My son Quinn couldn’t stop wiggling. What was going on?
As we walked home from school, my son Quinn suddenly bent double, raised one leg and flapped his arms like a chicken.
Not for the first time, I wondered how he would cope at secondary school…
As a toddler, Quinn had either rubbed his cheek or flapped his hands whenever he was excited. By seven, he’d developed what we called his ‘wiggle’.
Now, aged nine, the movements were bigger and more frequent. At the supermarket and on the school run it was almost continuous.
‘It feels good,’ he’d say if
I asked why he did it.
And sometimes, he’d add: ‘I can’t help it.’
At his primary school, most kids accepted Quinn. But I feared he’d have a tougher time at secondary.
He was spending more time alone and struggling to concentrate in lessons.
The special educational needs co-ordinator at Quinn’s school couldn’t explain why he was struggling, and neither could his GP.
I saw countless experts but no one could help or tell me the root cause.
Then, googling for answers one day, I found myself on a website for teens with autism.
They were all talking about their ‘stims’, which is short for self-stimulatory behaviour. Although Quinn didn’t show any other signs of autism, I had a name for his wiggle at last!
Searching more, I learnt that stims were connected to an area of the brain that controls motor movement being underdeveloped.
Around the same time, I was looking at a secondary school for Quinn, and the head teacher mentioned an organisation called EVO Brain Body Mind. That was where I heard about retained ‘primitive reflexes’ in children with developmental delays.
It turns out, all babies have primitive reflexes which help with everything from finding their way out of the birth canal to breastfeeding. Once no longer needed, the brain normally inhibits these automatic impulses.
In some children, however, the reflexes remain active. American research has linked them to various developmental disorders.
It’s thought, however, that the brain can be rebuilt by going through the stages that had been missed.
Quinn was assessed by EVO’s founder and given a movement programme, while I signed up for a training course on primitive reflexes.
For five months, Quinn followed the programme, doing various exercises for 10 minutes, three times a day.
Amazingly, it wasn’t long before his wiggle started disappearing. His teachers reported that he was more focused in lessons and his coordination had improved.
Nine months on, the difference in Quinn, now 10, is incredible.
I’m desperate to tell other parents what I’ve learnt, so I’ve started a podcast —
My Mighty Quinn — where I tell our story and speak
to experts.
When I finally learnt why Quinn wiggled, everything fell into place.
By Lucia Silver, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire