The answer is easy: the earlier the better! I received my first adjustment at the age of 6. And immediately after my first adjustment I could take a full breath into my lungs. At this point, I thought that I was just as every other kid around me. One thing I didn’t know that I never took a whole breath into my lungs. Even as a child I realized it was late enough.
Today, more and more parents are bringing their children to the chiropractor. Children receive tremendous benefit from chiropractic care.
Many times, we will get a call from a parent that goes something like this: “My friend has been bringing her baby with colic to the chiropractor and she said it has helped. My child has constipation, can chiropractic help?”
Yes, chiropractic can help. We have seen many children with childhood conditions like colic, bedwetting, asthma, allergies, digestive troubles respond well to chiropractic care and many other conditions that you can think about. However, chiropractic care is not a treatment for these conditions. The objective of chiropractic care is to find and correct spinal misalignments. Spinal misalignments can exist in infants and children just as they can exist in adults.
Why should kids get checked for spinal misalignments?
Because spinal misalignment puts strain and stress on the nervous system.
A healthy nervous system free of strain and stress is essential because the nervous system controls and coordinates every function of the body, including healing and repair. Therefore, a spinal misalignment can diminish and decrease a child’s ability to express optimal function and optimal health. Every parent I have ever met wants their child to be fully healthy, expressing their fullest life potential. Chiropractic aims to keep the spine and nervous system optimized and healthy. In this respect, chiropractic works for infants and children just as it does for adults.
How does an infant or child get spinal misalignments?
In children, there are numerous ways that spinal misalignments can occur and often time they go undetected because the child will not usually complain of pain like an adult does.
Most commonly, spinal misalignments exist in infants and children because of a traumatic birthing experience. Often, a spinal misalignment can occur from an accident or fall, such as fall from the change table, sitting in front of the PC, poor reading, poor sleeping posture, recreational activities, sports and etc. Regardless of how a spinal misalignment develops in a child, a spinal misalignment poses a health risk to children just as it does to adults. Therefore, a chiropractic pediatric check-up is essential even if the child has no symptoms.
A chiropractic pediatric check-up will include a complete health history from the child’s birth to present, a posture evaluation and a chiropractic spinal assessment.
Chiropractic techniques are modified to accommodate the pediatric spine making chiropractic care for infants and children safe, gentle and effective.
In our family chiropractic practice, we have noticed that there are 3 common ways that parents discover chiropractic for their children.
1. Parents are informed about the necessity of a chiropractic check-up by the chiropractor.
2. They do research online about pediatric chiropractic care. i.e. (www.icpa4kids.org)
3. They hear about chiropractic care by a friend who takes their child to the chiropractor.
Many people and many families enjoy the benefits that chiropractic care brings them. Have your children checked, and let other community members know about it. An optimal spine= optimal brain function= optimal health.
