What Looks Like Behavior Might Be A Brain Asking For Help

What if the struggles you’re seeing aren’t defiance or “just a phase,” but signals from a developing nervous system asking for the right kind of input? We dig into primitive reflexes—the automatic movements babies are born with—and show how they set the stage for attention, coordination, emotional regulation, reading, and even sleep. When these reflexes don’t integrate on schedule, kids often look “sensory,” “distracted,” or “clumsy,” but the root is usually more basic: the brain still needs movement patterns it missed.

We walk through the brain’s bottom-up design, from survival circuits to emotional systems to higher thinking, and explain why movement is the fuel that builds each layer. You’ll hear how retained reflexes like the Moro, ATNR, spinal Galant, and palmar grasp can show up as startle and anxiety, trouble crossing midline, fidgeting, bedwetting, or weak handwriting. Instead of chasing labels, we focus on function—how to read these signs, what the nervous system needs next, and why neuroplasticity gives families real leverage for change.

Then we get practical. We outline reflex integration therapy in everyday language, from OT strategies with swings, climbing, and spinning to chiropractic methods that sharpen brain-body communication, plus simple home exercises that mimic early developmental sequences. Expect realistic timelines, common early wins (better sleep, calmer mood, smoother handwriting), and tips for adults who still carry retained patterns that drive stress and poor recovery. If your child hates tags, avoids certain textures, melts down over small things, or can’t sit still, this guide offers a roadmap rooted in movement, consistency, and hope.

Ready to rethink behavior through the lens of the nervous system and build a plan that actually fits your life? Listen now, subscribe for next week’s OT deep dive with Kim, and leave a review to share the insight that helped you most.

