Personalized care matters when we are dealing with developmental milestones and neurodevelopmental delays. What we know is that a traditional pediatrician’s office does not really provide individualized, personalized care – they are all about general milestones and charts. They use more of a cookie-cutter clinical protocol where height charts, weight charts, and well-baby charts are life to them. After going to these appointments with your child during those first couple of years, you know that they are not performing neurological examinations. What they’re doing is asking you a lot of questions and having you fill out a bunch of surveys.
I actually have a love/hate relationship with developmental milestone charts and tracking it that way. We don’t have the charts on the walls in our office because, on the surface, they’re pretty worthless. In fact, they can really throw things off and stress parents out. We see so many premature kiddos, special needs kiddos, and what we call Perfect Storm children, who are not going to adhere to any chart. In our clinics, we don’t even come close to the generalized, cookie-cutting care for our kids.
In our office, every single patient, whether they have a ton of things going on neurologically or it’s a well-baby checkup, is given individual, personalized, detailed care.
But the reality is, the majority of families still rely on a general family doctor, medical doctor, or pediatrician for the health of their child.
Traditional medical doctors are wonderful at what they do. They’re wonderful in emergencies and urgent care. They’re the fire department that puts fires out. But they don’t build and restore houses and they don’t build or restore health. They aren’t trained in neurodevelopment unless it’s grossly obvious that the child is having some neurological challenges. In that case, they would hopefully refer your child to the local early intervention, OT, or PT.
I know the early intervention world well. I was blessed to be on the board of our local early intervention program. I learned so much that I apply not only to what we do with neurologically focused pediatric chiropractic, but also to the collaboration we have with OTs, PTs, SLPs, developmental therapists, and teachers. That’s how we work, as a community.
The one profession that doesn’t work so well with this community or parents a lot of the time, is pediatricians. It’s so unfortunate because most often they are the first stop or even the only stop. What’s going to happen with these developmental changes going on, where everything is being pushed back, is they’re going to miss it more. We’re going to hear more “don’t worry, they’ll grow out of it”, or “it’s normal.” They’re redefining normal at a time when we have the sickest, most delayed kiddos and the highest rate of ADHD than we ever have before because we’ve been missing it more than ever before.
Why Personalized Care Matters So Much for Our Kiddos
So what does matter? The chart? No, the chart is not as helpful at figuring out exactly what is going on with your kiddo or whether they need some help to get on track. What IS helpful, is diving into their nervous system in our office. We use what’s called Insight Subluxation Scans. Subluxation in the central nervous system is what we are able to evaluate using this scan. We use a scanning technology that is non-invasive, takes 10 to 15 minutes, and we can measure, quantify and figure out exactly how your child’s central nervous system is developing and functioning.
We can look into the brain stem, the vagus nerve, and the autonomic nervous system. We look at how the nervous system is controlling the gut, immune system, and motor tone and whether it’s doing a good job. So if your child has hypotonicity or low motor tone, which is a huge thing in developmental milestones, we can figure out what’s actually causing that and where it is. Through chiropractic, and, alongside a lot of movement-based SLPs, PTs, OTs, we can get all that fixed up once we have those scans.
My net thesis on this is, the chart does not matter as much as an individualized, customized, personalized evaluation, scan, and assessment from somebody whose business is the central nervous system and neurodevelopment.
You want a doctor on your team who specializes in this. Again, I know I’m generalizing and I don’t like to do that because there are so many phenomenal medical doctors and pediatricians out there, but generally, they miss it. If you’re looking for the answers to whether your child is on track developmentally or not, that’s just not their expertise. Their expertise is sickness and pathology. So if you want more sickness and pathology, that’s the system that you should stay in.
I’m pretty confident in my belief that none of us as parents want more of that for our kids. We want optimal development. We want more health of the nervous system, brain, emotions, digestion, focus, everything for our kiddo that is pediatric neurologically focused chiropractic.
If you love this and are eager to learn more, please dig into our articles about the vagus nerve and dysautonomia. The other thing to research is what we call the Perfect Storm. What actually causes these neurodevelopmental delays and challenges in the first place? What is that sequence and what is the science?
Listen to Your Gut
If you ever reach a place where your mom or dad gut is making you feel unsure that your child is healthy or on the right track, or that there’s something more going on even if the pediatrician is telling you it’s normal and they’ll grow out of it, please visit our directory and find a local PX doc near you. At a minimum I want you to get a consultation, examination, evaluation, and scans for your child in one of our PX Doc offices.
That evaluation and personalized neurological assessment is something only a neuro-trained kid chiro can do. That’s what matters more than the charts in the pediatrician’s office or what you’ll find on online blogs and websites.
I am blessed with four kiddos who neurologically are able to kick butt and take names, but that didn’t come without challenges. My son Oliver spent six weeks in the NICU. He had a severe brain injury and hypoxic brain damage at birth. He was never supposed to make it on any chart, let alone be ahead of it as a 12-year-old, straight-A student, basketball and golf-loving, overall athletic dude. His nervous system wasn’t supposed to go down that road. But because I knew exactly what takes nervous systems off track as a pediatric perfect storm chiropractor, I knew how to get him and other kids back on track.
We want every child and family to have the best experience with their health, always.
