Today’s episode is answering a question that we received from a student inside of our Primitive Reflex Digital Course. This person is an OT working in the schools and wants to know if it’s beneficial to complete primitive reflex exercises once or twice a week. We chat about the pros and cons, as well as other ways to incorporate primitive reflexes into the classroom.
Today’s episode is answering a question that we received from a student inside of our Primitive Reflex Digital Course. This person is an OT working in the schools and wants to know if it’s beneficial to complete primitive reflex exercises once or twice a week. We chat about the pros and cons, as well as other ways to incorporate primitive reflexes into the classroom.
Can you have your students lay on their stomachs when they're practicing their handwriting instead of sitting at the desk, which in their classroom, they might be sitting at their desk more. But for their OT session, you can switch it up and get them in prone so they're working on their primitive reflexes in prone. Have them do the activities on the scooter board, to use the scooter board to go find a letter to write, and really implementing these exercises into like the handwriting or the visual activities that they need to be working on. I mean, along with completing the actual integration exercises, if possible, can make a huge difference.
Rachel:
I'm Rachel.
Jessica:
And I'm Jessica. And this is All Things Sensory by Harkla.
Rachel:
We are both certified occupational therapy assistants and together with Harkla, we are on a mission to empower parents, therapists and educators to help raise confident and strong children of all abilities.
Jessica:
On this podcast, we chat about all things sensory, diving into special needs, occupational therapy, parenting, self care, overall health and wellness and so much more.
Rachel:
We're here to provide raw, honest and fun strategies, ideas and information for parents, therapists and educators as well as other professionals to implement into daily life.
Jessica:
Thank you so much for joining us. Before we jump into today's episode, we want to let you know that our Holiday Sensory Survival Guide is on sale right now through Christmas. And this is something that we've had on sale for the last couple of years during the holiday season because it provides you with some tips, tricks and strategies to just get through the holiday season.
Rachel:
There are over 35 pages in this survival guide and they include things like road trips survival activities and strategies, holiday picky eating, our gift guide, our modified gift guide it's not like a huge ones like our sensory gift guide. We provide you with a holiday season sensory diets, visual schedule template, because we are obsessed with visuals. How to use sensory diets and visual schedules, sensory diets for when you're traveling, which is what I'm going to be using quite often this holiday season, holiday traditions, low talks, holiday ideas, you know surviving holiday parties, and we also share 10 tips for sensory friendly holidays. So lots and lots of information is included in this survival guide PDF document that you have access to forever. It is $5. You can head to the link in our show notes and check it out.
Jessica:
One more quick thing that we want to let you know about before we jump into today's episode, we are having one final sale of the holidays and this sale is for our digital products. You will save 20% off when you shop our digital courses December 15 through December 22, 2023. I mean, this is our last sale of the year of 2023.
Rachel:
If you missed the physical product sale and you're like crap, I didn't get a gift for so and so then you can get them a digital product because what better Christmas gift than getting something that you can't open and you can't see. But the information is actually really helpful and it's probably a better gift anyways because.
Jessica:
The gift of education. Not one of our courses.
Rachel:
Exactly. it is so good. It's so helpful. I love it. If anyone wants to gift me a course feel free. No. With that being said, save 20% The link is in the shownotes. If you have questions don't hesitate to reach out, but Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Thank you for being here. Let's listen to today's episode. Hey there, welcome back to All Things Sensory by Harkla. We are happy to have you here today for another episode.
Jessica:
Today we are talking about a question that we got from one of our digital courses. It's our primitive reflex course. If you don't know about it, we have a course about primitive reflexes and we teach you what primitive reflexes are. We teach you why they're important. We teach you how to test for retained primitive reflexes as well as how to integrate them. And there are three different purchase options. There's purchase options for parents, for teachers and educators as well as our AOTA continuing education course option for occupational therapist and occupational therapy assistants. So if it's something you're interested in learning more about we will link it in the show notes. One of the great things about this course is that our course members, the people who've purchased the course, have the ability to ask questions inside of the course and then we get notified and we can go in there and answer. So we got this question and we thought it was a really great question. I wanted to talk about it on the podcast.
Rachel:
Because we love talking about primitive reflexes.
Jessica:
And this is just a really great question.
Rachel:
Yes. Okay. So the question is, I love your digital course and podcasts on primitive reflexes. Thank you. As an OT in the schools, I'm discovering how many of my students have retained reflexes. It's a large amount. Yes, thank you. There's so many. I am struggling to work on it. Sorry for the commentary. I'm struggling to work on the integration exercises every day as staff is limited. Of course, it's always is. And I myself can only commit to a max of twice per week with select students. Should I continue working on the exercises if the student is only able to complete them a few times per week?
Jessica:
Yes, absolutely. I think that even if you are only completing the exercises one time a week, there's still huge benefits. Oftentimes, this is what happens in therapy because carryover of primitive reflex integration is challenging. So even if you are in therapy or in the schools, and your students or clients are only doing these exercises one time a week, two times a week. Yes, it is still so so beneficial.