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Transcript

Labels And Hidden Clues

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Parents today are hearing more labels than ever before: ADHD, sensory processing disorder, autism spectrum, dyslexia, OCD. But what if many of these challenges are actually clues about how the brain developed? What if a child's behavior, coordination, attention, or emotional regulation is actually telling us something about their nervous system? Today we're going to talk about something most parents have never heard before: primitive reflexes, and how they can give us a window into brain development. Welcome to Living a Full Life Podcast. This week is an a fun dive into the brain from within utero all the way up to birth and into those first few years of life and how it shapes us for the rest of our life. Our brain develops from the bottom to top. Survival brain, emotional brain, and then thinking brain. Movement builds the brain, both in utero and out of utero. And humans have a unique development in comparison to most of our mammal friends. Gestation is nine months, nine to ten months in utero. And in that time, the first thing to happen one once conception happens, the first thing in the mitosis development, the mitosis uh cellular reproduction, cellular splitting of cells that turn us into who we are, the first organ to develop is the neural cord, the brain. And that coordinates the rest of development for the next nine months. It's a fascinating part of human development. And it happens within those first 21 days. Most mothers don't even know they're pregnant by the time the neural cord is developed, two to three weeks into pregnancy. And what ends up happening is the brain develops and orchestrates what cells are going to turn into what. And as we develop in utero, we start to look like a human and we're born. But the human brain, unlike our mammal friends, once we're born, we can't stand up on all four legs and start walking behind mama. We still need another 12, 13, 14 months of development to really get the full brain coordinated. So it's one sacrifice humans have had over time compared to our mammals, because we need more time to be nurtured, to develop our brains, to get that motor function and sensory function and livable function to survive. We have a longer survival window than our mammal friends who get up and start walking, and even in a few days later, can start running and galloping away from predators. So it's it's a different development. Babies are born with automatic reflexes. You can test these. If you have a newborn or newborns coming, test them. Tickle the bottom of their foot and watch their toes point in all different directions. Uh, tickle their back and watch them kind of go into an extension. Uh, clap your hands and watch them go into the startle reflex, or just touch their cheek from mouth to ear and watch them follow it with their tongue. It's called the feeding reflex. And they have all these. And these reflexes help them survive and develop. As the brain matures, reflexes should integrate. They should integrate. A newborn baby doesn't think about sucking, grasping, or turning their head when they touch something. These are automatic reflexes controlled by the lower parts of the brain. As the brain matures, these reflexes integrate so the child can develop voluntary movement, coordination, emotional regulation, and focus. These are called primitive reflexes. The moral reflex, the ATNR, asymmetrical tonic neck reflex, spinal gallant, palmer grasp, rooting reflex. These are all the ones I just described. Um, Babinsky reflex on the foot. That's my favorite, the little tickle one. Primitive reflexes are supposed to appear in infancy and disappear as the brain matures. When they don't integrate, the brain can get stuck in a more primitive pattern of function. And it's in that stuck primitive pattern where we start to see things after the age of one. After the age of one, 12 months is where we start to see things. It could be behavior, um, adaptation to food. They just are interested or not interested in food, or they're very picky by the time they're two. Uh, picky about sensory, the clothes that are on them, the textures that are on their skin, how things feel, cold air, warm air, temperature, brushing their teeth, uh, combing their hair, brushing their hair, these sensory things that can start to happen. We start to see it as parents, two, three years old, and we're like, hey, why are you so sensitive to that? Or what's going on? So, what we do in a neurodevelopmental clinic, in either occupational therapy, physical therapy, chiropractic, pediatrics, and medical offices, is we use reflexes to get a window into the nervous system to see how optimally it's functioning. We use reflexes all the way through adulthood. I'll do reflexes on a 92-year-old, uh, the knee jerk reflex, the Achilles reflex, the wrist reflex, the bicep tendon reflex, um, tricep tendon reflex. We'll we'll do these reflexes and sensory and motor tests to see how the nervous system is working and the eyes too. The eyes can show us so much of how the brain is functioning. So, a retained moral reflex. This is one example, anxiety, emotional meltdowns, sensory overload. They're easily startled with even little things. This is a retained moral reflex. Retained uh asymmetric tonic neck reflex, difficulty reading, poor handwriting, trouble crossing midline. They look clumsy when they try and do things. The spinal gallant, uh, can't sit still, constant fidgeting, sensitivity to clothing or tags, bed wetting, and then the palmer reflex, poor fine mortar skills, weak handwriting, difficulty with button or zippers. Sometimes what looks like a behavior problem is actually a nervous system problem. So reflexes themselves don't cause uh autism or ADHD. Instead, they're part of the neurological picture, overall picture. Many children diagnosed with ADHD or sensory processing challenge or learning delays have retained primitive reflexes. These reflexes can interfere with how the brain processes information, coordinates