"My Mighty Quinn" - From Tics, Turbulence, Distraction and Disconnection to Calm, Confident and Connected"

S2 Episode 2: A Mother's Conversations with World Leading Experts: "Ready or not for School?"... How Immaturity in Aspects of Physical Development impacts Learning, Emotional Wellbeing and Behaviour - with Sally Goddard Blythe

• Lucia Silver / Sally Goddard Blythe • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Sally Goddard Blythe, an expert in child development, discusses the importance of physical development, motor maturity, and primitive reflexes in children's learning and behaviour. She explains how social factors, changes in modern life and limited movement opportunities can contribute to learning struggles and behavioural issues in children.

Sally emphasises the need for a comprehensive approach that addresses the root causes of these challenges and provides individualised remediation. She shares success stories of children who have experienced improvements in confidence, academic performance, and social relationships through programs that focus on neuromotor development and reflex inhibition.

The conversation explores the convergence of medical, educational, and parental support in addressing neurodevelopment challenges in children. Sally Blythe discusses the implementation of a developmental movement program in schools and the research that supports its effectiveness. She also emphasises the need to establish what should be considered normal neuromotor skills in children and challenges the current paradigm of children's development.

Sally provides advice for overwhelmed parents and encourages them to pursue alternative paths for help. The importance of understanding the underlying problem and remaining curious and hopeful is highlighted. The conversation concludes with a focus on viewing children's development from a biological perspective and putting development back into education.

Key Takeaways:

  • Physical development and movement play a crucial role in children's learning and behaviour.
  • Social factors and limited movement opportunities can contribute to learning struggles and behavioural issues in children.
  • A comprehensive approach that addresses the root causes of these challenges is necessary for effective remediation.
  • Success stories demonstrate the positive impact of programs that focus on neuromotor development and reflex inhibition.

Sally Goddard Blythe resource Links:
Website: www.sallygoddardblythe.co.uk
Website: www.inpp.org.uk
Book: Reflexes, Movement, Learning & Behaviour
Instagram:  @sallygoddardblytheinpp

Resource Links:

My Mighty Quinn EP07

[00:00:00] Lucia Silver: Hello, dear devoted parents, carers and listeners. Today we are broadcasting the second in the podcast sub series of The Mighty Quinn, called A Mother's Conversations With World Leading Experts. And oh my goodness, do we have a wowser of a world expert for you today. You'll need to be patient as I have quite an introduction for this formidable woman.

[00:00:23] Lucia Silver: Sally Goddard Blythe is with us today. And with over 40 years experience in the field, she is one of, if not the, leading expert in the relationship between children's physical development, learning, and behaviour. And within this, how to spot if there is a problem, and then what to do about it. And by what to do about it, we are not talking about masking, medicating, or managing symptoms, but true to our motivation and passion at the brain health movement.

[00:00:53] Lucia Silver: I mean to first analyse and understand what the root cause of the problem is and then unblock them to allow our children to express their potential. As the Director of INPP, which is the Institute for Neuro Physiological Psychology. Sally has worked extensively with individual children and families in private practice and has developed a screening and intervention program for schools all around the world.

[00:01:19] Lucia Silver: She's written a brilliant array of books dealing with child development and specifically with neuro developmental delay, which we now refer to more as neuro developmental immaturity. Renamed as such in recognition of our exciting development in neuroplasticity and the brain's ability to adapt and change.

[00:01:39] Lucia Silver: As far back as 2009, Sally described behaviour. Immaturity as encompassing many learning and developmental issues. How immaturity in the functioning of the nervous system can interfere with a child's progress across a range of tasks. Simply, Sally says, behaviour. Immaturity is when the brain and the body do not communicate well because of the continued presence or underdevelopment of a cluster of primitive reflexes.

[00:02:09] Lucia Silver: Beyond the first six to 12 months of postnatal life. And as we've discussed across a whole range of our information the brain health movement, neuromotor immaturity can block learning and be a physical factor in underachievement in balance related anxiety disorders, movement, behaviour, and emotional problems and dysregulation.

[00:02:31] Lucia Silver: And over these 40 years of research, Sally has been asking critical questions such as. Why is our children's physical basis or physical foundation, so important for learning? How does neuromotor immaturity impact on learning, emotional well being and behaviour? How can this be identified and assessed?

