What is Primitive Reflexes and how can they interfere with your childs’ development?

Primitive reflexes are automatic responses originating in the brainstem that develop in utero and are essential for a newborn’s survival and early development. Some reflexes are needed during labor, some during early motor development. These reflexes typically diminish as the child grows and higher brain functions mature.

BUT – sometimes they stay, and if these reflexes are retained beyond infancy, they can interfere with motor coordination, balance, learning, and behavior – Any higher levels of the learning pyramid.

How you can learn how to test for and train retained reflexes

I have included affiliate links below for the course I took to learn how to test and train reflexes. Review and endorsement of the course is 100% based on my personal opinion.

When we first stumbled upon primitive reflexes, we had a hard time finding a occupational therapist that knew anything about these and could test primitive reflexes.

I had a feeling that these reflexes might be important for our boys’ wellbeing and development so I started searching near and far to learn more. And then I found a online course made by two occupational therapy assistants (Harkla), and found that I could do the tests and exercises myself – and it made all the difference for us!

Harkla has made a course, that is easy to understand, with videos showing exactly how to do each of the tests, and very detailed explanations of what to look for when doing them and how to scale the level of retainment in each reflex. This last part is key, since a retained reflex might show in different ways and you will miss some of the signs if you just read about how to check the reflexes.

Harkla has made it easy for everyone to get started by making videos showing real examples of children who have retained reflexes and explaining for each of them how they can observe in the child’s response to the test that the reflex is retained. I have seen lots of videos where an adult tries to mimic how an active reflex looks like and it just isn’t the same!

And then there’s videos showing exercises for integrating each of the reflexes. So you’ll learn everything you need to start testing and training your childs’ reflexes. And everyone can do it – you don’t need any specific skills!

There’s even visual checklists that you can print and hang up at home. We have used these, since it takes quite a lot of effort from you and your child to integrate the primitive reflexes. You have to train consistently and be patient – Using positive reinforcement and tracking the progress has really worked for us!

I took the expert level course, which is the cheapest option, and found it to fully include all the things we needed.

Here are some examples on how this courses has improved life for our kiddos – and we could do it all from home!

– Problems with bedwetting beyond normal age – it turned out to be an active spinal galant reflex. The problems disappeared after about a month of doing spinal galant retaining exercises.

– One boy was highly sensitive, and very easily overstimulated, leading to many many tantrums. Loud noises scared him (a lot!), he was tactile sensitive and had problems with other children being too close to him. After 20 days of doing the moro reflex exercise from the course, we started seeing improvements – his tactile shyness started disappearing, he was more calm and less tired after a day in school. We are still doing these exercises and keep on experiencing improvement.

I am so happy we started Primitive Reflex training – It has made a huge difference for our boys and us as a family. If you have a kid who struggles, you should really check out the online course.

Maybe you can make the same difference for your child!

The different Primitive
Reflexes and Their Effects When Unintegrated

Below is a short description of 8 primitive reflexes with examples on issues and difficulties that might come from an unintegrated reflex. Note, that these difficulties does not equal an unintegrated reflex, but if you can check off quite a few of them, then that might be a good sign to have the reflex checked.