What Are Retained Reflexes?

We all have reflex reactions to certain stimuli without even consciously thinking and an automatic motor response occurs such as blinking when something flies towards your eyes, or sneezing or coughing. When a baby is born, primary reflexes develop as a way to help the baby grow and mature in their environment in their first year of life.

Examples of primary reflexes are those for:

• Moving the head
• Crawling

Causes of Retained Reflexes

As babies mature, they develop postural reflexes that are much more mature patterns of reflexes to help control balance, coordination and sensorimotor development. In some cases, babies retain their primary reflexes past the first year of life because they fail to integrate them well with the rest of their nervous system. These are called retained reflexes. This may happen when there is too much overload and stress for the nervous system to handle and process.

Retained reflexes can cause developmental delays that may lead to disorders such as:

• Autism
• Learning disabilities

Here are some of the reasons why babies may have retained reflexes beyond the first year of life:

• Feeding issues during first six months of life
• Illness with high fever
• Delirium or convulsions in the first 18 months of life
• Adverse reactions to toxins
• History of recurring ear, nose and throat infections
• Severe allergic reactions

What Your Doctor May Tell You about Retained Reflexes

Your child’s pediatrician will likely do a routine assessment on reflexes present in your newborn child. However, more than likely, the pediatrician will not routinely do an assessment to ascertain if these reflexes have integrated sometime within the first year of your baby’s life.

Neuro-motor immaturity, which is another way of describing retained primary reflexes, is one of the most prevalent issues in children with learning disabilities and developmental delays. American medical literature only recognizes neuro-motor immaturity in cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury or diseases that affect motor skills such as Alzheimer’s but not in infants and children with developmental delays.

Infants and children with retained primary reflexes present with many sensory integration symptoms. Most pediatricians are skeptical about recommending occupational therapy with sensory integration to help integrate retained reflexes because they consider sensory integration therapy to be controversial and questionable as to its effectiveness.

In addition, your child’s pediatricians may also believe that retained reflexes are really sensory processing issues which he or she might believe are just symptoms of another underlying developmental problem. Your child’s pediatrician will likely prefer to diagnose the other underlying disorders that share the symptoms that are presented by retrain reflexes rather than address retained reflexes themselves as what your child is experiencing.

Therefore, it is more than likely that your child’s pediatrician will not recognize retained reflexes but rather the sensory symptoms of the retained reflexes as part of a particular developmental disorder.

Another Way to Think about Retained Reflexes

Retained reflexes are a sign of neurodevelopmental damage caused by the above-mentioned traumas. In some cases, this damage is similar to what happens to an adult who has had a stroke, so think of rehabilitating your child in a similar fashion, although with the added complexity of the damage happening at a time of profound development in the brain and nervous system.

Your child may have some or many of the developmental delays found in retained primary reflexes such as:

• Asymmetrical gait
• Midline-crossing difficulties
• Poor short-term memory
• Poor concentration
• Panic attacks
• Hypersensitivity
• Hyperreactivity
• Speech problems
• Articulation problems
• Impaired social learning
• Impaired emotional learning
• Impaired intellectual learning

Integrating Retained Reflexes

One of the most effective ways of integrating retained primary reflexes is to do a reflex-integration program, which can help to extinguish or integrate the primary reflexes and integrate many of the sensory-like symptoms that may be preventing your child from making improvement. The goal of this program is to activate as many of the neurological connections and functions as possible, so that your child will begin to become more age appropriate as they integrate their retained primary reflexes. Your child can then make much more physical and academic progress in many of the areas where he or she has delays.

A therapeutic reflex-integration program can also be extremely helpful if your child developed retained reflexes from the first year of life. If your child’s development was interrupted such as those on the autism spectrum, then a reflex intervention program would be appropriate. Parents may also learn how to work with their children and integrate reflex exercises and techniques.

The Sveltlana Masgutova Educational Institute offers an enormous amount of material on the role of reflexes in learning and behavior and also teaches parents how to work with their children.

In addition to treating the retained primary reflexes with therapeutic interventions, it would be helpful to address many of your child’s biomedical issues such as:

• Fatty acid deficiencies
• Oxidative stress
• Detoxification of pathogens

It would also be helpful to include some other additional therapies that can enhance the improvement and progress of your child’s developmental delays. You can learn more about reflex integration here.

Retained Reflexes Healing Checklist

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