• Have a light snack
• Take a bath
• Put on pyjamas
• Brush teeth
• Read a story
• Make sure the room is quiet and at a comfortable temperature
• Put your child to bed
• Say goodnight and leave
• Have your child form positive associations with sleeping alone on their own. The child can then fall asleep on their own once awaken during the night
• Make bedtime the same time every night
• Make bedtime a positive and relaxing experience without TV or videos. According to one recent study, TV viewing prior to bed can lead to difficulty falling and staying asleep. Save your child’s favourite relaxing, non-stimulating activities until last and have them occur in the child’s bedroom
• Keep the bedtime environment (e.g. light, temperature) the same all night long
• Babies should be put to sleep on their backs. According to the “Back to Sleep” program, this lowers the risk of dying from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). The American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends that parents should avoid placing young children to sleep on a water bed, sofa, pillow, soft mattress or other soft surfaces
• Nap and nighttime sleep are both necessary and independent of each other, according to national sleep foundation. Children who nap well are usually less cranky and sleep better at night. Although children differ, after six months of age, naps of 1/2 to two hours duration are expected and are generally discontinued between ages 2-5 years. Daytime sleepiness or the need for a nap after this age should be investigated further.

Opening Your Child’s Window Of Opportunity

A natural, safe and drug-free approach to solving learning and behavioural problems in children.

As a result of the misunderstanding surrounding learning and behavioural problems in children, one in every three, a staggering four million or more, cannot learn to write, read, spell, concentrate and remember, and many feel both mentally and physically off balance, uncoordinated and clumsy. Standard schooling requires that children pay attention as directed and maintain focus for extended periods of time.  Children who cannot focus and maintain attention cannot learn.  Needless to say, children who cannot learn and compete at school become adults who cannot learn and compete for jobs, with resultant emotional, family and social instability.

Indeed, research shows that the problem is having ever-greater impact on our society.  Recognition of this impact has led the federal government to legislate that schools screen for potential learning disabilities.  The ever-rising rate of burn-out, work absenteeism, crime, drug and alcohol abuse, physical violence including domestic violence, relationship breakdowns, anxiety and depression make the identification and treatment of this problem a number one priority for us all. Unfortunately, most learning and behavioural problems remain unidentified or misdiagnosed.  Many times they are treated with prescription medications.  Whilst these drugs may suppress the symptoms, they do not address the causes.  Indeed, drug therapies are often found to be ineffective, and cause potentially harmful side effects.

Yet there is an alternative…

The main concern for each of us as parents is to ensure our children have the opportunity to be their healthy best.  Research tells us that achieving our best as adults, on physical, mental, social and occupational levels, is in large part shaped by the windows of opportunity opened to us during childhood.

Patterns established early in life may persist and limit a child’s future growth and development, on a number of levels, throughout their lifetime.

Until recently, a child was considered healthy when he or she had no symptoms.  Research now suggests that health is better defined as the child’s ability to interpret, and then appropriately adapt and respond to, environmental and lifestyle stresses. In fact, the World Health Organisation defines health as, “…a state of optimum and complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. It is within this greater context of health that we look at learning and behavioural problems in children and adults. The highest priority of all living things is to survive!  From the moment of conception the ability to sense and interpret changes in our internal and external environments are essential to our ability to adapt and survive.

There is one system in your child’s body that is responsible for accurately interpreting messages coming in from the environment and deciding how to respond to them appropriately.  That system is the nervous system.

Our nervous system controls and coordinates every organ and system of our body.  Messages are continually being sent along nerves from our brain to our body and back to our brain.  Interference to this communication prevents the proper function of our body and hence the full expression of our potential. When a child is born, he enters a world where he is assailed by an overwhelming volume of sensory information.  To survive, he is equipped with a set of primitive reflexes designed to ensure immediate response to this new environment and his ever-changing needs.

Primitive reflexes are automatic, stereotyped movements, coordinated and controlled by the nervous system.  They are essential to the child’s survival in the first few weeks and months of life.  They are not under voluntary control. Primitive reflexes should have a limited lifespan.  Having helped the child survive the first few months of life, the primitive reflexes should be inhibited and controlled by higher centres of the brain by 15 months of age. These primitive reflexes sets the foundation for proper emotional (2-5 years old) and cognitive brain ( after 5years old) later in life.

