“Gravy” on Top!
From a clinical perspective, I often send a follow up text message to see how a client responds to our time together. Here is a message that I received from a mother of a client, with regards to her middle school-aged daughter’s response.
Melissa was actually really good the rest of yesterday and this morning. She had some pretty involved homework to do and she just got it done.
She had her first volleyball practice today. I am the coach of her team. I was shocked when she walked in and started overhand serving after never being able to get the hang of it last year. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the power, she just couldn’t make all of her body parts sync up to do it. I think she was shocked too! When she came home she was giving you all the credit.
You know I brought her to see you to address her challenges with school. So this is some “gravy” to the work she is putting in. She was super excited about it!
Melissa said on the way home from her session with you yesterday that she really loved trying the upside down exercise. Even though she was scared, her body wants to try it again. She said it made her feel like she was just more even keel after doing it. Thank you for checking in and for all the work you are doing with her. We are definitely seeing progress.
Through the evaluation process, Melissa showed immaturities with reflexes that impact one’s ability to establish good connections between the vestibular and visual sensory systems. These immaturities have impacted her ability to track information across the page for reading, writing and math activities. Although she has a very strong IQ, prior to starting reflex integration work, she was having to compensate for her limited foundation.
These same reflexes underpin our ability to learn to coordinate our upper and lower body, front and backside of our body, and right and left sides of our body together. By offering integration activities and working on movement patterns, Melissa not only has seen a significant improvement in her reading, math and organization skills; yet she is seeing a change in the coordination of her body allowing for greater ease in executing a higher degree of difficulty in sports related skills.
One of the things that I love the most about reflex integration work, is that it impacts numerous developmental domains: safety and security, regulation and bonding, social and emotional regulation, speech and language skills, fine and gross motor skills, memory and learning abilities and higher executive functioning.