movement, and regulates emotions. Retained reflexes can affect our focus, our motor control, our sensory processing, emotional regulation, balance, and posture. Now, every time I get to these points in the podcast, it's always okay, how does this happen? Why did it happen? And we and we always like to look at the past and point blame. But I'm gonna tell you as a parent, it's futile to go back and look at the past and and blame whatever issues there are for that because all we have is the present and the future. So all we can do is work in the present and what we have. Yes. Let's let's do the hard knocks, you know, the new tone I've got for this year. Uh can Tylenol during pregnancy cause neurodivergence? Yes. Does it cause neurodivergence in everyone? No. Is it a causation? Uh no. It's not direct causation. Can vaccines cause neurodevelop neurodevelopmental delays in kids? Yes. Does it cause it in all of them? No. Is uh is it causation? No. Does mold exposure during pregnancy cause neurodivergence? Yes. Does it happen with everyone? No. Can uh stress during pregnancy, mental, physical, emotional stress for mother during pregnancy cause neurodivergent issues in the child? Yes. It's the truth, people. It's the absolute truth. There are many well-researched documents from around the world showing that these things do cause changes in our children. And we're seeing them at a higher and higher level. More and more scientists are invested in figuring out what's going on. So going back and looking and being like, oh man, maybe we we did live in that moldy house uh during conception. Um maybe we shouldn't have given all the vaccines at the three-month checkup. Maybe it's futile. You can't go back and change the past or or sit and dwell in that time. What you have is a child that needs help. And their brain right now is perfectly healthy. It's perfectly healthy. It's just got retained reflexes, it's got one hemisphere for firing higher than the other hemisphere. And all of this is going to catch up as they age, as they become adults. It's all going to catch up on its own. As a parent, I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to get them to enjoy being a four-year-old or a six-year-old and keeping up with their peers. That's the whole point of childhood. It's painful. But this happens more and more because of a lot of other things, too. Let's talk about the practical things. Less crawling. We put kids in bumbos, in bouncy chairs. I even had I've got pictures of me like as a three-year-old. Remember those things? You'd sit in it, it would have your tray in front of you, but you could walk, it was on wheels, you could walk around the house. It's like a bumper car. I remember smashing wall tiles and stuff like that. My dad always jokes about it. He's like, I had to repair tiles all the time. Uh, that, right? Sitting in it. So I was supported up and I was running. Maybe a little bit younger than I should have, maybe as like a nine-month-old. I shouldn't have been running as a 10-month-old when I didn't develop my crawling pattern fully by the time I was 12 months old. So less crawling in our infants. We're not putting them on the floor enough to do that, less tummy time, more time in containers, car seats, swings, devices, uh, less outdoor play, birth trauma, c-sections, early stress, screen exposure at a young age. We put iPads in front of them quite early. Kids today move less, crawl less, and spend more time sitting on devices than any other generation before them. And movement is how the brain organizes itself, and we're taking it away, and we're scratching our heads, blaming everything else except the obvious elephant in the room, and it's movement. The good news is the brain is plastic. The brain is not this organ like a heart of muscle that won't change. Even your heart can change, you can make it stronger. Uh, the brain is plastic, it's neuroplastic, and this is the hopeful part for everyone. The brain can change at any age, but it's turbocharged in children and the amount of time how quickly it can change. Reflex integration therapy is the fancy way of saying occupational therapy or chiropractic adjustments or uh class four laser on the brain, or all these therapies can integrate the reflexes. Simple, specific, simple movements, repeating developmental patterns, and training the brain to integrate reflexes is how reflex integration therapy works. Through specific movements that mimic early developmental patterns, we can help the brain reorganize itself and integrate these reflexes just as simply as from home. Families usually see uh improvements when they start this with their kids is better focus, improved handwriting skills, less anxiety, better sleep, improved coordination, emotional regulation improves, better reading ability, and less sensory overwhelm within the first three months of doing the exercises and the rehab programs. When the brain matures, behavior often changes naturally. So parents can start looking for clues because there's a lot of hope. And as long as we know what's going on, we can address it early. The earlier, the better. Does your child hate tags or certain types of clothing or particular materials? Do they slouch or struggle with posture? Are they clumsy? Be honest with the clumsy part. They just can't catch anything or they drop everything or they bump into everything all the time. They got bruises all over their shins, trouble sitting still, or emotional overreactions to many little things. These aren't always discipline issues. Sometimes they're neurological clues. We have to tread lightly on this. So understanding as a parent for what to look for gives us a lot of hope in what to help them with and what to treat with. And that's the beauty of the brain being neuroplastic. We have lots of opportunities to help these children move through it. So forget about the cause, because when we have a child that needs help, all that matters is the moment of present. And if you have children that have done this, I'm sure now parents come to our office all the time and they've done it all. They've been everything I've