Developmental Delays in Children: The Neurological Root Cause Most Doctors Miss
Episode 125, Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: July 29, 2024 | Duration: ~13 min
Key Takeaways
- One in six children face developmental delays, yet the neurological root cause, nervous system stress that locks children in fight-or-flight mode, is rarely identified or addressed by pediatricians and early intervention specialists.
- Children cannot be in growth and development mode and protection mode at the same time; when a child’s nervous system is stuck in Sympathetic Dominance, developmental milestones across motor, speech, behavior, and social domains all suffer.
- The sequence or order of developmental milestones matters more than the exact age they’re hit, a child who skips crawling or struggles with sleep and digestion is likely to face challenges with behavior, socialization, and communication next.
- The Perfect Storm, a combination of maternal stress during pregnancy and birth interventions like forceps, vacuum extraction, C-section, or induction, is the most common and most overlooked trigger of neurological stress in developing children.
- Birth trauma injures the brainstem, upper cervical spine, and vagus nerve, the three structures that control virtually every aspect of child development, from motor tone and digestion to speech, behavior, and emotional regulation.
What Really Causes Developmental Delays in Children?
Developmental delays in children are not primarily caused by genetics, bad luck, or bad parenting. According to Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, the root cause in the vast majority of cases is neurological stress, specifically, a child’s nervous system becoming locked in Sympathetic Dominance (fight-or-flight mode) when it should be operating in growth and development mode. Because children cannot be in growth mode and protection mode simultaneously, a nervous system under chronic stress cannot allocate the resources needed for normal motor, cognitive, speech, and social development.
The primary drivers of this neurological stress are what Dr. Ebel calls The Perfect Storm: maternal stress and anxiety during pregnancy, followed by birth interventions such as forceps, vacuum extraction, C-section, or induction. These events directly injure the brainstem, upper cervical spine, and vagus nerve, the structures that control neuromotor tone, digestion, immune function, sensory processing, and communication. When these are compromised at or before birth, the child’s nervous system defaults to a state of sympathetic overdrive that blocks normal development.
For parents already in the world of therapies, PT, OT, speech, ABA, understanding this root cause explains why so many families hit a plateau. Therapy addresses the outputs of the problem (motor delays, speech delays, sensory challenges) but not the underlying neurological state driving all of them. Until the nervous system is identified, assessed, and addressed at the root level, the plateau remains.
The Hidden Crisis: Why 1 in 6 Children Face Developmental Delays [00:00 – 03:59]
Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP: Parents, is your child falling behind in developmental milestones? Maybe they’re struggling with motor skills. Speech isn’t coming along as expected, or their behavior, sensory, and social skills aren’t quite matching their peers. You’ve probably heard “Don’t worry, they’ll catch up” or “Don’t worry, they’ll grow out of it” from your conventional pediatrician.
But what if one in six children face developmental delays? And there’s a crucial piece of the puzzle that most doctors and even therapists are missing.
What we see every single day in practice is something we call The Perfect Storm, a combination of early life stressors that impacts your child’s developing brain and nervous system and gets it off track. From a highly stressful fertility or pregnancy journey to birth interventions like forceps, vacuum, induction, and C-section, there are a multitude of factors now proven to trigger developmental delays that traditional doctors and even most early intervention specialists fail to discuss and address appropriately with parents.
But not us. We know exactly what’s causing the rapid rise in developmental delays and chronically sick kids, and we know exactly how to address it at its root cause.
We’re going to break down the root cause of developmental delays far deeper than the pediatrician does, and maybe even deeper than your pediatric OT, PT, speech therapy, and developmental team does.
What happens for families when they enter the world of developmental delays is, first off, you have a lot of questions. You’re wondering: what’s going on? What’s causing this? Why did this happen? How do we get it back on track? Those last two questions are probably the most important, why is this happening, and what can we do?
It’s also really hard to make sense of everything when your child is experiencing developmental delays, troubles with walking, troubles with talking, troubles with their social-emotional development. It’s hard because you end up seeing multiple specialists once a developmental delay is identified, which unfortunately is often missed by standard pediatrician checkups. They often miss neurodevelopmental issues, especially sensory processing and motor development delays, for months before identifying them and making a referral.
