The Experience Miracles Podcast

Q&A: Early Signs Your Child’s Nervous System is on the Right Path

Oct 25, 2024

Neurological Soft Signs of Healing: How to Know Your Child’s Nervous System Is Recovering

Episode 46 — Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP — Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: October 25, 2024 | Duration: ~60 min

Key Takeaways

  • Neurological soft signs — improvements in posture, sleep, digestion, immune function, and sensory regulation — are the earliest evidence that a child’s nervous system is healing, often appearing weeks or months before any visible change in speech, seizures, or behavior.
  • In complex cases like autism, seizures, PANDAS, and POTS, the early stages of neurological healing can last many months. During that window, INSiGHT scans and neurological soft signs are the most reliable evidence that care is working — not symptom changes.
  • The single most important soft sign is improved motor tone, posture, and gait, because the neurospinal system provides the most influential input into the brain — more so than gut health, nutrition, or any other system.
  • Subluxation in the brainstem and upper cervical spine is the root neurological cause of chronic constipation, sleep disruption, and immune dysfunction in most neurologically complex children — not nutritional deficiency.
  • Healing always follows the same sequence: neuromotor improvements first, then sleep, then digestion and immune function, then sensory regulation, and finally brain-based improvements in speech, behavior, and seizure control.

What Are Neurological Soft Signs of Healing in Children?

Neurological soft signs are subtle but clinically significant indicators that a child’s nervous system is beginning to recover — even before visible changes in speech, behavior, seizure frequency, or communication occur. As Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP explains in this episode, these signs include improvements in posture and muscle tone, sleep quality, digestive function, respiratory and immune health, sensory processing, and emotional regulation. They appear in a predictable sequence, with motor and postural changes typically happening first, followed by sleep and digestion, and then sensory and brain-based improvements.

For parents whose children have started Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care and aren’t yet seeing the big changes they’re hoping for — no new words, ongoing seizures, continued meltdowns — understanding neurological soft signs is essential. The absence of improvement in major symptoms does not mean care isn’t working. In complex cases like autism, epilepsy, PANDAS, and POTS, the early foundational stages of healing can span many months. During that time, the correct markers to track are INSiGHT scan results, pre- and post-adjustment neuromotor changes, and the six soft sign categories covered in this episode.

The reason this sequencing matters comes down to how the brain and body are connected. The brain runs on autopilot — reading sensory and motor input from the body and responding accordingly. When the neurospinal system is disrupted by Subluxation, the brain receives distorted signals. No amount of direct brain-based intervention — medication, neurofeedback, or behavioral therapy alone — can bypass that disruption. The body’s foundation must stabilize first. Only then can the brain begin to change.

Introduction: Why Parents Need a New Definition of Healing [00:00 – 09:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Today we’re going to talk about neurological soft signs. This is one of my favorite topics to teach, and it’s driven by the questions many of you have been sending in. We’ve started care and aren’t seeing changes yet. We’ve started care and things seem slightly worse. We’ve started care and my child is nonverbal with autism — I understand the weight of this. You can’t wait to communicate with your child or to finally get through the seizures so they can discontinue medications.

I know the big changes are what you want to see first and fast. We want that too. But here’s the thing — every child heals differently. If we don’t break healing down into its fundamentals, put it into phases and sequences, and emphasize how important these foundational signs are before expecting brain-based improvements, it might actually hold you back from getting started.

One of the hardest things for parents to grasp is that our only definition of healing comes from medicine. That’s all we’ve ever known. Medicine says: take this pill and your headache disappears, take this pill and your ADHD, anxiety, depression, and seizures go away. There’s no lag time between the treatment and the supposed result. But the truth is, those kinds of results — symptomatic suppression only — aren’t results at all. There’s no actual healing. They’re just covering up symptoms.

To understand how neurological healing through chiropractic care works, we have to start with a completely new definition of what results and healing actually mean.

The Head-Heart Tension in Tracking Your Child’s Progress [09:00 – 21:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: There’s another layer to this conversation that has to be addressed: the difference between what our head understands and what our heart feels. The vagus nerve actually connects the two — and I can’t go five minutes without mentioning it, so there we are.

I distinctly remember watching my son Oliver have seizures and never wanting to see that again. The visceral emotional response I had as a parent when Oliver struggled is something I carry with me. With any of my children’s struggles, my parent heart will always want their pain resolved instantly. I appreciate that you keep asking these questions of us, because that emotional response should stay in play. It’s what’s going to keep you fighting for your child.

What’s different about PX Docs is that we’re comfortable walking the tightrope with you. Our doctors are trained to hold that conversation — the one in your heart — with full empathy. And then also get nerdy. Also get scientific. Because when we understand the science of neurological healing, that understanding helps put our hearts at ease when healing takes longer than we want.