said in this podcast, they've been to OT, they've done this, they've done, and they've seen improvements. And they're continuing to hope for more improvement. And when they come to see us, we bump them up another rung on the ladder and they see more improvement. So what we do with the brain itself, with the chiropractic adjustments, making sure the nervous system is clear of interference, making sure that the brain can communicate with the body clearly through uh heart rate variability, thermography, and static muscle EMG testing that we do, we actually measure to make sure the flow is clearing up. We can light up parts of the brain with some fancy lasers we have in the office. We use vibration plates to stimulate the nervous system after the adjustments. That's our recipe. That's our way of facilitating the nervous system to help with primitive reflex, reflexes that are retained. In an OT place, which our guest next week, I highly recommend being on the podcast next week and listening to that one with Kim. Kim's an OT, and she set up her whole office based on functional movement. So there's swings, there's net ropes to climb, there's uh the kids can hang upside down, they can spin, they can do all these things that help mimic the early movement patterns that we were supposed to have to help prune the brain from the retained reflexes that we've kept. And once we continue to do that, and we start to do that at home through exercises at home, the recipe always works. You just get to choose your environment of where you want to go. The short, condensed technical appointments with chiropractic at our office, which are short, or the longer physical therapy type appointments there, or a combination of both, or doing one first and then doing the other. But that that progression covers the entire brain, the the from bottom to top with therapy to make sure that it the neuroplasticity changes happen as frequent as fast and as frequent as possible so that we start to see change in the short term in in weeks and months rather than years. So that's the easiest way to talk about the brain and neuroplasticity. Now, how this affects adults is uh super fascinating. When we retain these and don't do anything, is if you grew up like me, you know, 70s, 80s, 90s, we we didn't, our parents did not bring us to these places, right? It was rare. The the doctors that were doing it in America in the 70s and 80s and 90s were ostracized and uh by their peers and about talking about the brain and helping the brain. They believed you couldn't you couldn't uh help the brain. They were just starting to believe they should stop smoking as doctors because maybe smoke wasn't good for them. And they were like, okay, well, but you can't help the brain. So we were at this time and generation of our parents not knowing of sending us anywhere. But this generation of millennials helping their children, the alphas, has been a fascinating thing to watch, uh, and how adaptive and how willing they are to help their children do this, which is amazing stuff. And we're going back to the fundamentals in healthcare of you know, facilitating the brain, good nutrition, movement. But for adults, having these retained reflexes with weird uh reflexes that have been retained in the spinal cord can affect us too, and how we adapt to stress, anxiety, panic, sleep dysregulation, and things into adulthood. So uh most chiropractic patients that are adults don't even know that this is happening in the background when they continuously get adjusted, how we're pruning the brain. And I may actually give them the child exercises to take home. Like, hey, get on the floor, do your towel exercise for your neck curve, but also while you're there, move your arms up and down like snow angels on the carpet. And I tell them, remove their shirt, get as much skin on the carpet as possible to stimulate that pathway the nights after they are adjusted. So if they're adjusted, you know, on a Tuesday morning, Tuesday night, they got to do that, and Wednesday night they should do that. And then next time they come in for an adjustment, do it again. Because that's the clearest time to do that and reintegrate the patterns. And then we end up getting rid of that primitive reflex. The reflex goes away. They don't have it anymore. But in that time of starting therapy to the reflex going away is where typically the adult patient comes back and says, I'm sleeping better. Like, and it happens very quickly. And that's a side effect of the chiropractic adjustments because everything we're doing is relaying information back to the brain, uh, which is which is amazing and what it does. So I hope that gives you a little input on how the value of a clear nervous system affects our overall health. And we use the children in this with neurodivergence because it's such a hot topic right now for a lot of parents. But if you're someone that's thinking about this, you know, uh look into it. Instead of asking, you know, what's wrong with the child or myself, we should start asking what the brain needs. Because when we support the nervous system and brain development, many children begin to thrive in ways parents never expected. Very cool episode. Catch next week and listen to Kim and how she integrates this in there. And then there'll be a two-part series on how this brain uh primitive reflex science really works and how we do it. And the cool thing about Kim and I, we're both here, both a mile apart from our offices. We've always, for the last seven years, eight years, we've referred back and forth. She's amazing. And how lucky Lutz is and the North Tampa area is to have us. We have people from all over the Tampa Bay area come and do this work with us. Um, and we're a tag team that does this. We just need two separate facilities because of how we integrate our offices and the approach that we take. But very cool stuff. Thanks for joining us this week. If you have any info, any questions or anything, email us at info at fulllifetampa.com. We love answering questions and helping you out. Thanks for tuning in. Stay well, stay healthy, take care.