Birth, Bonding and Attachment: The Book Part I

I have been grappling with a book on sensory-motor-reflex interactions for years. As with all writing projects, the structure and emphasis is key. So after many false starts, I think I have found the right approach. The direction will center on difficult births and the connection between them and reflex issues that can result in bonding, attachment and other psychological issues. As I teach the Birth, Bonding and Attachment course and work with clients, the more I come to appreciate the foundations set by typical reflex development. Having myself been breech born and delivered by forceps (sorry, Mom), I have a first person experience with many of the subtle and not so subtle effects of traumatic birth. Look forward to snippets as the year goes on and please feel free to comment in any way.

New Year: New Connections

The mission of this blog is to exchange and pass on knowledge about the importance of sensory-motor-reflex interactons in life and learning.

The Bodhi Tree of Sensory-Motor

I spent most of the weekend working on a new interaction chart for sensory-motor interactions. After a few tries I came up with something that reminded me of a banyan tree. After a little more research, I learned that the banyan tree is a direct relative of the Bodhi Tree where Buddha found enlightenment. Accident? I think not.

I hope to add the picture soon. I like the model, because it adds memory types and social and verbal processing to a higher degree than HANDLE®'s Spaghetti chart, as well as the body senses.

Parietal Lobe and Language

In my work in Spatial Cognition and Language, I have used many different developmental timeline of body-space, verbal and nonverbal language and very early reflexive patterns of what I call push energy to study how language develops.

The concept of the need for "push" and "reach" reflexive patterns that are later integrated with voluntary push and reach motion was corroborated by Japanese scientists, Ishbashi Tidetoshi and Iriki Atsushi in the study The role of the parietal lobe in monkey tool-use published in the journal Advances in Neurological Sciences in 2004. In a nutshell, this study showed that when monkeys intentionally used rakes to reach food out of their grasps, the area of the brain used was the same as the area used by humans to speak.

So when you "grasp" an idea, you need to grasp and reach with that rattle first.

Mourning the Passing of Judith Bluestone, Founder of The Handle Institute International

On February 18th, 2009, two days after sharing a plane ride back to the U.S. from HANDLE's World Wide Affiliate Gathering in the U.K., my mentor and friend, Judith Bluestone released her body and merged with the energy that is life. I say this because one of her favorite sayings was, "We are energetic beings in an energetic world." Her healing gift and haliographic mind was a treasure and inspiration to us all. She will be sadly missed.

Big Eight Reflex Patterning Class-Brighton, U.K.

On February 10th, 11th and 12th, I had great joy in sharing the holistic approach to working with the basic Big Eight Primary and Facial Reflex Patterns in England. The class was well attended at Pilgrim Hall near Lewes, Sussex. I also worked with 4 students as clients as well, with many positive results. A manual, Powerpoint DVD and the first GOMO and Handwriting DVD were made available.

After the class was the HANDLE World Wide Affiliate Gathering, with presentations by Judith Bluestone, the founder of The HANDLE Institute International and Ros Blackburn, a 40 year old woman who has lived with Autism Spectrum Disorder her entire life. I got to eat dinner with Ros and was able to ask her questions about her and other's issues with auditory processing. I ask questions about all my hypotheses on Spatial Cognition and Language. All the answers followed my predictions.

As my MN Autism Society presentation draws near, I will be posting more on Spatial Cognition and Language.

I'm Back-Summer 2008 and Reflexes

For a while I thought no one could get to my blog and who would read it? Turns out some people do. I will continue this with topics from time to time.

SUmmer of 2008 was very eventful. Challenging Children class with Svetlana Masgutove in MN, Dream workshop with Harald Blomberg.

Svetlana went over the most common diagnosis of neurodevelopment: Autism, ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, low motivation, Cerebral Palsy, MR, and aggression. She presented new statistics of the frequency of hyper, hypo and atypical reflexes in each.

In both seminars, Fear/Paralysis is the new discussion point. It seems to boil down to some simple points: 1. F/P is an early pre-reflexive pattern that is not only muscular, but is cellular. 2. It is habituated in the first 3 mo. in utero. 3. It is activated with sensory triggers.
Moro is proprioceptively activated, but later can be sensory activated. So far I have seen no case where a client had F.P but no Moro retention. However, there are cases of Moro without F/P.