It often takes the longest to see improvement with the biggest challenges — autism, seizures, PANDAS, POTS, anxiety, ADHD. These are the things the majority of you reach out to us for help with, and they’re the hardest to stay committed to during the early stages, when on the surface there are still no words, still seizures, still meltdowns. If we look at the big stuff only, we miss the forest for the trees. That’s exactly what this episode is about.

“We can take that conversation, honor it, empathize with it, fully understand that it’s going to stay in play — and it should, because that’s how you’re going to get your children better. Your heart’s going to lead your way, even when others try to take away your hope.”

What Are Neurological Soft Signs — and Why Do They Come First? [21:00 – 28:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Neurological soft signs are subtle yet absolutely critical indicators that show a child’s nervous system is beginning to recover, even before the more obvious changes in behavior, speech, communication, and seizures occur.

When someone reaches out saying they’re twelve visits in, four weeks into care, and haven’t seen any changes yet — I know what that question really means. They’re still having seizures. Their child is still nonverbal. And when people say the seizures might be getting worse or the behavior is different, I almost always know that if I could examine that patient individually and review their neurological soft signs and INSiGHT scans, we would see all sorts of positive changes moving in the right direction.

These signs give us confidence and clinical clarity that the big improvements are coming, even if nothing has changed yet in the major symptoms — or if things appear to be getting worse during a detox phase. That’s why we have to look at this holistically.

In the early foundational stages — which for tough cases is months and months, not days and weeks — we have to focus almost entirely on the INSiGHT scans and table-side checks. These are what we call functional, objective measurements of improvement. Then we look at neurological soft signs, which I categorize as the middleman between the body’s foundations and true brain-based healing.

We’re going to go through six neurological soft sign categories. Numbers five and six will start to neuroanatomically and neurofunctionally take us into the brain — where the challenges of autism, epilepsy, anxiety, and ADHD actually live.

Sign 1: Better Posture, Muscle Tone, and Gait [28:00 – 36:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: The first and most important neurological soft sign is better posture, motor tone, and gait. When we begin evaluating our patients — especially our neurodevelopmental cases, which make up the majority of my patient load — we start by evaluating nervous system function with our eyes.

We look for distortions in head tilts, shoulders, hips, and gait. We look for disruptions technically called dyskinesia and dyspraxia. These extend into fine motor and speech function. Dystonia is a dramatic example — showing as hypertonicity. More obvious examples include toe walking and stimming, grinding teeth, jaw clenching, chewing on things, constantly touching or wringing hands. We track all of these as signs of increased Subluxation, Sympathetic Dominance, and hypertonicity.

There’s another side to this conversation: where things are too weak, too lax, too hypotonic. Most families we see are already familiar with this from PT and OT. But here’s why I put motor function first — the motor system, how your child moves through life against gravity, is more important by a large margin than gut health. I’m not dismissing the gut, microbiome, MTHFR, or toxic load. But look at the motor system first.

“The motor system — how your child moves through life against gravity — is more important by a large margin than their gut health. Every single case I see of severe autism challenges: their motor system is a mess.”

Every muscle in the body connects to the spine and central nervous system. The neurospinal system is the main conduit controlling every other muscle. Before you can move your pinky toe, a nerve within the neurospinal central canal has to function and respond first — for both output and input.

No one in healthcare evaluates the neurospinal system first. No one trains their eyes on motor tone, coordination, and gait analysis at the brainstem, neck, and thoracics. That’s remarkable, because that’s the hub of everything. Subluxation, birth trauma, and even toxins — the most permeable area for toxins to enter the nervous system is the upper cervical area, the brainstem region. If those areas are subluxated and dysfunctional, toxins can get into the nervous system not just through the gut, but through CSF and neurospinal pathways as well.

What does a neurological soft sign look like here? Pediatric chiropractors trained in this work look for neuromotor imbalances before anything else — before changes in sleep and digestion, before brain-based changes. We make an adjustment, then check while the patient is still in the room. Relaxed shoulders. Head tilt gone, now midline. Improved coordination efficiency. These subtle shifts are the very first things that happen with Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care.

We train our chiropractors not only to spot these changes for clinical value, but to point them out and communicate them to families. Think of them as milestones — not the developmental milestones on a pediatrician’s office poster, but milestones of true neurological healing and recovery.

Sign 2: Improved Sleep Patterns [30:00 – 33:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: The majority of our neuro-spectrum, Perfect Storm children don’t sleep. They don’t fall asleep easily, they don’t stay asleep, and even when they are asleep, their nervous system isn’t calm. Parents instinctively know this — when you look at a child who’s technically asleep but their body is still moving, still tense, still activated, you can see it.

