Movement and the Emerging Mind

Meghan and Sean

Baby Sean crawled avidly across the room towards the wheeled car while 5-year old sister Meghan sat quietly playing with a puzzle. Mama Paulette watched in quiet celebration. Just 2 months ago Sean couldn’t sit up or down on his own, and he showed little interest in toys or active play. Kindergartner Meghan, on the other hand, had been bouncing off the walls, easily irritated, with about a five second attention span.

Paulette is helping her children overcome significant delays with a home program for neuro-development. Daily they do simple movement activities and play that mature each child’s nervous system. These early intervention strategies tap into the power of developmental movements that organize the brain.

Our minds are formed in entwined relationships through our developmental movements in utero, birth and the first year. These early movements enable the baby to organize his/her emerging sense of self, dynamic brain networks for learning and emotional regulation, and core strength and grace. At any age we rely on coherent movement to keep our brains lively.

School age children need developmental movement to provide them with the ABCs of pre-academic skills; attention, balance and coordination. These natural movements organize vision and hearing, and establish the brain rhythms that are optimal learning states.

What might be a profile of a school child with immature neuro-developmental movement? Our brains are complex, so there are many individual variations. For example, without early intervention, Sean may have developed problems with telling time, understanding sequences (math and story reading), poor spatial skills (math, concepts of over and under, before and after, etc), poor eye-hand coordination (writing, messy eater, clumsiness), slowness at copying, problems with adjusting vision between blackboard and desk, poor attention span, dislike of sports, slumping posture, or tendency to get car sick.

The power of simple, developmental movements and the lifelong malleability of the brain allow us to help a child – or ourselves – at any time. With children we see fast results; within two months for babies and within 6-9 months for school children. For all of us, developmental movements enable us to tap into our own internal resource for greater flexibility and creative minds.