The Therapy Plateau: Why Families Get Stuck Despite Doing Everything Right [00:04:00 – 05:59]
Dr. Tony Ebel: What I hear all the time in our clinic when taking a case history: “We have physical and motor challenges and we’re working with a PT team and we’ve seen some changes, but we’re not all the way there yet. We have speech and communication challenges, and we’re seeing some changes, but we’re kind of stuck. We’re at a plateau. We have sensory stuff, meltdowns, tantrums, behavioral issues, and we’re in therapy for them, but we’re stuck.”
That plateau is the key signal. Therapy is addressing the outputs of the problem, but not the root neurological cause driving all of them.
“Developmental delays are not just bad luck. The vast majority of the time, there is something beyond genetics.”
True genetic neurological disorders, trisomy 18, Down syndrome, muscular challenges, absolutely exist and will increase or guarantee developmental delays for those children. But we’re talking about the much larger group of children where development has gone off track for reasons that can be identified and addressed.
The reason so many kids have developmental delays today often starts way before the delay actually shows up, before they skip crawling, before they’re delayed in walking, before we expect them to be talking.
Sequence Over Timeline: Why the Order of Development Matters More Than Age [00:06:00 – 08:59]
Dr. Tony Ebel: I want to add one important point here: it’s not just the season or the space on the calendar that a child should be doing certain things. As parents, we really love that word “should”, they should be doing X, Y, and Z. But what I really want to draw your attention to is the sequence or the order with which a child develops.
When you truly know neurodevelopment and neurodevelopmental biology like we do, you know that it’s not just where they are on the calendar that matters, but what order they go in, the proper sequence for brain and overall health development.
Every kid is different. Your child might have been born early, or might have had a traumatic birth, we’ll break that down next as the most overlooked, under-identified cause of developmental delays in kids. Maybe they’re huge. Maybe you had a ten-pound baby with an oversized head trying to figure out how to walk with a bowling ball on top of their neck. That absolutely matters. I’ve been in the busiest pediatric chiropractic practice in the world for 15 years specializing in this, and bigger, taller, heavier kids take longer to go through their developmental and motor milestones. That’s not a red flag, that’s physics.
“The sequence or order with which your child develops is a bigger deal than when they hit these milestones.”
If your child skipped crawling, if your child is not sleeping, if your child has digestive challenges, if your child’s immune system is a mess, they will have challenges with what comes next: behavioral regulation, emotional regulation, socialization, communication. These things will be a challenge for a child who missed or was significantly delayed on earlier milestones.
Growth vs. Protection Mode: The Core Neurological Conflict [00:09:00 – 09:59]
Dr. Tony Ebel: Let’s really break down what triggers developmental delays. It’s not genetics, it’s not bad luck. And parent to parent, please lean back in your chair, give yourself a big hug and a high five, and know this: it’s not bad parenting either.
This is not supposed to be your specialty. You’re not supposed to be able to do a developmental assessment and neurological examination on your child and identify every issue. You weren’t supposed to know that stress and anxiety during your pregnancy, or a forceps, vacuum, C-section, or induction birth, could significantly trigger neurological stress that moves a child’s nervous system into fight-or-flight protection mode.
You probably didn’t take as many seminars and neurological courses as I did to learn this phrase, which really brings this whole discussion together:
“You can’t be in growth and protection at the same time.”
Our children are supposed to be massively in growth and development mode in those first many weeks, months, and especially the first three, five, and seven years. The number one thing that gets them off track and leads to developmental delays is when they’re stuck in what’s called a sympathetic fight-or-flight neurological storm.
The Perfect Storm: How Maternal Stress and Birth Interventions Trigger Developmental Delays [00:10:00 – 10:59]
Dr. Tony Ebel: We call this The Perfect Storm because so often when we take a case history, it looks like this:
The mother was stressed out, anxious, crazy busy, maybe a high-risk pregnancy during the fertility or pregnancy journey. So her nervous system was stuck in fight-or-flight, shifted into Sympathetic Dominance. And the child and mom share that umbilical cord. That’s the power cord. That’s the neurological connection. Baby is a hitchhiker on mom’s nervous system during that developmental phase.
The second biggest trigger we find consistently in case histories of children with developmental delays is birth trauma. Birth interventions, forceps, vacuum, C-section, and induction, wreak havoc on the areas of the neck, the brainstem, and the upper cervical spine that control neuromotor tone and coordination. Motor milestones are crucial for development, and those milestones are built on a neurological foundation that starts right here.
“You weren’t supposed to know that stress and anxiety during your pregnancy and an induction, a forceps, vacuum, or C-section could significantly trigger neurological stress.”
The Vagus Nerve Connection: How Birth Trauma Controls Development, Behavior, and Communication [00:11:00 – 12:13]
Dr. Tony Ebel: This nerve called the vagus nerve is so easily and often injured during birth interventions. That injury can lead to torticollis, plagiocephaly, chronic ear infections, colic, constipation, and eczema, but the vagus nerve also controls digestive and immune health development.
And finally, the vagus nerve is a sensory nerve to our eyes, our ears, and our mouth. The vagus nerve, and all of this air traffic control that is governed in the upper cervical area and injured by birth interventions and birth trauma, also controls socialization, emotional and behavioral regulation, and communication and word formation.
Everything with development is controlled in the brainstem and the upper cervical spine and the vagus nerve. When that’s injured, when it’s dysfunctional, what we call subluxated, everything shifts into sympathetic dominance. The child gets stuck. They’re in fight-or-flight protection mode and can’t spend enough time in growth and development mode, which looks like sleep, proper digestion, strong immune function, good motor tone and coordination, and then speech, communication, socialization, behavioral and emotional regulation, and later on, cognition.
Finding that root cause, and then fixing it, is how we get these kids back on track to exactly how they were designed: meeting, surpassing, and exceeding their potential.
Frequently Asked Questions
What actually causes developmental delays in children?
In the vast majority of cases, developmental delays are not caused by genetics or bad luck, but by neurological stress that locks a child’s nervous system in Sympathetic Dominance (fight-or-flight mode). When a child’s nervous system is in protection mode, it cannot simultaneously be in growth and development mode, which disrupts every developmental domain: motor skills, speech, behavior, immune function, and digestion.
Can birth trauma cause developmental delays?
Yes. According to Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, birth interventions, including forceps, vacuum extraction, C-section, and induction, directly injure the brainstem, upper cervical spine, and vagus nerve. These structures control neuromotor tone, coordination, digestion, sensory processing, speech, and emotional regulation. Injury to this area at birth is one of the most common and most overlooked triggers of developmental delays.
Why is my child stuck at a therapy plateau despite doing OT, PT, and speech?
Therapy addresses the outputs of the problem, motor delays, speech delays, sensory challenges, but not the underlying neurological state driving all of them. According to Dr. Tony Ebel, until a child’s nervous system is assessed and supported at the root level, therapy results often plateau. The missing piece is identifying and addressing nervous system dysregulation caused by birth trauma or prenatal stress.
Does the order of developmental milestones matter as much as the timing?
More, actually. Dr. Tony Ebel emphasizes that the sequence of development matters more than hitting milestones at specific ages. A child who skips crawling, struggles with sleep, or has digestive problems is likely building on a compromised neurological foundation, which sets the stage for challenges with behavior, socialization, and communication that follow later.
What is the Perfect Storm and how does it relate to developmental delays?
The Perfect Storm is Dr. Tony Ebel’s framework describing how two compounding stressors, maternal stress during pregnancy (which puts the mother’s nervous system in Sympathetic Dominance, shared neurologically with the developing baby) and birth interventions, create a cascade of neurological dysfunction that leads to developmental delays. It’s called a “storm” because neither stressor alone fully explains the severity; together, they compound the neurological impact.
Where can I find a chiropractor who specializes in neurologically-focused pediatric care?
The PX Docs Directory lists neurologically-focused pediatric chiropractors trained in Dr. Tony Ebel’s clinical approach. These practitioners use INSiGHT Scans to assess nervous system function and provide Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care as a drug-free, root-cause approach to supporting children with developmental delays and other chronic challenges.
Resources & Related Content
- Developmental Delays & The Perfect Storm, PX Docs overview of the Perfect Storm framework
- Birth Trauma in Children, How birth interventions affect the developing nervous system
- Vagus Nerve Dysfunction in Children, The vagus nerve’s role in development, behavior, and immune health
- Autism & Neurological Root Causes, Related episode and condition page for families navigating ASD
- Find a PX Docs Office Near You, PX Docs Practitioner Directory
- Next Episode: Q&A: How to Best Advocate for Your Child in Medical Decision Making (and High-Stress Hospital Visits)