[00:02:53] Lucia Silver: And what forms of remediation are possible with the inhibition of primitive reflexes, neuromotor training, sensory development, and of course, all important movement? And as many of our followers will know, I have seen an enormous transformation in Quinn through neuromotor maturity and primitive reflex focus work.

[00:03:13] Lucia Silver: So I am really looking forward to exploring with Sally the specific role she's seen in the development. and understanding of neurological challenges such as ADHD, ASD, tics, dyslexia and more. I have learnt so much from her extraordinary book which I have here, it's my bedside reading, Reflexes, Movement, Learning and Behaviour, which I can thoroughly recommend to our listeners.

[00:03:38] Lucia Silver: But another of Sally's books which I know she recommends above all others is raising happy, healthy children. This book examines what children and babies really need, looking at the crucial early years from a child's perspective. So I'd like to segway right there to welcome you, Sally, to my mighty quinn.

[00:04:00] Lucia Silver: Hello, how are 

[00:04:01] Sally Goddard Blythe: you? Hello, that's a hell of an introduction. So I'm very well and I'm delighted to be with you and yes, I feel quite small actually. 

[00:04:10] Lucia Silver: You're magnificent and we are so excited and privileged to have you and I mentioned that book as an introduction because I think it's a perfect place to start, What Children and Babies Really Need.

[00:04:21] Lucia Silver: So Sally, may I start with what do children and babies really need for healthy development? 

[00:04:27] Sally Goddard Blythe: We have the obvious things of shelter and warmth and nutrition and, of course, love. Love is, the all encompassing thing. But the thing that I think is often forgotten in our modern technological society is how important physical experience is.

[00:04:44] Sally Goddard Blythe: and social engagement is. That motor development takes place in the context of a social environment of being able to explore your environment, to play, to move, whether it's at school, whether it's at home and so on. And that we are part of the species of mammals and all mammals have a basic underlying need to move and to play in order to grow up into healthy adolescents and adults. So in a society where movement opportunities for children are becoming more and more restricted, it's easier to put them in front of gadgets to keep them mentally or cognitively amused. We are at risk of creating new generations of children with Not underlying neurological disorders, but immaturity in their motor development as a result of socioeconomic factors.

[00:05:39] Lucia Silver: It's terrifying as a starting point, and yes, it's so prevalent. Is this why you would say we're seeing such an increase in children struggling in the classroom with these delays, with ADHD and the collection of symptoms around autism and so called behavioural 

[00:05:55] Sally Goddard Blythe: issues? I think social factors are certainly contributing more than perhaps they did when I grew up or my children who are now in their 40s were growing up in as far as there is so much distraction in the general environment that It takes up to 15 minutes after our attention has been taken away from the task to get back into the same state of focused attention again.

[00:06:19] Sally Goddard Blythe: And as we know as adults, if you have pop ups coming up on your screen when you're trying to focus on something, you find yourself getting more and more distracted. And our children's world is actually a cacophony of this now. It's not just TV as it used to be when you know, 20, 30 years ago. It's gadgets, it's devices, it's things pinging, it's things constantly challenging your ability to focus your attention on a single thing.

[00:06:44] Sally Goddard Blythe: We have those sort of things. We have the fact that life for parents, I think, has changed a lot in the last 30 years, that the sort of economics of, and politics, means that more and more women, whether they want to or not. have to be in the workplace. That affects the course of their pregnancy in terms of the emotional stress that they undergo.

[00:07:06] Sally Goddard Blythe: It affects potentially how much time they spend with their child in the first one to three years of life. And although Nursery care can be absolutely excellent and it can make up for deficits when there are parental problems. There are differences, subtle differences, in that child's experience, how much one to one experience it has, how much conversation individual social engagement, physical engagement, and so on.

[00:07:33] Sally Goddard Blythe: So it's very difficult to pinpoint any individual factor, but I just think the changes in modern life are potentially contributing to a growth in these type of I'm not sure we should call them disorders. I think they are behaviours that are becoming more prevalent. 

[00:07:50] Lucia Silver: I quite agree. I quite agree with this disorders and what to call them.

[00:07:55] Lucia Silver: It's a very controversial area, but it feels to me so much like a collection of symptoms and behavioural struggles that are Reflections of dysregulation, reflections of imbalance, reflections of immaturity. And with that comes hope, actually. With that comes, rather than receiving a diagnosis that your child has ADHD, there is an open door to explore what might be absent, what might be immature, what might need a little bit more support.

[00:08:26] Lucia Silver: And we are seeing change in these children. It's not a definitive diagnosis, which therefore means there's nothing that can be done. There is. A lot that can be done when we come to understand what is really going on as far as the root cause is concerned. And with that, Sally, how do you think conventional Medicine, on the one hand, and mainstream education, it's a huge question, on the other is seeing the struggles that our children are facing.

[00:08:52] Lucia Silver: There's your qualified clinical empirical experience. What are they seeing this rise as? 

[00:09:02] Sally Goddard Blythe: I think the problem for medicine is that, certainly within the restrictions of say the health service in this country, is that their job is to look for pathology is to look for something caused by disease and for which science has proved that there is an effective treatment.

[00:09:18] Sally Goddard Blythe: Remedy. And if no clear pathology is present, in some ways that child or that family is no longer the problem of medicine. They become the problem of the other environments that they are functioning in, which in the case of most of the children we see is education. And so I call these children grey area children.

[00:09:38] Sally Goddard Blythe: They're not quite bad enough to have received a formal diagnosis. And if they have, it's not necessarily a diagnosis that falls neatly under the medical umbrella. If it does, it is often just in terms of assessment rather than intervention or treatment. And so they're passed over to education where teachers these days have a very minimal education in their training on children's physical development.

[00:10:06] Sally Goddard Blythe: And the role of physical development in supporting learning success, not learning potential, but actually achievement and learning outcomes. And so teachers recognize that there is a problem with a child, but they don't necessarily know what to do about it. They don't know how to identify what it is. And if they send it back to medicine says yes, we've had a look at this, but we can't find anything that We are going to work with either.

[00:10:31] Sally Goddard Blythe: And so these children simply fall through the net of services which should be in place to identify, assess, and then recommend. Effective remediation. Yes. 

[00:10:43] Lucia Silver: That, that, and therein begins another cycle, Sally. Formal medicine turns them away. It's not serious enough or you're not sick enough.

[00:10:51] Lucia Silver: Education receives them and can't some of the behaviour that presents in class. And then you're left with this idea for many parents where each day they're collecting a badly behaved child. Which in turn has another knock on effect affecting the child, affecting the parents, blame, guilt, where to apportion, was my child bad, and as we move on through this and we start to look at the impact of physical motor immaturity, primitive reflex retention in the classroom, and how it actually can impact a child's behaviour, it just makes my heart bleed, because there's no such thing as a bad child.

[00:11:27] Lucia Silver: There is only ever circumstances which explain what is going on. No child intends to be a pain in the butt. It just isn't. It just, I don't believe that's where we're at. So that's really what we're going to try and unpack together a little bit. So what in an ideal world, Sally, would these establishments need to do to support our children?

[00:11:49] Lucia Silver: How could the medical and education establishment do this differently? If we go 

[00:11:55] Sally Goddard Blythe: back to the 1980s, all, children at the time of rising five, just as they were going to school, all were assessed by a school medical officer who asked them to stand on one leg, hop to one end of the room, did a basic sight test and hearing test.

[00:12:11] Sally Goddard Blythe: And it was pretty primitive in terms of what they were looking at. And they would pick up some children with problems or some children who were just on the sort of borderline, again, the gray area children. But then they realized they didn't know what to do with the children who failed these preschool assessments.

[00:12:27] Sally Goddard Blythe: And so in their wisdom, they said, I know what we'll do. We'll phase out assessing these children. So whereas What are we going back? 1980s. Gosh, we're going back 40, nearly 50 years now. Whereas in those days, at least there was a recognition that this child may be entering school with some physical skills.

[00:12:47] Sally Goddard Blythe: less mature than other children and that they should be kept under observation to see if things could be done. Now, those children enter the school system with no clear picture of whether a child is physically ready or not. And so I know it's one of your later questions for me, but the whole area of physical readiness, again, is looking at outcomes and attainment of children.

