The Experience Miracles Podcast

Q&A: Why Kids Plateau (or Even Regress) in the Middle of Their Healing Journey

Feb 7, 2025

Why Kids Plateau or Regress in Healing: 7 Causes and 5 Ways to Push Through

Episode 76 — Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP — Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: February 7, 2025 | Duration: ~60 min

Key Takeaways

  • Plateaus and regressions during a healing care plan are normal and expected — even when chiropractic care is working. In most children, what looks like regression is actually the nervous system reorganizing to handle the next phase of healing.
  • Growth spurts are the most common cause of apparent regression in children ages 2–12. According to researcher Roger Sperry, PhD, 80–90% of the brain’s neurophysiological energy is consumed by motor function at any given moment — leaving fewer resources for speech, behavior, and emotional regulation during growth surges.
  • When the nervous system strengthens through chiropractic care, it initiates detoxification of heavy metals, toxins, and pathogens it couldn’t perceive before. This typically occurs at the 90–120 day mark and can look like sudden regression — but is actually a sign of healing progress.
  • The counterintuitive clinical response to a plateau is to increase chiropractic adjustments, not reduce them. Daily or twice-daily adjustments during a plateau provide more neurological support precisely when the nervous system is most dysregulated and subluxated.
  • Emotional stress is the most impactful of the three types of stress (physical, chemical, emotional) for children’s nervous systems. Family stress co-regulates directly into a child’s nervous system — and a new school year, schedule overload, or loss in the family can trigger significant behavioral and neurological regression.

Why Do Kids Plateau or Regress During Healing?

Plateaus and regressions during a child’s healing journey are not signs that care has stopped working — in the majority of cases, they are signs that the brain and nervous system are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do. Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care initiates a process Dr. Tony Ebel calls restoration and reorganizational healing, and that process is rarely linear.

The brain and nervous system have a fixed amount of neurophysiological energy to distribute across every function — immune response, motor coordination, speech, digestion, emotional regulation, and active healing. When a growth spurt, illness, or detoxification process demands a surge of energy, the brain temporarily deprioritizes other systems. The result looks like regression, but it is actually the nervous system making a strategic choice about where to allocate its resources.

For parents, understanding this is the difference between pulling back on care at the exact moment it’s working and pushing through to the breakthrough on the other side. Dr. Tony Ebel identifies seven specific reasons why children plateau or regress — and five clinical action steps to navigate each one.

Why Healing Is Nonlinear: The Manual Transmission Analogy [00:01:00 – 00:12:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP: The number one thing I want parents to understand before we get into the specific reasons is that plateaus and regressions are completely normal — even for children whose healing is actively progressing.

Healing and neurological development are sequential. But inside each of the three phases of healing, it is rarely straightforward or linear. The majority of children going through a care plan — even the ones who experience real miracles — had bumps, plateaus, and regressions along the way. That’s how healing happens.

The best analogy I’ve ever been able to come up with is a manual transmission car. When you shift gears, you have to back off the gas and press in the clutch. That clutch creates the space for the transmission to handle shifting into the next gear. If you don’t back off the gas — and especially if you don’t press in the clutch — you grind those gears and you get regression.

This is what’s happening when we look at children healing from The Perfect Storm. Parents and practitioners both have two feet on the gas pedal. We want to get them talking, get rid of the seizures, eliminate the asthma. I feel that a thousand percent — when my son Oliver was in the hospital having seizures, I didn’t want to make any space at all. But almost 20 years of practice has taught me: healing is nonlinear. And the gear shifts are not regression. They are the transition point into the next level of healing.

“Often what looks like regression is actually progression. What looks like we’re sliding backwards is actually the brain and the body figuring out how to heal and go forward.”

What happens with healing is that healing and developing have to occur simultaneously. So when growth spurts, immune challenges, and seasonal changes come in and stress the nervous system further, they amplify what already looks like regression — and understandably get into your head. You start thinking: this was working, now it’s not. We’ve got to back off. We’ve got to add something else. So often, that instinct is exactly wrong.

