Why should my child’s SLP care about reflex integration?
Generally, Speech Language Pathologists learn in college and graduate school about the parts of the body (from the stomach up to the head) and the functions the systems serve. We also learn about oral reflexes that help baby suckle in the womb and learn to eat once they are born. We learn how to identify when the oral reflexes are not working properly, putting the baby at risk and what signs of dysphagia may or may not look like. We didn’t learn about the primitive or primary reflexes that mold and develop the sensory system and the brain. We didn’t talk about the reflexes in the spine and our limbs that are responsible for growing our brain from the brainstem up to the cortex or the ascending pathways that carry sensory info to the brain. We definitely didn’t talk about what happens if there are issues with the development of those reflexes.
In a few classes, we discussed the upper and lower motor neurons in the descending tracks but it was very superficial. Only after I was out of school and doing detective work to try to learn more about the body, did I come across important details about the nervous system. I wish we would have talked about how the nervous system is the highway that sends information about what we are experiencing in and outside of our body from our sensory organs to the brain. The brain processes this data, guides our actions, and stores the info for later use. It would have been important to know that learning is a very complex task that happens best when our nervous system is functioning in a safe and engaged manner. What and how we learn developmentally is dependent on the fact that our sensory/nervous system must have a balance of information coming in. If one of our systems is under receiving/processing or over receiving/processing input, our brain is not able to completely absorb this new material that we are trying to learn. Producing speech, understanding and using language, and eating/feeding are all skills that I believe are shaped not just by the systems we learned in school, but also those reflexes such as ATNR, STNR, Babkin Palmomental, Spinal Galant, Foot Tendon Guard, and the many many more that are described within MNRI. Having known and understood about all the reflexes, I feel that I wouldn’t have spent so much time trying to cortically teach children speech, language, and even swallowing exercises.
SLPs who are knowledgeable about reflex integration, neurodevelopment, anatomy/physiology, and specialize in a specific area (i.e., swallowing, articulation, etc.) bring a wealth of knowledge to the table when working with your child because they are aware of how to develop the brain from the “ground up” so that learning is effortless. MNRI has been called “the missing link” because it is the bridge that takes a person from their current ability in a skill to doing that skill more independently and with less support.