Sleep is one of the earliest indicators of neurological recovery because sleep is essential to neurological healing and neurodevelopment. When we get the nervous system healing and the brain shifting out of Sympathetic Dominance into a parasympathetic state, sleep begins to change. When you see sleep improve in the early stages, that is absolutely cause for celebration. Party on.

Sleep getting better means the vagus nerve and parasympathetic system are coming online. It means the body is starting to access the rest-and-repair state it needs for healing. For infants, toddlers, and young children with complex neurological challenges, sleep improvement is one of the clearest early signals we look for.

Signs 3 and 4: Digestive Function and Respiratory Health [33:00 – 41:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Neurological soft sign number three: improved digestive function. The vast majority of our Perfect Storm patients — those with autism, epilepsy, anxiety, and any condition in the neurological box — have digestion that is a mess. They don’t poop regularly, they don’t poop easily, despite copious amounts of probiotics, supplements, and gut interventions.

Here’s the kicker: in the majority of these cases, when we dig into the case history and run our scans, the real root cause of their constipation and gut issues is not nutritional. It’s neurological.

The autonomic nervous system controls digestion. The parasympathetic system — the rest-and-digest system — handles motility, absorption, and elimination. If the brainstem and vagus nerve are under stress from Subluxation, the gut does not function properly, regardless of how many probiotics are going in. When we get the nervous system healing, parents start to see their child poop regularly, with less bloating, improved motility and absorption. It’s one of the most joyful clinical changes families experience, and it signals that the parasympathetic system is waking up.

This also applies to teenagers — especially those with anxiety and depression. If a child’s mental-emotional challenges are significant, we have to get their digestion moving. The gut-brain connection is not metaphorical. It’s neurological.

“The real root cause of their constipation and gut issues is not nutritional. It’s neurological. The nervous system has to be functioning properly in order to absorb the good nutrients going in and get the bad stuff out.”

Neurological soft sign number four: improved respiratory and immune function. Ear infections, chronic bronchitis, asthma, allergies, chronic congestion — kids with ADHD, anxiety, and autism are often chronically sick. Their respiratory, lymphatic, and immune systems are dysregulated. And if a child is sick all the time, their brain is carrying constant stress load. Nobody who is perpetually sick can focus, regulate, or develop the way they should.

One of the most telling signs is not just how often a child gets sick, but how quickly they recover. The majority of our Perfect Storm kids are essentially chronically constipated both digestively and lymphatically — always congested, always coughing, always mucousy. When they start to get adjusted and the nervous system shifts, they begin to clear infections faster. Their immune system starts to respond the way it was designed to. When respiratory and immune function improve, the brain has less systemic stress, and the next stages of healing become accessible.

Signs 5 and 6: Sensory Processing and Emotional Regulation [41:00 – 48:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Signs five and six are where we start to enter the brain-based changes. And I want to be clear — we’ve been talking about brain-body function this whole time. Everything up to this point — motor tone, sleep, digestion, immune function — it all requires nervous system improvement. But signs five and six are where neurological changes become directly visible in the brain’s outputs.

Sign five is reduced sensory overload. Children start to experience less hypersensitivity to stimuli — lights, textures, new places, social interactions, brushing teeth, wearing different clothes, trying new foods. The sensory overwhelm begins to ease.

This matters because sensory overload is not just uncomfortable. It is the root cause of ADHD, anxiety, ODD, OCD, and behavioral and emotional dysregulation. Sensory overload is what drives the meltdowns. When the neurospinal system is functioning better and Subluxation is reduced, the brain is no longer receiving the distorted, overloaded input that triggers those responses.

Sign six follows directly from sign five: improved behavioral and emotional regulation. A calmer, better-regulated child. Less reactive. More present. More able to interact.

I had a patient — an intensive care case who came from Ireland with his family for a month of chiropractic care. He was severely stuck in fight-or-flight, hypersensitive to everything, never slept, severely constipated despite three pages of supplements, and sick constantly. Six adjustments in — his fourth day with us — the team sent a message to our wins channel: he came into the office smiling, with no meltdowns, no crying, and was playing and interacting with everyone.

He slept through the night the last three nights. He’d never done that.

Did he speak yet? No. But the sequence is unfolding exactly as it should. Neuromotor first, sleep next, then digestion and immune function, then sensory regulation — and when those come online, the brain gets access to begin its own healing. The wins channel will one day report that this child is talking.

“It always happens in the same sequence. We have to get their neuromotor system better first. We have to get their sleep improving. We have to get their digestion and immune function improving. We have to get rid of sensory overload to get access to the brain.”

