Sleep and Learning Difficulties

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.