Rachel:
Couple of ideas. Could you teach your teachers some simple ways to implement primitive reflex integration into their teaching room, their teaching routine for all of their students? Because, like you mentioned, there's a large amount of kids, probably more who aren't actually on your caseload, but things like crawling around the room, working on crossing midline, doing windmills, laying on their tummy during circle time or while they're doing their work. Just some little changes that you can do can help all of the students work on primitive reflex integration.
Jessica:
If you have teachers who are on board with a quick three to five minute sensory break a couple times a day, you could teach them a quick sensory break routine that incorporates a lot of the movements for primitive reflexes. Things like the cat cow stretch, superman bananas, downward facing dog into cobra, like Rachel mentioned the windmills, cross crawls.
Rachel:
Inside of our primitive reflex course, we have a lot of tools that you could create for the teachers. So once you teach them a little bit about the reflexes, and you could make like a little key ring tool for them and you could print out some of the reflex integration sensory diet cards, and you could put them on a key ring and have the teacher go through them with all of the students a couple of times a day. Or you could have them do the primitive reflex yoga. There's a video that you could share with them. They could put the reflex yoga video on and do that once per day. That could be beneficial as well.
Jessica:
The other thing would be to talk to the PE teacher about including specific activities and exercises into the PE curriculum for all the students in the entire school. This is more towards elementary school for sure. If you are in like junior high or high school, can you talk to maybe some of the sports coaches about implementing some primitive reflex exercises into their warm ups? Or? Yeah, the sports coaches they think would be great, because oftentimes, the sports coaches are also teachers for the classes. So you can see if they can implement some of these things into their classroom and into their sports routines.
Rachel:
Could you teach the students to advocate for their needs with words or picture cards to complete the exercises daily. Easier said than done, but I feel like once a child understands that they're cognitively able to understand the benefit of these reflexes and how they can help them and build their brain up and you can work on that. And even if they aren't able to verbally say, hey, I need to do my exercises, we can maybe have a little button on their AAC device or we can have a little key ring for them attached to their lanyard with some different exercises that they can participate in. A lot of it is just like the visual reminder and having a little key ring or something like that with them, with any of these students that you're working with, could be really helpful. It is just like oh, right, I forgot we need to do these every day. So that visual is going to be a game changer because I feel like the out of sight out of mind with these is tough.
Jessica:
And when you're doing your OT session with your students, it's in the schools, it's very academic base so you're probably working on a lot of handwriting. Can you have your students lay on their stomachs when they're practicing their handwriting, instead of sitting at the desk? Which in their classroom, they might be sitting at their desk more, but for their OT session, you can switch it up and get them in prone So they're working on their primitive reflexes in prone. Have them do the activities on the scooter board to use the scooter board to go find a letter to write and really implementing these exercises into like the handwriting or the visual activities that they need to be working on. I mean, along with completing the actual integration exercises, if possible, can make a huge difference.
Rachel:
Absolutely. So really, it takes a little bit of creative thinking, some planning, and some prep, which in your already limited amount of time, I'm sorry, but it is going to be kind of difficult, but you can do it. So you you're in the course you're learning like we already know that you are an OT who's going above and beyond. and I just, I really appreciate that. I know your students really appreciate it. I And I think the other key takeaway here is to figure out wish every OT was taking our course and implementing these thing. Because he if you think about it, if every child was working on these reflexes and reflex integration, I feel like there was so many things that could be helped. ADHD and learning disabilities and like we mentioned, we're not fixing anything, but we're just helping the brain work as efficiently as possible. And I feel like this is just something that every child needs. how to get the teachers on board with implementing some of these exercises and movements for the entire class. So. Because every child needs these.
Jessica:
Yes.
Rachel:
And they're beneficial for everyone. If anything, they're just great movement breaks.
Jessica:
Yes.
Rachel:
And brain breaks.
Jessica:
So I think those are the two key takeaways. Yes, twice a week is still beneficial. Get the teachers on board. You can do it.
Rachel:
Okay, quick episode. Quicky, quicky. in and out, and on our way.
Jessica:
In and out.
Rachel:
We hope this was helpful. We will link the primitive reflex course in the show notes for you to check out. We hope you love it and we will plan on chatting with you next Wednesday.
Jessica:
Okay, bye.
Rachel:
Thank you so much for listening to All Things sensory by Harkla.
Jessica:
If you want more information on anything mentioned in the show, head over to Harkla.co/podcast to get the show notes.
Rachel:
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Jessica:
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Rachel:
Head to Harkla.co/sensory to use that discount code right now.
Jessica:
We are so excited to work together to help create confident kids all over the world. While we make every effort to share correct information, we're still learning.
Rachel:
We will double check all of our facts but realize that medicine is a constantly changing science and art.
Jessica:
One doctor or therapist may have a different way of doing things from another.
Rachel:
We are simply presenting our views and opinions on how to address common sensory challenges, health related difficulties, and what we have found to be beneficial that will be as evidence based as possible.
Jessica:
By listening to this podcast you agree not to use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or your child.
Rachel:
Consult your child's pediatrician or therapist for any medical issues that he or she may be having.
Jessica:
This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast.