therapist is very pleased with how she's comming along and has given some new excersises. It is hard to find time every day when she feels up to it. She is extramly sensitive to touch and spends most of the session laughing and not paying attention. We are getting there though, slowly but surely.

Hi my DD2 is 19 months and has kept the morro (startle) reflex and hasnt got the parachute reflex (where they fling their arms out in front of them when they are falling). They are apparently meant to lose the morro reflex when they are small babies. Interesting to hear someone elses child has kept theres as ive not heard anyone else mention this before. My DD startles very easily and flings her arms out still just like a newborn does particularly when woken from sleep. Ive never been tld of any exercises to improve these though?? might our OT know??? My DD also sensitive to touch and dislikes too much touching

You can ask your OT. From what I can gather though, they don't like to do anything until the child is 7 or 8. (I could be wrong) We see someone privetly. The NHS therapists tend to say, see how it goes and put you off for as long as possible to keep costs down. 19 months would be too young to do the excercises my daughter does but there might be a different programme for younger children. Definatly worth asking about as these retained reflexes can delay most of the other areas of development.

My ds1 (age 7) has just started RRT. He has also still got the moro reflex and many others.

We pay - its not cheap! - but we are hoping it will help ds1 with his reading and writing and to make him less anxious.

I am sure indigo will be along soon...it was she who recommended the therapy to me!

Agree with mummyloveslucy...the nhs/LEA will do very little until the child is 7-8 unless you go privately.

Good luck!

Hi everyone

I just started a thread about this today! You can buy the book 'disconnected kids' to look at a at home program.

DS had to do a lot of sucking and blowing exercises. I presume this was for the rooting reflex. He drank everything through a curly wurly straw for a few months. Because it's curly it requires more suck (although I guess if DD found that too hard you could use a normal straw) plus loads of blowing exercises ( an awful whistle thing, plus using a straw to blow a table tennis ball, that sort of thing)

Just seen you can get the straws at the party section in Wilkinsons

Hi indigo

Have pm'd you

x

Thanks for book advice Indigo-we have noticed similar improvements to Walsingham with higher levels of maturity and recently a greater awareness of abstract stuff. 2 months ago I showed a picure to DS of people holding umbrellas and he had no idea that meant it was probably raining. This week I showed him a picture of someone wearing shorts and he was able to say that it was probably summer-a huge leap in the how and why type questioning for us. Also calmer with greater impulse control. I would say that a child needs to be over 3 purely because some reflexes dont integrate until this age anyway. For the rooting reflex we are doing lots of facial and oro-motor exercises including the straw stuff Indigo mentions but also some facil massage/brushing.
HTH

thanks guys thats helpful