Alright, done with brain basics 101. We’re now moving on to reflexes. These workshops are full day sessions, so I’m going to try to break entries down to specific sessions, but there may be some abrupt switches between entries because of this.
Reflexes control our movements. Obviously we want our students to be in control of their bodies. First the body needs to experience things in order to build a storehouse of knowledge, then the body will be able to apply that learning to situations and use it to perform tasks.
Some skills are automatic (or should be) such as sitting in a chair, handwriting, listening, and so on. But for many students, they aren’t.
Reflexes are god given, “pre-fabricated” movements. Their purpose is to provide a learning experience for the brain. They may not seem like they have an obvious purpose, but they often do. They can be integrated, learned or matured. They become internal, occur automatically.
Most primitive reflexes should be integrated in the first year of life.
First is the ATNR reflex, Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex. Basically, it’s when the child’s head is turned to one side, the muscle receptors in the neck have the same arm straighten and the opposite arm flex or bend. It helps babies roll from stomach to the back. Typically occurs from 4-6 months.
Here’s one thing that wasn’t immediately apparent to me (and a few others). We want these reflexes to be completely internalized in our students. For example, when on their knees with their arms straight out (so they are almost in a crawling position), they should be able to turn their head all the way towards their shoulder and hold it without having any bend in their elbows. If there’s a bend in their elbows, it could be that they haven’t internalized the ATNR reflex and need to do some exercises to properly internalize it.
Just finished a lunch break and soon we’ll be continuing on reflexes. It has been a pretty productive morning and I’m starting to get a good feel for what the program is about. It seems to take the same principals that I’m always harping about with respects to the importance of social and emotional development occurring in students’ early school years, and applying it to brain development. In other words, if the students’ brains haven’t developed properly between ages 1 and 6, then they already have a strike against them in future years. A student who hasn’t properly developed the pathway that transmits data between the eye and the brain may have issues skipping words and/or letters when they’re reading. It definitely seems to make sense. I’m starting to buy in to the idea at least.
Onwards with reflexes! They have a ton of activities to address ways to exercise these reflexes in a variety of situations. Maybe I’ll try to take some video, or photos of these exercises so I can provide a visual for you.
Next reflex is the STNR: Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex. Position of the head and neck affect the position of the trunk and limbs. When the neck is extended, the arms go into extension and the knees are contracted. When the head goes down (chin to chest), the arms naturally bend and the legs extend.
TLR: Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex. Stimulates the labyrinthine of the inner ear by the position of the head in space and the position of the body. Basically, it looks like the entire body is bent. Arms, legs, feet, neck and so on. Babies start off like this and quickly learn to extend different areas. Exercise to test this involves laying on the belly and trying to get their arms, legs and head fully extended and off the floor.
Quick tangent. We just saw a video of a student who has trouble with retained reflexes. He was supposed to be drawing a counter clockwise circle between two pieces of tape. He was doing it clockwise instead of counter and seemed to be having a problem. The presenter told us to watch carefully what he did at the end of the activity. When he finished, he looked up to see what his neighbor had done or whether the teacher had seen what he had done. She claimed that he looked up like this because he was so used to have problems due to retained reflexes that he was used to doing things wrong and being criticized. Right there is where she lost me. Retained reflexes may cause some problems, but that doesn’t mean that every problem will be solved by fixing the reflex issue! Could it simply be that he has a self-confidence issue brought on by overbearing parenting or teaching? Or perhaps he wants to go to the playground and is checking to see if he has done the task well enough to be released. Who knows? This may very well be a tremendous boon to the educational environment. It could help students to be better prepared to learn. But please don’t try to fool me into thinking that this is going to solve all of our educational problems, or that every problem can be solved through these exercises.