Children

How Can CranioSacral Therapy Help My Child?

There are many challenges children encounter in their body during all stages of development. CranioSacral Therapy can be extremely beneficial in your child's health and wellness. Because of a child's continuing development, their bodies are extraordinarily accepting of bodywork.

Each individual session can provide your child with invaluable benefits: increased calmness, better focus, improved sensory integration...Each additional session will strengthen and improve these outcomes to help create a lifetime of wellness for your child.

CranioSacral can address

When CranioSacral Therapy is utilized early it can potentially help relieve current symptoms of:

  • structural concerns, imbalances in their posture or movements

  • behavioral concerns

  • emotional concerns

  • lingering birth injuries/trauma

  • learning disabilities/developmental delays

  • chronic ear infections

  • reflex/digestive disorders

  • support through difficult stages of development

  • effects of trauma (physical and emotional)

  • assist with recovery (from surgery and substance

  • sleep issues

  • headaches

  • encopresis/enuresis

  • body dis-morphia

  • disabilities

CST can be used alone or combined with other early therapies and interventions.

Tongue Tie in children

If your infant or child was diagnosed with a tongue tie or you suspect they have one, CranioSacral Therapy can help.

Unfortunately many practitioners fail to recognize tongue tie properly leaving children with tongue ties throughout development and potentially into adulthood. If their tongue tie was recognized, and your child had a release, known as a frenectomy. Those releases can be incomplete or there may be a degree of reattachment, even if you did all the exercises recommended.

A release while often necessary, may not fully relieve the symptoms brought on by a tongue tie because there is more to the dysfunction than a tongue with limited mobility.

A tongue tie is a mid-line (center of the body) dysfunction. Mid-line dysfunction begins at the brain and runs through the entire mid-line of the body. Therefore the restrictions can also run throughout the mid-line of the body causing multiple forms of dysfunction. Therefore more bodywork is often recommended to release those restrictions.

Neurodevelopmental Disorders: i.e. Autism Spectrum, ADHD, and Sensory Processing

The science behind these conditions suggest some degree of compression and inflammation. CranioSacral therapy has demonstrated success is treating consequences of inflammation of the brain and cranial nerves. In a recent international research study on the benefits of using CST with ASD

  • A majority of participants reported measurable changes begin to to emerge within 1-5 sessions after beginning CST

  • The top three areas of evaluated change in behavior following CST were general behavior, sensory reactions, and social.

  • Participants also reported improvements in cognitive skills, communication, emotional stability, and biological functions.

Information on ASD, ADHD, & SPD, Upledger Productions. Discover CranioSacral Therapy for Autism Spectrum. SDHD, and Sensory Processing Disorders, Upledger Productions, 2017-2018. www.upledger.com

What does a therapy session look like for my child?

The first aspect of a session with your child is always safety and consent. For this reason the session may begin a few different ways. The therapist may start by asking if the child knows why they are there, talking to the child for a little bit about things that interest them, talking about how the child feels in their body. The session may look like play at the beginning as well while the therapist establishes a rapport with you child.

Depending on the age of your child the therapist, child, and parent/guardian will then find what works best for them for therapy. Children, depending on their age and ability, may sit on a surface, such as a massage table or the therapy room floor, while parent/guardian reads some books to them or plays with some quiet & calming toys. The child may take breaks and/or change locations if necessary. Other children may be comfortable laying on a surface, such as a massage table, for the entire sessions with fewer to no breaks. The child's location and position during therapy is largely based on their comfort and cooperation.

In a CranioSacral session the therapist will apply light pressure to your child's body in various places to assess the subtle rhythms in their body. The comfort of you and your child are paramount, therefore, the therapist will continually explain and ask for consent throughout the session.

In some instances the child will cry or whine while they are working through a release or unwinding. This is normal and we do not label this as distress. However, CranioSacral Therapy is often very calming and the child may even fall asleep during a session.

The session is an hour in length though the therapist might not work that entire hour. Instead they will generally work in intervals to allow for rest periods, stretch breaks, restroom breaks, etc for the child, and parent education.

How many sessions will it take?

How many sessions will depend on your child’s system, the symptoms they are presenting, and the desired outcome. While it is possible considerable change can be achieved in one session, it often takes several sessions over time to achieve desired outcomes.