This is all very twisty. I often use my own situation to study these two. I had a 100% retained Moro reflex that was activated with proprioceptive, auditory, tactile and visual challenge. I did not have Fear/Paralysis or I worked through it in life. I also had retained Spinal Galant, another core reflex, which is tactilely activated. Sensitivity in sensory channels must play a role in whether a reflex is integrated or stays integrated. This is Judith Bluestone's view, as well.

Harald Blomberg's class on dreams interpretation as body and brain communication was very interesting. I have been asking my clients for their dreams since last year and have many that fit the pattern of the nervous system of the spine, lower brain and prefrontal cortex communicating and trying to integrate. I hope to devote more time for this later.

Another P.P.

3. This one is the need of people for a silver bullet or magic pill approach to learning differences. No matter what anyone tells you there is no one "right" answer to these issues. Usually neuro-development, like all health takes a well-thought out approach. No one diet, activity, habit, therapy or medication helps in all ways. Usually all these components need to be considered and balanced with the life, environment and needs of the family as a whole. HANDLE(R)'s "H" stands for Holistic. Systems thinking demands seeing the big picture and the trade offs.

P Ps about P's Ps

#2 The next pet peeve is the very idea that we can actually come close to defining intelligence, measure it in a growing child, and sum it up in a number.

IQ scores, I guess, have a place in the world of measurement. But, let's stop saying that they measure intelligence and stop believing that they are at all meaningful in the education of children.

Standardization also has a place in this world and wise people keep it in its place. But, let's stop thinking that there is much true standardization in the measurement of intelligence tests given to children. Their sleep, food, fear, percpetion, earlier interactions, expectations, developmental maturity and much more interacts and makes nonstandard outcomes.

If machines were being tested, they would be oiled properly, adjusted properly, housed properly to make the test valid. But with kids, only the test is the same and it is considered valid.

Dr Dr. Robert J. Sternberg of Yale University's Educational Psychology had his IQ tested early in school and it was deemed that he was of a low sort. Little was expected of him until in 4th grade his teacher told he that she didn't believe that he was stupid and was going to start expecting as much from him as anyone else. He never looked back. He learned the lesson of standardization: standardization doesn't say much about individual performance, but is best at showing data trends.

Now when I am told that a child's IQ is 40, 60, 80 or even 160, I look at the subtests and attempt to see how neuro-processing might have affected it. If you have poor audio processing, both part of the tests are difficult. If you have visual issues, the performance side can be very low. If your laterality or inner hemispheric integration is weak, processing quickly enough can make you look "slow".

Pet Peeves about People's Paradigms

I know, I know alliteration is a no-no in blogging. But I have liked the term "pet peeve" ever since my daughter made a little elfin creature out of Sculpty clay and gave me my own pet peeve. I call him Alfred.

Oliver's Pet Peeves about People's Paradigms

Paradigm #1: There is psychology and there is physiology and the two are unrelated and need totally different approaches.

The longer I study neuro-development, the more I believe that much of what we perceived as personality is really just an accommodation to our perceptual world and the attendant stress. This may sound materialistic, but in reality we do have choice and creativity with these accommodations, if we are aware of where it starts. Most people think that personality starts in the mysterious area called, "psychology".

For years, psychology has told us that we are affected emotionally by early trauma. Trauma does affect the type and amount of stress that a system receives and can impact many neuro-systems in subtle and overt ways. However, emotions are the feedback systems that tell us how our systems are dealing with stresses.

I once helped with a study trying to find why some people have resilience in the face of great trauma and others do not. At the time the theory was that a dependable adult in the life of a child makes a difference (and of course it usually does.) However, I would bet that a robust neuro-developmental system is even more consistent with resilience.

More "peeves" in future posts.....

Why a blog on Neuro-development?

For the last six years, when I tell people that I am a neuro-developmental specialist, I usually get a blank stare. When I explain that neuro-development deals with discovering perceptual and processing differences in individuals, interest increases. When I remark on my observations of a particular person's perceptual processing, attention is riveted.

We are taught from the very beginning that people are all unique individuals, but these differences are usually considered to be in culture or perspective. Rarely do people consider the differences in our perceptions of reality and how we react to these perceptions. These differences are very real and more defining than ethnic origins or life situations.

In neuro-development we look at stress stimuli (good and bad) and the ability and efficiency of an individual's body/mind system to deal with this stress.

My goals on this blog is to explain and discuss neuro-development and neuro differences as I am able. I do not want to get into specific cases, so if questions, examples or descriptions get too individual, I'll suggest an individual assessment. I do want to write about general concepts and react to related news items of the day.