The 7 Reasons Children Plateau or Regress [00:07:00 – 00:50:00]

Reason 1: It’s Normal — Healing Is Not Linear [00:07:00 – 00:12:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: The foundational reason is simply that neurological healing is not linear. The three phases of healing are sequential when you put them on a chart, but inside each phase, the reality is nonlinear.

The brain and nervous system have so many jobs to do simultaneously. They can only allocate so many resources to so many systems at one time. When the nervous system is under Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care and the healing is actually working, it will confuse you. Some things get worse in order to make space for other things to get better. The nervous system knows that healing is sequential, and it will sacrifice energy from emotional and behavioral regulation if the body is busy working on something more foundational — digestion, immune function, or motor development.

This is neuroplasticity and neurological reprogramming at work. It’s normal to have these shifts. Some aspects progress, some aspects temporarily regress.

Reason 2: Major Growth Spurts [00:12:00 – 00:26:00]

Physical and neurodevelopmental surges temporarily shift the brain’s energy away from healing and regulation toward growth. This is the most common cause of apparent regression in children between ages 2 and 12.

Dr. Tony Ebel: PhD researcher Roger Sperry documented that about 80 to 90 percent of the brain’s actual neurophysiological energy — mitochondrial, ATP energy, not metaphysical — is consumed at any given moment just dealing with motor function. Motor function starts with big muscles first (gross motor), then small muscles (fine motor), and encompasses both in what I call sensory motor function.

When a physical growth spurt comes in, the place it hits hardest is the motor system. Now they’re toe walking again. The stimming returns. The movement, gait, and coordination patterns you thought resolved through chiropractic and OT and PT — they go sideways. Not because care stopped working, but because the brain is busy managing a surge in growth and has temporarily deprioritized fine motor, gross motor, sensory motor, speech, tone, and coordination.

Children ages 2 to 12 are going through significant physical growth spurts and neurological milestones continuously. What we’re trying to do is accomplish two entirely exhaustive, complicated jobs at once: neurological healing and active development — in the same system, at the same time.

“The brain spends about 80 to 90 percent of its energy just dealing with motor function at any given moment. When a growth spurt comes in, it loses focus on fine motor, gross motor, speech, and coordination — and that looks like regression.”

It won’t feel like a short season in the middle of it. Every day when your child was making progress with speech and motor function and sensory regulation, and then it regresses — that one day feels like a month. I know that. But in the grand scheme of healing, these growth-spurt plateaus are temporary.

Reason 3: Immune Challenges, Illness, and Fever [00:26:00 – 00:35:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Illness and the recovery process are as energetically exhausting as any serious physical trauma. The Chiropractic Textbook — written for the four years of chiropractic school — actually covers the energy expenditure required to get well. Chiropractic has been focused on this neuroscience for over a hundred years.

When your child is sick, the immune system draws a huge amount of energy from the brain and nervous system and increases its metabolic capacity to fight the illness. It redirects energy from neurological growth, neurological healing, and neurological reorganization. Seizures may intensify. Tics increase. Behavior becomes more challenging. They’re sick — and being sick is part of being human.

Here’s the most important thing I can share about this: on the other side of an illness, neuroplasticity surges. Medical journals from decades ago documented that children would experience neurodevelopmental cognitive surges after getting through a measles infection independently. When children fight through an illness on their own — when the nervous system and immune system engage in crosstalk and overcome it — there’s a growth surge in development as a result.

Fever is not just a defense mechanism. Fever is a catalyst to neurological development. That’s why when I take a case history and a parent tells me their child never gets sick, never gets a fever — that’s concerning, not reassuring. A child who can’t mount an immune response is missing one of the key mechanisms for neurological development.

Reason 4: Toxin and Heavy Metal Elimination [00:35:00 – 00:45:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: This is the most nuanced reason, and the one most likely to catch parents and practitioners off guard. When a child is subluxated, dysautonomic, and neurologically dysregulated, the nervous system doesn’t even recognize that parasites, bacteria, strep, and heavy metals are present. Subluxation inhibits perception. The healing mechanisms are unresponsive.

You run the labs, the stool tests, the hair analysis — you see the metals — but they won’t be eliminated. Because the nervous system isn’t online enough to do it.

What happens after 90 to 180 days of effective neurologically focused chiropractic care is that the nervous system awakens. It grows stronger, more connected, more coordinated. And then it realizes — how did these toxins get in here? It initiates detoxification independently, because that’s what a healthy, regulated nervous system is designed to do.

When this happens — usually around the 90 to 120 day mark, sometimes six months or more into care — your child will develop dark circles under their eyes. They may appear unwell. Their behavior becomes irregular again. And parents think: they’re regressing. But what’s actually happening is the nervous system has become strong enough to do the work it was never able to do before.

This is the moment to increase chiropractic support, not reduce it.

“Subluxation inhibits perception. A dysregulated nervous system doesn’t even recognize that toxins and heavy metals are present. Once chiropractic care awakens the nervous system, it begins eliminating those substances on its own — and that process looks like regression.”

Reason 5: Seasonal Changes and Weather Sensitivity [00:45:00 – 00:47:00]

Seasonal shifts, weather fronts, and full moon cycles are real neurological disruptors — particularly for children with PANDAS, PANS, POTS, seizures, and tics. Dr. Tony Ebel has covered this topic in a dedicated episode. If your child’s behavior, seizures, or tics consistently worsen with temperature fluctuations or seasonal transitions, listen to that episode for a full explanation of the underlying neuroscience.

Reason 6: Emotional Stress [00:47:00 – 00:50:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Emotional stress is the most impactful of the three types of stress — physical, chemical, and emotional. And our children respond directly to our emotional states. This is co-regulation — a technical term for what happens when the emotional state of one family member affects the nervous system of every other member.

When work becomes overwhelming for a parent, when a relationship is strained, when a loved one is lost — the family unit absorbs that stress, and the child’s nervous system reflects it. A new school year, a new teacher, an overloaded therapy schedule — these are stressors that drive the nervous system into Sympathetic Dominance (fight-or-flight mode), and what follows is emotional rigidity, sleep disruption, behavioral regression, tics, and speech challenges.

This doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the child or the care plan. It means we sit down with the family and ask what’s happening — and then increase support.

Reason 7: Too Many Therapies Simultaneously [00:50:00 – 00:55:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Often the cause of a plateau is also the most counterintuitive: too many interventions at once. All natural, all holistic, all beneficial on paper — but if they’re all demanding energy from an already dysregulated and overwhelmed nervous system, it’s too much input with not enough capacity to integrate.

The brain needs time to process and consolidate the changes initiated by each intervention. When there’s too much stimulus coming in, the nervous system can’t complete the work. What we focus on is getting the nervous system regulated and stable first — tracking this on INSiGHT Scans to confirm we’re moving from sympathetic overdrive into parasympathetic regulation. Once that stability is established, we can reintroduce therapies one by one and they’ll work far more effectively.

Nervous system first. That’s the batting order.

5 Action Steps for Handling a Plateau or Regression [00:50:00 – 01:00:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Here’s the clinical checklist we use at PX Docs the moment a family reports a plateau or regression.

Step 1: Review and reduce external interventions. Ask: what is every intervention currently in place? Identify what the nervous system can actually manage right now. If the child is sick, skip therapy that day. If there’s a significant growth spurt, let them rest. Make subtle adjustments that create space for the nervous system to prioritize what matters most — not major changes, just small ones that reduce the total energy demand.

Step 2: Prioritize the nervous system — and increase adjustments. This is the most counterintuitive step and the most important. When a child is at a plateau or regression, the clinical response is to increase the frequency of adjustments. Get them adjusted daily that week. Get them adjusted twice daily if needed. The nervous system during a growth spurt, immune challenge, or seasonal shift is more subluxated, more dysregulated, and less coordinated — it needs more support, not less. The analogy here is Days of Thunder: when you’re right in the middle of a crash on the racetrack, you actually accelerate. You don’t back off. Backing off is how you truly regress.