[00:13:11] Sally Goddard Blythe: at the time of school entry, not looking at do they have the physical equipment and the physical tools in place to be able to succeed and learn effectively in the classroom. And to go back to what you're talking about a little bit in the previous question, behaviour is language. If we do not have the verbal language with which to express ourselves, our needs, our frustrations, our overload or whatever, all of us, whether we're children or adults, will regress back to demonstrate that sense of insecurity in the way that we react, in the way that we behave.

[00:13:49] Sally Goddard Blythe: And behaviour in children is so often seen as something that must be removed because it's antisocial, it's inappropriate or whatever. Instead of asking the question, what is that behaviour actually doing for that child? Because behaviour is often a form of self treatment, albeit So children who are constantly spinning are probably telling us something about the functioning of the balance or the vestibular system, which responds to different types of motion.

[00:14:16] Sally Goddard Blythe: And the type of stimulation they may be giving themselves may not be the right one to fix the underlying problem. But it's telling us that somewhere this system is not content, it's not happy, it wants something done that makes them feel better. And so in the whole area of behaviour, instead of saying we need to diagnose this child with a disorder, we need to put strategies in place to suppress behaviour, change behaviour, modify it or whatever, we need to be saying, what does that, what clue is that behaviour giving us?

[00:14:50] Sally Goddard Blythe: What do we need to look at to see if we can identify what underlies it? Are there things that we can do to help improve it? And if not, then maybe we have to look at things like behavioural modification, medication and so on. 

[00:15:06] Lucia Silver: This is music to my ears because I think it's all about Root causes and as our listeners will know from understanding my personal story with Quinn I was being told constantly that this wiggle this stim was something that was just was okay It was annoying and it was disruptive in class but that it would go away and if it didn't that as opposed to Being curious, why on earth would a child be moving this way?

[00:15:33] Lucia Silver: Why was the medical department, why was the educational department not asking this question? In fact, why weren't the teachers in Quinn's class asking why over a third of the class was having behavioural issues? Why aren't we asking why, is the sort of drum that I've been beating. And yes, exactly this.

[00:15:52] Lucia Silver: And let's go back a little bit now, Sally, if we may, to school readiness, motor maturity, primitive reflexes. Could you talk to us about what you mean by motor maturity and school readiness? Can we go back to basics, please? 

[00:16:08] Sally Goddard Blythe: I suppose in a nutshell, motor maturity means that a child's motor skills are commensurate with expectations for their chronological age.

[00:16:16] Sally Goddard Blythe: For example, there is a window of what is considered to be generally normal for a child learning to walk unaided. Anything between about 11 and 14 months would be within the normal range. Going beyond that It's getting a little bit late. Before that is a little bit early, which is always thought to be a good thing, but actually a child who's learnt to walk early may not have had quite as long as is ideal for things like crawling and creeping and putting other motor patterns in place to underpin later balance and coordination.

[00:16:49] Sally Goddard Blythe: So when we're looking at a child of, say, seven years of age, we're looking to see are the motor skills of that child up to the level we would expect for a child who is seven years of age. And if they're not, then we can anticipate that there are going to be certain skills that are more difficult and more challenging for that child.

[00:17:08] Lucia Silver: So there is an inextricable connection between the two, Sally, is what you're saying. And the brain is quite exact in the chronology. It's not a vague thing. If you missed crawling or you got to crawling too soon or too late, That is an indication of something that could have an implication for your learning later.

[00:17:27] Sally Goddard Blythe: It can be. Very rarely is it one thing in isolation. So we use a developmental screening questionnaire before we ever see a family and it has all sorts of questions on birth, pregnancy, family history, and then those motor skills development in the first years of life. And if a child scores more than Seven yes answers in the first part of that questionnaire.

[00:17:47] Sally Goddard Blythe: It's highly probable that if we then go on to see them and assess them, we will find that there are underlying problems with balance, coordination, possibly primitive reflexes, and so on. So it's rarely that you can look at a child and say one thing in a Isolation has caused something unless it's severe oxygen deprivation at birth.

[00:18:07] Sally Goddard Blythe: It's more often a cluster of factors over a period of time that provide indicators that there have been little bits that have just gone a little bit sideways instead of straight ahead. And you can compensate for one or two things, but the higher the number of things, The harder it is to continue to compensate later on.

[00:18:26] Sally Goddard Blythe: And motor skills and postural control are so important because they provide the physical basis, or the platform, for centres involved in the control of eye movements, which are then going to support reading, writing, catching a ball, all those things that we assume a child will be able to. to do naturally later on.

[00:18:46] Lucia Silver: Yes, and understanding the hierarchy, I'll often say it's a little bit like expecting the lights to go on in a house when you haven't put the electrical wiring in. So there is a sense in which there is a very correct architectural build, and nature is formidable. The brain is formidable and it does things in its own way to perfection.

[00:19:09] Lucia Silver: But if we interfere with certain milestones or we've hurried through something or certain stimulation hasn't happened and the neuro sequencing hasn't quite been patterned as it needs to be, then it will have an effect on balance or eye convergence or, and that in turn has an effect on reading or emotional regulation.

[00:19:27] Lucia Silver: So when you start to understand it, In this way, once again, I think it presents an opportunity for us to go back. We know neuroplasticity is a proven thing. It gives us an opportunity to go back and, could we say, I like to say re hardwire or rebuild or put some of those vehicles in place that might be missed or immature.

[00:19:51] Lucia Silver: Would that be a helpful way of Yes, I would 

[00:19:53] Sally Goddard Blythe: probably say software rather than hardwire 

[00:19:55] Lucia Silver: actually. Software yes. 

[00:19:57] Sally Goddard Blythe: Basic underlying neurology is your hardware that you're born with. But the experience that you have is the software that's put into that system and allows it to run any number of programs.

[00:20:09] Sally Goddard Blythe: And if that software has had pieces missing or is not linked up with something else, that lack of connectivity. then can affect thinking skills, emotional regulation, how we feel about our world, how our sensory systems integrate to interpret the world, and so on. 

[00:20:28] Lucia Silver: It's amazing. And our motto is Movement Matters.

[00:20:31] Lucia Silver: And I would hazard a guess you would agree and that movement plays a huge role. You're talking about the physical foundation, balance, convergence, and so forth, proprioception, all of these extraordinary component parts, as you say, it's never one it's many that need to come together. But what happens crudely speaking, Sally, if we don't move enough?

[00:20:56] Sally Goddard Blythe: I suppose the best analogy is if you've broken a bone and your arm or your leg has been in a plaster cast. And if it's been in that for six weeks, when the plaster cast has taken off, there is some atrophy. to the muscles. And if we think of the nervous system being like, it's not correct, but being like a muscle.

[00:21:17] Sally Goddard Blythe: If it's not used, it becomes slack, it becomes lazy. Sometimes the connectivity starts to just become redundant because it's not being used enough. And yes, as you've touched on, you can create alternative pathways. plasticity in how the brain can wire itself up. But if we don't use certain things, we quite literally lose them over time.

[00:21:41] Sally Goddard Blythe: So when I'm lecturing, I usually give the example of a little primitive creature called the Assyrian sea squirt, which when it's young moves around rather like a tadpole. But when it reaches what counts for adolescence in a sea squirt's life, it attaches itself to a rock and it continues to feed itself by filtering plankton that's passing in the water.

[00:22:02] Sally Goddard Blythe: But from the moment that it stops moving, it starts to consume its own primitive nervous system because it doesn't need it anymore. So it is a great reminder, the old adage, that if you don't want to lose it, you need to keep using it. And that's not just true in old age, that's true from the moment that we are.

[00:22:21] Sally Goddard Blythe: Sort of that we were meant to move. We were born to move in a gravity based environment. 

[00:22:29] Lucia Silver: So if you don't use it, you lose it. What's the name of that little creature again? 

[00:22:33] Sally Goddard Blythe: The Assyrian sea squirt.

[00:22:35] Lucia Silver: The Assyrian sea squirt, God bless it. Yes so that is, that's a great analogy or metaphor for us to bear in mind.

[00:22:43] Lucia Silver: And we see it all the time, don't we Sally? I was away a few months ago, sitting on a holiday with a lovely couple. And they had their toddler two year old in a seat. And we must have sat with them for two or three hours chatting. And again, this is not about judgment. It's purely about education.

[00:23:07] Lucia Silver: I, I, they put they gave the little one a phone. And this little guy was absolutely absorbed with the phone and it allowed them, of course, to have some downtime and to sit together and, but I thought as the time was clocking on, I was child free and enjoying being able to be child free for that time.

[00:23:25] Lucia Silver: But as the time clocked on, I was thinking, my goodness, there was a time where that simply wouldn't have been possible. You've got this comfy seat and you've got this screen and Everything that child is missing out on, the sensory input, the smells, the tastes, the touch, the conversation and, of course, the movement.

[00:23:45] Lucia Silver: If you look at it in that regard, and then you think of if you don't use it, you lose it, and you think of how many hours our little ones are spending in car seats or Because we're in meetings, we put them down, but they're not making friends with the floor. They're sitting in a pram. In a in a, whatever it is.

[00:24:02] Lucia Silver: For me, it was quite often a car seat that I'd take out of the car and then carry Quinn around in a car seat. And I think that's great. He's safe. But actually, it would have been far better Had I been able to just let him roam around on the floor or go and eat some earth in the park or, so that's what we're looking at in modern day, isn't it, Sally?

[00:24:21] Lucia Silver: That lack of movement, stimulation, integration. It's not 

[00:24:25] Sally Goddard Blythe: just about movement. It's also about conversation in real time. Anything that's on a device is pre programmed. And it's been pre programmed by a particular type of mind, what I call digital thinking. Which is fine. It's wonderful.

[00:24:41] Sally Goddard Blythe: It's logical for all sorts of particular tasks. But it's not actually interested in what the child has to say, how the child reacts. It will continue to feed. to stimulate, but it doesn't adapt its response to what the child has done in return. So it is not the same as having a real conversation with someone, where everything is flexible and changes according.

[00:25:08] Sally Goddard Blythe: to what's said back. And there's some wonderful work done at the University of Edinburgh by Colwyn Trevathan in cooperation with the Department of Music, where they were analysing mother infant conversations. And they were able to show that if the mother was a receptive listener and she gave the baby time to Process, what she had just said.

[00:25:31] Sally Goddard Blythe: The baby would not only respond, but its response was the equivalent of a perfect musical answering phrase. The mother would go, la da. And if she waited, the baby would go, la da. And this would carry on for several minutes. But if the mother didn't wait, the baby would just give up and stop responding.

[00:25:52] Sally Goddard Blythe: As if to say, don't you understand good manners of conversation, you need to wait for me and listen to me before you say something back. And we forget, I think, that when e media is used, those elements are completely lost. that it's some, it'll go on firing because that's what it's been programmed to do, and it will fire a particular type of information which is not the same as the intuitive emotional sensory information which we rely on so much for good human communication.

[00:26:25] Sally Goddard Blythe: I, I was amazed when I did my psychology degree that up to 90 percent of effective communication is non verbal. It's not what we say. It's how we deliver it. It's the eye contact. It's the tone of voice. It's the spaces we allow in between. It's knowing when there is the right social, comfortable social space for communication.

[00:26:47] Sally Goddard Blythe: And all of those things are derived from the knowledge and control the vocabulary of your own body, what I call a physical vocabulary, that feeds our non verbal abilities to be able to communicate on a human level. And those don't exist on a flat screen. It's not the same process. 

[00:27:06] Lucia Silver: Oh, and it's so finessed and subtle and profoundly about connection that we are losing connection.

[00:27:15] Lucia Silver: It's not just children who are affected as a result of the lack of those nuances, but children interrupting, not reading situations, all because of this, I'm sure. But we see adults as well. Adults have been affected, with the way that we communicate with one another. Now we don't sit down, we're not present with one another, looking at one another, we're on our screens, we have 300 other conversations going on at the same time.

[00:27:40] Lucia Silver: So it's it's quite a malaise across. Humankind now, isn't it? 

[00:27:46] Sally Goddard Blythe: And I couldn't give you evidence for it, but I would say since COVID, this is now an adult problem as well, that we find when we are arranging continuing professional development days, people don't commit to the days, they decide they're going to come the day before, they then tune out halfway through, that we all seem to be suffering from.

[00:28:06] Sally Goddard Blythe: an information overload and an attention deficit which is either causal or the effect of the information overload. In effect, we are becoming more and more like the children that we are, we see as being disordered. 

