Neurobehavioral disorder is an umbrella of neurologically-based conditions that affect a child’s social interaction, and her/her ability to learn a physical or cognitive skills. A very common condition is ADD/ADHD, attention deficit (hyperactivity) disorder, which affect a child’s ability to stay focused and paying attention, memorize information, following instructions, difficulty to control his/her behavior, and hyperactivity. Other common conditions are dyslexia, sensory processing disorder and autism spectrum disorder. Those conditions affect people of all ages, but the most vulnerable persons are children and adolescents, when the brain is not completely mature yet. Not only those deficits can obviously affect a child’s academics, it can also interfere the relationship with family and friends. It is sometimes hard to find out that a child is suffering from a neurobehavioral disorder, because many times the child will be as smart or even smarter than the average, but at the same time won’t be able to perform some specific tasks or will give the impression of being bored or inattentive.
Causes
There can be several causes that lead to neurobehavioral disorders, as well as many environmental aggravating factors, which leads to imbalance in the central nervous system, ultimately causing altered mental and motor coordination. Control and timing of our body movement is directly connected with our ability to lean, to read, to speak, and to behave. For instance, speech requires a good motor control of our tongue, throat and lips muscles. The ability to track correctly with our eyes is necessary if we want to be able to read, and writing requires a good eye-hand coordination. In the other hand, our brain is responsible to integrate the different input that we receive from the environment through our different senses, such as vision, sounds, or touch. When our brain doesn’t integrate those different sensory input, it won’t provide in return the appropriate response, which will result to abnormal behavior. An interesting way to evaluate a child’s motor response is through the primitive and postural reflexes, which if dysfunctional will indicate that some neural connections are altered.
Treatment
Very often, a child will suffer from more than just one neurobehavioral disorder, however they will commonly be labeled with a specific condition and will be given the corresponding medication. Most of the time this will help by giving a better outcome in the child’s behavior, but it is important to be aware that medication is often associated with undesirable side-effects and moreover it is not treating the problem at its roots. There is however more and more scientific evidences that a child suffering of a neurobehavioral disorder can improve his/her capability and reach full potential without the use of medication but simply by rebalancing the brain using simple motor rehabilitative methods.
In our clinic, we specialize on restoring brain function using reflex integration and visual motor coordination techniques. We also focus on identifying the possible inflammatory or toxic factors that might contribute to aggravate the child’s behavior. Regardless of the condition or the label given, we evaluate the brain’s functional state and address the deficits to help your child reach full potential.