Step 3: Track patterns. Parents, document what’s happening when plateaus occur. What was happening the week before? Was there a growth surge? An illness? A weather shift? Emotional stress in the family? You don’t need extensive notes — just a simple log. Patterns reveal the cause, and knowing the cause allows you to respond with confidence instead of fear.

Step 4: Watch for signs of overload. Know the signs that your child’s nervous system is overwhelmed during a therapy session. Even the best neurologically informed therapists will adjust and say: let’s end early, or let’s just do relaxed play today. A session that meets the clock but overwhelms the nervous system is less beneficial than a shorter session that leaves the child regulated.

Step 5: Examine the INSiGHT Scans. This is your objective indicator. The scans often show improvement during the exact period when behavior and external symptoms appear to be worsening. When the scans are improving and symptoms look worse — that’s not a contradiction. That’s the healing process in action. Don’t back off care when the scans tell you it’s working. If the scans are also plateaued, that’s the signal to discuss a clinical adjustment with your PX Docs practitioner. There are three specific clinical variables a trained PX Doc can adjust when the scans are stuck — that conversation happens at the practitioner level, but parents should know that those tools exist.

“So often, what we think is happening during a plateau or regression is actually the exact opposite. What looks like we need to back off is usually the signal to push forward with more nervous system support.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my child’s behavior get worse during chiropractic care?

When a child is under Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care and things appear to worsen, it usually means healing is working — not failing. The brain and nervous system have limited energy to distribute. When healing, growth, immune challenges, or detoxification demand more energy, the nervous system temporarily deprioritizes emotional and behavioral regulation. This is called neuroplasticity at work. According to Dr. Tony Ebel, this “whack-a-mole” pattern is expected and is most common in children between ages 2 and 12.

How do I know if my child is actually regressing or just hitting a healing plateau?

The most reliable indicator is the INSiGHT Scan results from your PX Docs practitioner. Scans often show objective neurological improvement during periods when behavior and symptoms look externally worse. If the scans are improving while symptoms fluctuate, that is a healing plateau — not a regression. True regression tends to be accompanied by plateaued scan data as well. Your PX Doc is trained to distinguish the two and adjust care accordingly.

Should we reduce chiropractic care when our child is sick or going through a growth spurt?

No — and this is the most common mistake. According to Dr. Tony Ebel, the clinical response to a plateau or regression is to increase the frequency of adjustments, not reduce them. During a growth spurt, illness, or seasonal shift, the nervous system is more subluxated and dysregulated than usual and needs more neurological support. Reducing care at this moment is equivalent to backing off the gas mid-gear-shift — it grinds the transmission.

Can toxins and heavy metals cause a plateau six months into care?

Yes. Dr. Tony Ebel explains that a dysregulated, subluxated nervous system doesn’t perceive toxins, heavy metals, or pathogens — so it can’t eliminate them. Once Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care has strengthened the nervous system (typically 90–180 days in), the nervous system initiates detoxification independently. This process creates temporary worsening of symptoms — dark circles, behavioral irregularity, apparent regression — but is actually a sign the nervous system is now strong enough to do the work it couldn’t before.

What should I do if my child seems overwhelmed by too many therapies?

Pause some interventions temporarily and let the nervous system stabilize before reintroducing them. Dr. Tony Ebel recommends focusing on nervous system regulation first — tracked through INSiGHT Scans — until the child is out of sympathetic overdrive and into parasympathetic regulation. Once stable, therapies like PT and speech therapy can be reintroduced and will be far more effective. The sequence matters: nervous system first, everything else builds on that foundation.

Where can I find a chiropractor trained in this approach?

Find a PX Docs practitioner in your area who is trained in Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care using the PX Docs Directory. These practitioners are specifically trained to identify and navigate plateaus and regressions using INSiGHT Scans, clinical assessment, and the protocols Dr. Ebel covers in this episode.

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