When treating little ones, we are intentional about making therapy all about connecting to the child’s brain. Children who are developmentally delayed have often had little to no exposure against gravity and limited opportunities to independently move against gravity. This delays their brain’s opportunity to create neural pathways that establish each direction of movement.
This will result in vestibular dysfunction that can present a number of ways, including but not limited to:
- car sickness
- motion sickness
- avoidance of swings and similar movements
- closing eyes or covering of the eyes when being moved too quickly
- clumsiness
- gross motor delays
- poor body awareness
- nystagmus
- poor tolerance for lying on the back
- anxiety and/ or fear with sudden movements
- poor visual tracking, especially below eye level
- turning of the head to visually focus rather than using central vision
- muscle tone issues
This is where vestibular rehabilitation comes into play, no pun intended!
Establishing a child’s baseline for registering vestibular movement is critical, as well as assessing their visual system. As explained in this blog post, the visual system strongly influences the function of the vestibular system. When referencing vision, this has more to do with visual perception (information the brain receives about the environment), and less to do with visual acuity (how clearly the child can see).
We do not treat acuity in the clinic, but we can help retrain how the brain perceives information in the child’s environment and establish a plan of care to help the child’s visual motor and visual perception skills.
Our treatment approach is to holistically treat vestibular dysfunction and empower you as the caregiver, how to help your child after their visit with Therahappy.
Email us for more details at hello@therahappy.com.