Movement or motion is fundamental to the optimum function of the human body.  Movement of blood through arteries and veins, air in and out of the lungs, electrical impulses along nerve fibres, and of muscles to create movement of the body, all allow us to function effectively in our world.  Movement is our primary means of adaptation and survival.

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“90 percent of the input and output of the brain is for relating the physical body to gravity.  A mere 10 percent is for healing, growth and thinking.”

~Roger Sperry, Psychobiologist, Nobel Prize recipient for Brain Research

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As specific movement patterns are practiced over and over again by the child, more mature patterns of response supersede primitive reflex responses.  The movement patterns are believed to contain within them a natural inhibitor to the reflexes. If, however, the child has never made these movements, in the correct sequence, the primitive reflexes may remain active.  Hence, the neurological equipment necessary for learning and mature behavioural control will be faulty or ineffective, despite adequate intellectual ability.

The development of these reflexes could be effected by: birth trauma, head injury, viral infections, reaction to vaccinations, prenatal trauma to the mother either physically or emotionally and poor sleep patterns.

They are said to be aberrant, and they represent structural weakness or immaturity within the central nervous system.  They also can inhibit proper use of other reflexes which enable the child to interact effectively with his/her environment. This leads to further adaptation of the body resulting in :

• Poor posture
• Emotional Immaturity
• Crying spells
• Passivity
• Aggression
• Hyperactivity
• Poor learning skills
• Poor social skills
• Poor coordination
• Chemical imbalances
• Sleep disturbances such as: snoring, sleep apnoea, bed wetting, sleep talking and night terror

To assess whether a child has a properly functioning and organised nervous system, we must ask:

• Can the child receive information through the senses?
• Can the information be processed properly by the child’s brain?
• Can the child respond appropriately, either through language or movement?
• Does the child have proper sleep patterns? Since most of the brain development occurs within the first 15 months after birth during sleep

One of the most stressful events that we all go through in life is the process of being born.  The circumstances that surround most births set the stage for the development of birth-related nervous system disorganisation. Research performed by chiropractor Dr Reza Samvat, in Adelaide, Australia suggests that about 70 percent of cases of learning and behavioural problems have had some type of head injury, sustained either before, during or some time after the birth process.

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“There is no such thing as a genius. Some of us are less damaged than others.”

~R. Buckminster-Fuller

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Learning Difficulties in Children and Childhood Sleep Disorders

Learning and behaviour in children is based on the brains ability to integrate the sensory information and respond appropriately which is based on timely development of primal reflexes after birth.

When poorly developed, disorganization within the brain’s central integrative state occurs influencing learning behaviour as well as sleep patterns

The treatment program

The treatment program offered is the unique approach devised by Dr Samvat after 20 years of clinical observation, research and experience.

At its root is Neural Organisation Technique (N.O.T.), a treatment protocol created by eminent chiropractor and kinesiologist, Dr Carl Ferreri.  N.O.T. offers a unique understanding of the function of the human body in relation to its innate survival systems. N.O.T. perceives the human body as a bio-computer with specific programs designed to ensure optimum capacity for adaptation , survival and learning.  These survival programs are the fight or flight, digestive, and reproductive programs.  These programs are each coordinated by the central nervous system.

When one or more of these systems fails to operate, or operates inappropriately, our capacity to adapt and survive is compromised.  The result is improper function at the physical, emotional, mental, or social levels. Dr Samvat is holistic chiropractor who has successfully treated thousands of children with sleep,learning and behavioural challenges using chiropractic Neurology, Applied Kinesiology, nutritional therapy and sleep therapy. Dr Samvat’s success has attracted numerous national media coverage over the last 10 years.

Dr Samvat checks for the integrity of these reflexes both through a comprehensive questionnaires filled by parents as well as clinical assessment for these reflexes. The treatment is very gentle  and effective. After the initial assessment, if the child fits in this neurological category then an initial program of 16 weeks is undertaken( 14 sessions) . The progress is reassessed every 16 weeks.

For more information on Help with Your Childs Sleep or to make an appointment please contact us:info@sleep4health.com.au