Solution for motor development of your child

During my 20 years of practice of working with children who have problems with motor development, I came across a lot of reading materials from different kinds of authors. Most of them cover motor development during all stages of life and are written for “college professors” who are able to understand these issues on a scientific level. I have recently discovered a “small treasure” for parents. Jan P. Piek wrote a first text that concentrates on motor development during infancy - the stage in which the greatest qualitative changes in the life span occur.

I just had to write a short review of it for you. When I say You, I mean parents, because language used in this book is so simple that you can easily understand it even if you are not a health professional or researcher. When I say You, I also mean students, professionals and researchers, because this book is what You need to get  the whole picture about child’s motor development.

Topic of this book is Infant Motor Development and the author mentioned above is a associate professor at the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. It integrates information from a variety of disciplines to encourage a broad understanding of infant motor development.

This book brings 3 main solutions:

1. If You can see that Your child is different in some way from the other children. This book tells where exactly You need to look so you can see what is wrong with child’s motor development.

2. Book teaches You how to test child’s abilities and confirm or discard your doubts. These tests answer questions like what child can/cannot do and than lets You compare the results with child’s motor development milestones.

Topics included: posture, stability, balance, and orientation; manual control of reaching and grasping; locomotor control of creeping and walking; the unique difficulties faced by premature infants; and an examination of two disabilities with devastating consequences to motor control: cerebral palsy and Down syndrome.

3. This book teaches You how to stimulate undeveloped motor abilities of Your child. I noticed that Jan gave more than a few really simple and practical solutions that I myself have started using in my daily practice.

Infancy is a period in which You can do the most for your child because of high plasticity of brain in its course!

You will not regret reading it, and please leave comments here after, so we can all share positive experiences.

Read more here.

Reflexes

reflex arc

Reflexes are responses to stimuli without the participation of the will. If you are applying the same stimulus to the same receptors, reflex responses are the same.
Reflexes are very important for the diagnosis and localization of neurological lesions, as well as assessing the degree of maturity and development of the central nervous system.

Reflex arc consists of: receptor, afferent (sensitive) neuron, the inserted neuron, efferent (motor) neuron and effector (muscle or gland). If the reflex arc interrupted at any level of the reflex reaction is missing.

Reflexes are divided into the four groups:

1.     Surface or eksteroceptive (reflexes of the skin or mucous membranes);

2.     Deep, proprioceptive (receptors in the muscle-spindle neuromuscular);

3.     Vegetative or interoceptive (visceral or organic-receptors in internal organs)

4.     Postural (receptors in the vestibule of the semicircular canals, utrikulus and sakulus; retina, and kinesthetic receptors: muscle spindle, Golgi tendon…).

Others  pathological reflexes important for neurological diagnosis and neurodevelopment.
Types of reflexes are: Conditional and unconditional, depending on whether they are caused by conditional or unconditional stimuli.

Tendon reflexes are called proprioceptive, because the receptor (muscle spindle) and effector in the same organ. Physiological basis of this reflex is a reflex contraction of muscle strength.
Direct muscular reactions are pseudo-reflexes, because muscle in response to a direct appeal.
According to the central level of representation reflexes are divided into: spinal, bulbar and mezencefalne or cerebral.

Muscle tone

hypotonia

Tone of skeletal muscle occurs so that the alpha-emitting fibers continuously rare impulses. Tone is increased when pulse frequency increases, and decreases when the frequency drops.

Alpha-motoneuron in the anterior horn continuously emits pulses, it is facilitated by sensitive impulsia from muscle spindles (charm) – when the muscle stretch then increase the frequency of pulse and tone increases, and vice versa. So the basic tone of skeletal muscle was largely achieved because of the feedback on the spinal level.

But the tone is controlled and supraspinalno through “gamma-efferent system. About 31% of motor fibers are gamma fibers. Thanks to this system (“gamma loop”) muscle spindle is “calibrated” (changing its length since the gamma-fibers ending in the contractile part of the spindle), or changes its sensitivity to tension and thereby controls and adjusts the degree of contraction regardless of the size load against which the muscle works (steering mechanism).

Stimulation of “gamma-system” is carried by the pulses from the activation section of the reticular formation, cerebellum, basal ganglia and the cerebral cortex.

Motor regulation

Motor system moves the body as a whole and individual parts of the body, serves to maintion of balance and attitude that is opposition to gravity and other external forces. All movements other than those controlled by the vegetative nervous system (smooth muscles of internal organs) are carried out by the contraction of cross-striped muscle.

conditioned reflex

Different neural levels are participating in the regulation of motor functions.
Summarizing it should be noted that participate in the regulation of motor complex hierarchical integrated neurofunctional systems: spinal-muscle system (level), extrapyramidal system, pyramidal system, the cerebellum and the highest, only partially defined level – ideation and psychomotor initiation, praxis, conscious and unconscious control and memory.

All motor systems (levels) appear in the functional unity and dependent on sensitive information / sensory system.

Evolution of motor functions from simple to complex movements (actions) is repeated during the maturation of motor function during the life of human. Newborn already has a simple spinal reflexes and brain stem reflexes. During the first weeks more complex postural reflexes are appearing, and the maturity of comissural structure of cortex allows you to perform activities that require motor coordination sensors – catching and grabbing.

In order to perform isolated movements, the beginning of the contraction of the main drivers must be accompanied by relaxation or contraction dosage agonists and synergists, and fixation of proximal limb muscles. Although the movements used stereotypes and automated movement schemes that are integrated at a lower level (basal ganglia), and targeted for voluntary movements are essential to higher levels of integration (cerebral cortex, the visual system).

Learn to Cope Up With Cerbal Palsy

Cerbal palsy is a disease in which many parts of the body are affected. With cerbal palsy comes many chronic disorders that impair motor skills and normal bodily functions. The reason this disease occurs is due to defective development or damage to the motor part of the brain. You will find that people with cerbal palsy have trouble writing, using scissors or eating because their motor skills are very limited. Another part of cerbal palsy makes it difficult to maintain balance and sudden, involuntary movements are common. It also hinders ones ability to walk and/or run.


Unfortunately, people that have cerbal palsy also are affected by other disorders, like seizures or brain damage. Signs of cerbal palsy will usually start to show up in children before the age of three. Infants with this disease are very slow in their development and don’t learn to smile, crawl, sit or walk at the expected ages.

Cerebral Palsy

To determine if a child has cerbal palsy, doctors will administer a series of tests on motor skills and reflexes. They will also look into medical history of the family and use other tests to ensure they are 100% correct in their diagnosis.

There isn’t one common treatment that is known to work for all those that have been afflicted with cerbal palsy. Instead, speech, physical and behavioral therapy is used in different ways on different people. There are also braces that help balance people out and drugs to help control involuntary muscle movements.

There isn’t a cure as of yet for cerbal palsy but scientists are working hard at developing one. Due to the extensive knowledge of this disease and the medical research, people with cerbal palsy can lead pretty normal lives. Learning to cope with this disease can be hard but it’s best to accept the things you cannot change and if you do this, you will be a stronger and wiser person for it.

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