If you’ve had previous chiropractic experience or taken your child in for pediatric chiropractic care and have not seen the results you were hoping for, I want to take you through five reasons why that may have been the case.
Does Your Chiropractor Have Advanced Training?
The first question is, did they or do they have advanced training in pediatric chiropractic? The way healthcare goes down for chiropractic is like any other profession. General education is just that – general. Our general chiropractic education is phenomenal and takes care of everybody, but it’s limited as to how deep it goes with pediatric chiropractic care, especially in tougher cases or what a PX Doc would call The Perfect Storm and neurological cases.
The standard education, in our opinion, is not quite enough to feel confident taking care of kids with certainty and confidence with clinical protocols and advanced/ specific adjusting techniques used for kids. General chiropractic education is fantastic for back pain, neck pain, headaches, sports injuries, rehab, and wellness – and there’s a lot of crossover into pediatrics. Still, there’s also a whole lot missing.
You want to look for someone who didn’t just put “family” in the name of their practice but put in the effort and acquired advanced training and proficiency in pediatric chiropractic.
This doesn’t mean they have to have a whole run of initials or have attended a certain school, it just means that you can tell that this chiropractor you’re going to put your child’s health into the hands of, has advanced training.
We started our family before I had graduated from chiropractic school and certainly before I acquired advanced pediatric chiropractic training. During my wife’s pregnancy with Addison, our oldest, and when she was an infant, we took her to a local chiropractor in the Quad Cities area. I knew he was one of the best who not only had advanced training but had advanced experience – because I knew I didn’t have that experience yet. I did not step into those shoes for my family until I had the training and experience.
Does Your Chiropractor Have Adequate Experience?
That happens to be number two. You have to take a good look at the practice and confirm that what they do every day is take care of kids and families. This one shouldn’t be hard to sort out. I recommend going into the practice, hanging out for 15 minutes or more, and seeing predominantly kids, pregnant moms, little babies, and older kiddos is perfect! If you’re seeing special needs challenges, that’s definitely a pediatric practice with clinical experience taking care of kids.
Something to keep in mind is that experience doesn’t mean the doctor needs to have gray in their beard and 15 years of practice or have a certain number of kids they’ve taken care of.
We’re looking at some of the youngest docs in the way the profession is going right now – and I’m proud to say we’re a big part of that. The teaching, internships, and associateship programs are going to some of the youngest staff in the profession. I trust these recent graduates who have trained and have advanced experience because they’re going to club meetings, seminars, etc. I trust them more than someone with 30 years of spinal care at a spinal practice when it comes to taking care of kids.
Does Your Chiropractor Incorporate Advanced Scanning Technology?
Number three, does their examination incorporate advanced scanning technology called INSiGHT Scans?
Regarding chiropractic, things have changed dramatically over the last 10 to 20 years, especially over the last five to seven years, even in our office – which is the leading pediatric chiropractic center in the world. We’ve worked with an incredible company to create a scanning technology specifically adapted to kids so we can measure the function of their nervous system.
We can measure and find out if subluxation, stress, vagus nerve interference, and/or dysautonomia are present. Not only can we find and detect the presence of this stress on your child’s nervous system with a non-invasive, 15-minute, crazy easy, super safe scan, but we can also quantify it so we know exactly what we’re working with. We can locate it, track it, and advance our adjusting approaches. We can match our techniques to what the child really needs based on the scanning technology.
These scans are everything! One of the places where our experiences really come to life and our clinical protocols are significantly different than an average chiropractor who may have families and kids on their website is this technology. If they are not incorporating the scanning technology, they pale in comparison to what the scanning technology can do to look into your child’s nervous system and determine if they are holding stress and if so, how much and where.
Does Your Chiropractor Use a Multitude of Chiropractic Techniques?
Number four is, do they use a multitude of chiropractic techniques? As we go down this list, we’re getting super granular with the differences in chiropractic.
This is something I experienced and learned from during the early years of my own career when I stayed limited for a couple of years before I figured out the way kids and all patients work. Especially children – each patient has their own unique case.
Some of the kids we see experienced physical trauma that led to their challenges. Some examples are forceps, vacuum emergencies, c-section induction, childhood trauma, or fall. If there’s physical trauma, you may have to adapt to the adjusting approach you use. Some of them are more toxic. It could be inflammation due to so many antibiotics, nebulizers, and other medical interventions that weakened and exhausted their nervous, immune, and gut systems.
So you want to look for a chiropractor for your child who is not limited to one specific technique. In our office, we incorporate an entire system. That multitude of techniques is key because we get to pair them, mash that, and dial that in with that kiddo each visit.
Does Your Chiropractor Deploy a Care Plan?
Number five, do they deploy a care plan? A care plan is a simple chiropractic phrase that basically means – what are the recommendations and action plan? As we take care of a child through a care plan, we will actually change our technique and a multitude of things as we go.
Your chiropractor needs to have a care plan built for kids at this point in time. Unfortunately, what that means is that kids are more stressed and worn out than ever before. They can’t be using care plans that were taught to chiropractors 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago – which may have been enough to take care of a kid a generation ago before all this stress and the perfect storm took root and overwhelmed our kids’ nervous system, but aren’t applicable now.
You want them to develop a care plan protocol that is neurologically focused, based upon your child’s specific case history findings using our scans and our exams. It’s a scientifically derived care plan protocol that sets the frequency and duration of the adjustments.
Standard Chiropractic Care Is Not Quite Enough
Let me share my experience with this. Standard chiropractic wasn’t enough to take care of kids. So when God told me, “you are here to take care of kids”, I sought out that advanced training. Once I got the advanced training and a multitude of techniques – it was great – but they didn’t have the technology and didn’t help us know which technique to use. So over the first couple of years in practice ( because I am a ruthless, insane nerd), we took a ton of notes. We documented and tracked everything with these scans to know what was making the most impact and influence.
Then we started to teach that to other chiropractors. First, just to local Midwest chiropractors, classmates, and friends, and did some small clinical seminars. That then grew over the years to the Perfect Storm to traveling the world and teaching others through the Pediatric Experience of the standard stuff to talk about.
It seems this has a bit to do with me, but that’s not true. It has everything to do with figuring out how to help the most amount of kids possible, quantity-wise, but ensure that the quality and clinical results of care are never, ever, compromised. That’s why we do so much teaching.
So if you’ve had a previous chiropractic experience, that may have even had “family” in the name of the practice, but you didn’t get results, I want you to understand that there are differences. There is a contrast in different chiropractors as they take care of kids, pregnant moms, and families.
If you’ve been considering seeking out a pediatric chiropractor, these are the five things you would look for. Now is the time to check out our PX Docs directory to find a local pediatric chiropractor that takes part in all this training, near you!
Please remember, your pediatric chiropractor has to have the training, experience, technology, and clinical protocols!
God bless and be well!
