More and more children are exhibiting behavior that is too immature for their age. They are not particularly motivated and seem to be somewhat lazy. They expect to get everything handed to them. They have poor diets and would be happy eating nothing but junk food. They’re captivated by the television and video games. They don’t think much about the future and are content under the comfortable wings of their parents. Turns out it’s all in the brain!
The brains of these children are refusing to grow up and express genes that will build the skills required to take on responsibility later in life. This whole brain immaturity means the brain and its neural networks are not getting proper and adequate stimulation for the brain to grow in timed sequence. This is what I refer to as The Peter Pan Problem.
Peter Pan was a naughty child who refused to grow up because he wanted to stay a little boy forever. He felt rejected by the adult world and would hide from adults so he didn’t have to interact with them. He took avoidance behavior to the extreme – not unlike what we are seeing today in children with immature brains.
We are seeing kids like this at our Brain Balance Achievement Centers more and more these days – where exceptional skills are not detected and instead we only see delay in both left and right hemispheric traits.
Development Milestones
One way to detect immaturity of the whole brain is by a close analysis of a child’s developmental milestones. For example, did your child crawl, walk, and talk on schedule? Did he have the natural movements expected in infancy and early childhood that you’ve seen in other children? Missed milestones often indicate something is not happening in the brain when it should.
Mixed Dominance
The side of the body your child favors to do such things as write, throw a ball, or look through a peephole can offer clues as to whether your child has a brain imbalance. If your child has mixed dominance, meaning she may favor her right hand, ear and eye but left foot, it is a sign of a brain imbalance and a big clue to an immature whole brain. Taking the Mixed Dominance Test on page 63 of my book Reconnected Kids will help you ascertain if your child’s brain has not completely inhibited its primitive reflexes which ultimately results in mixed dominance and can point to a brain imbalance or whole brain delay.
Primitive Reflexes
The motor coordination and the ability to walk and talk are driven by primitive reflexes – automated movements that require no thought. Each reflex plays a part in the necessary growth of the fetus an infant and prepares the way for the next state of development. As those primitive reflexes integrate, muscle movement and sensory stimulation prompt genes to build the brain and grow the neurons and connections that advance a child from one milestone to the next. If a child does not move enough to stimulate the genes to build the brain. the primitive reflexes will not will not become inhibited which can lead to whole brain delay or an imbalance of hemispheric traits.
If you suspect your child has whole brain delay, your family may benefit from The Brain Balance Program as outlined in my book Disconnected Kids and by setting family values and rules as outlined in my Family Empowerment Program as outlined in chapter 7 of Reconnected Kids.
