Attention, Focus and Concentration can be such a struggle for kiddos!
Parents if your kiddo has a “busy brain” this message is for you!
The Power of the Nervous System
It all starts with the nervous system. Whenever there’s a kiddo that is interpreting the environment around them, they’re doing that through their nervous system which essentially picks up everything from the environment – things like sensory, lighting, noise, and/or how their clothing feels on their body. All this input is coming from the environment around them. They’re picking up everything they’re feeling from their muscles, joints and bones and then that is sent up to the brain for organization and coordination.
If what’s coming into the brain is stressful, for example, if they’ve had an emotional day or didn’t get enough sleep, there’s going to be more stress in that sensory or muscular system. When there’s more stress, then all the information that’s coming up into our brain, isn’t going to be calm, easy or comfortable.
The brain is meant to organize all the information that comes in from the sensory or muscular side of it. When stress is coming in from the environment, naturally the output of it is going to be stressed out behaviors, such as lack of focus or being easily distracted. Basically when something isn’t neuro stimulating for them, they’re going to take their focus off of it immediately. This kind of output is called fight or flight.
Why Stress Comes Out As Physical Movement
Let me explain to you why this is so important for our kids. In years past the way our bodies were created was to deal with stress in a way that required movement. In historic times when there was more movement going on daily such as hunting, fishing, farming, doing more things non electronically, our body was meant to deal with stress by moving or even running away from it. Which is why our stress response is still really based on movement. So when our kids have to sit still and deal with that stress, it’s really hard because subconsciously their body is telling them to move and do everything you can to work through it physically. These days, our bodies often can’t do that.
When navigating these challenges, our goal isn’t to say we’ve got to find a better way to deal with all this stress coming in. The goal is to go all the way back and figure out how to calm the sensory system and calm the stress as it’s coming in so the organizer – the brain – doesn’t have to work so hard. When the brain doesn’t have to work as hard, then the body’s not in fight or flight in the first place.
That’s really what we work through with chiropractic adjustments and how we measure the nervous system. We figure out how to have less input coming in so the brain can organize better. Then the body can focus and kiddos can sit still, focus better and stay on task for longer periods of time.
In conclusion, yes, we can try to limit the stress coming in, but in cases where we cannot limit the stress, we need something that’s going to help push that physical stress down. That’s where chiropractic comes in because chiropractic allows movement into those muscles that are stuck or stressed. Once you add in that movement, the body is less likely to start the cycle and get into fight or flight.
Please check out our directory to find a PX Doc near you that would love to help your kiddos with focus challenges. It can make such a difference, not only in kids’ lives, but for us parents as well. Nothing is better than when our kids are succeeding and rocking it in school and at home.