How to Track Progress: The Four-Level Framework [48:00 – 1:00:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Here’s the order in which we track healing, from most immediate to most significant:

First, pre- and post-adjustment changes. This is where your chiropractor gets specific. When changes are happening on the table, in the room, immediately after the adjustment — those are the first signals we track. We can point out relaxed shoulders, improved head alignment, better coordination efficiency. These are tracked literally adjustment to adjustment.

Second, INSiGHT scans. These are the second most important clinical criteria for confirming we’re moving in the right direction. The scans measure neurological dysfunction, subluxation, and dysregulation in ways that are objective and visual. On an intensive program, we run them every three days. On a standard program, every week or two.

Third, neurological soft signs — the six categories covered in this episode.

Fourth, and last: the big symptom changes. Seizure reduction. First words. Behavioral breakthroughs.

When I put it in that order, does that mean we don’t care about the big stuff? Absolutely not. But we would be misleading you if we pretended those changes happen overnight. Every child gets their own algorithm. Each case — based on genetic factors, age at the start of care, depth of dysfunction — gets an individual prognosis, timeline, and set of healing milestones. That’s what your local PX Docs chiropractor can give you in person, with your child’s actual scans in hand.

Our doctors also have access to a clinical forum within PX training — where myself and our most experienced clinicians review complex care plans and scans. All our doctors must maintain an ongoing training curriculum to stay on the directory. They don’t get listed just because they know me. They get listed because they maintain the highest standard.

The hardest question in this work is when. Not how — we can explain how healing happens reasonably well. But the when is hard, because it depends on so much that’s individual. There is science behind it. There is sequencing. There are neurological soft signs that always precede the big brain-based changes.

Trust the process. It does not happen overnight. With the biggest challenges, it happens quite slowly. But it always happens in the same sequence. When you start to see pre- and post-adjustment changes, when the scans shift, when the soft signs begin to move — celebrate. Your child is on the healing path.

“Trust the process. It does not happen overnight, and with the biggest challenges, it happens quite slowly — but it happens sequentially. When you see some or all of these changes, get excited, because your process is proven.”

Frequently Asked Questions

What are neurological soft signs of healing in children?

Neurological soft signs are subtle physiological improvements that show a child’s nervous system is recovering — before major symptoms like speech, seizures, or behavior visibly change. Dr. Tony Ebel identifies six key categories: better posture and muscle tone, improved sleep, improved digestion, better respiratory and immune function, reduced sensory overload, and improved emotional regulation. These changes follow a predictable sequence and are the earliest evidence that Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care is working.

Why isn’t my child showing big improvements yet, even after weeks of chiropractic care?

For children with complex neurological conditions like autism, seizures, or PANDAS, the early foundational stages of healing can span many months — not days or weeks. During this time, the most important markers to track are pre- and post-adjustment changes, INSiGHT scan results, and the six neurological soft signs. The absence of visible changes in major symptoms does not mean care isn’t working. It means the nervous system is building the foundation that brain-based healing requires.

Why is posture and muscle tone the most important early sign of neurological healing?

The neurospinal system controls every muscle in the body and provides the most influential input into the brain. Before any muscle can move, a nerve within the neurospinal central canal must respond first. Subluxation in the brainstem and upper cervical spine disrupts this entire system. When chiropractic adjustments reduce subluxation, neuromotor function improves — and that is the first detectable sign of neurological recovery, even before sleep, digestion, or any other function changes.

Can chiropractic care really fix my child’s constipation and sleep problems?

In the majority of children with autism, epilepsy, and related neurological conditions, chronic constipation and poor sleep have a neurological root cause, not a nutritional one. The vagus nerve and autonomic nervous system control both digestive motility and the transition into sleep. When Subluxation is reduced through Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care, the parasympathetic system activates — improving gut function, bowel regularity, and sleep quality. These are among the earliest and most consistent soft signs parents report.

What is the correct order of healing milestones in neurologically-focused chiropractic care?

Dr. Tony Ebel outlines four levels of progress tracking, in order: (1) pre- and post-adjustment neuromotor changes observed in the office, (2) INSiGHT scan results tracked at regular intervals, (3) the six neurological soft signs — posture, sleep, digestion, immune function, sensory processing, and emotional regulation — and (4) major symptom changes like speech, seizure reduction, or behavior shifts. The big changes come last, not first.

How do I find a pediatric chiropractor trained in neurologically-focused care?

Not all chiropractors are trained in the Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care approach Dr. Tony Ebel teaches through PX Docs. The PX Docs directory lists chiropractors who have completed advanced pediatric and neurological training and maintain ongoing clinical education requirements. Find a trained practitioner at the PX Docs Directory.

Resources & Related Content

Find A PX Doc

Welcome to PX Docs. The place to find Hope. Answers. Hope. for you and your family.