[00:28:19] Lucia Silver: Absolutely, and our central nervous system regulation is so key to the systemic healing, which is something that we'll be exploring in future podcasts, Sally, and really wanting to talk about how important it is that We as parents address our connection with ourself, our own regulation, if we're to expect that of our children.

[00:28:39] Lucia Silver: To wind back again, we've touched on primitive reflexes and it's something that we talk about a lot within the brain health movement. And I'd love you as just one of the world experts in this as one of the contributing factors. Could we talk a little bit about, first in your words. Could you talk to us about primitive reflexes and then we'll creep into primitive reflexes in the classroom and how they impact.

[00:29:03] Sally Goddard Blythe: So every normal baby born at full term is born with a group of primitive reflexes that are there presumably to help it survive the first few weeks and months of life. So if you touch the palm of the hand, the thumb will come across, the fingers will grip, and it can't let go. If you stroke down one side of the face, the head will turn and the mouth will open as it starts to root or search for the breast or the bottle.

[00:29:26] Sally Goddard Blythe: So we all recognize these very primitive little stereotype reactions that every healthy baby should have. And they are active for about the first six months of postnatal life, as connections from lower to higher centers in the brain are developing, so increasingly the higher brain centers should be taking over control over the lower ones.

[00:29:49] Sally Goddard Blythe: And somewhere around six months of age, as these connections to higher centers are more developed, so the primitive reflexes slowly start to be put to sleep. The proper term is inhibited, but it's easier to understand them as being put to sleep, because they never entirely desert us. They're put to sleep in the brainstem, so if there was accident or injury to higher centers at a later date, they would pop out.

[00:30:12] Sally Goddard Blythe: So in situations like degenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis, you will see the primitive reflexes start to re emerge. In the progression of Alzheimer's disease, they will re emerge in the reverse chronological order that they were put to sleep in the first year of life. So they've never gone away, they've simply been inhibited.

[00:30:33] Sally Goddard Blythe: And at the same time as they are being inhibited, so the brain should release what are called a group of postural reactions. And these are reactions that help us to keep the head in the correct position on the body, to adjust and change at a subconscious level. to the needs of the environment when there is a, an alteration of position.

[00:30:54] Sally Goddard Blythe: And I describe that second group as being like a really good personal assistant to the executive part of the brain. If the postural reflexes are in place, the executive can float around the world doing all the things that executives do, and they know that all their. basic paperwork and things or computer work will be done.

[00:31:13] Sally Goddard Blythe: If that PA is constantly taking days off, is not available or whatever, the poor old executive gets very stressed and exhausted. And this is like the effect of having underdeveloped postural reflexes and or persistent primitive reflexes on a child's cognitive That they get overloaded more quickly because they're having to work harder at things.

[00:31:35] Sally Goddard Blythe: They don't always have the underlying physical support mechanisms in place. And therefore, it can potentially have an effect on behaviour and emotional regulation because you get greater stress, higher degrees of frustration, and exhaustion. And just as we do as adults when we're exhausted, we get bad tempered, we start to use language we shouldn't do, and generally behave in ways that are not appropriate.

[00:31:59] Sally Goddard Blythe: If all has gone well, by three and a half years of age, the postural reflexes should be fully in place. And in theory, from about four years of age, we should be able to assess the status of both sets of reflexes in a child to see are they at age level expectations. And if they are not necessarily the underlying cause of the problems, other problems you may be seeing.

[00:32:24] Sally Goddard Blythe: They simply provide reflections or signposts in maturity of the functioning of the nervous system. And as such, clinically, we use those as tools to show us, is there a problem? Are those reflexes pointing to problems in the functioning of specific sensory systems, such as balance, eye movements, audition, and so on?

[00:32:45] Sally Goddard Blythe: And if so, can we put together a physical program looking at the needs of the individual child, which will allow them to go back in time, repeat movements that they should have made at the appropriate time of development, and make those connections that haven't been formed correctly the first time around.

[00:33:06] Sally Goddard Blythe: So that's how the INPP method, if you like, sees primitive reflexes. They are signposts and tools, but as such they also point us in the direction of what sort of remediation we want to use, and they also provide us with measures. of change if what we've done has been effective. So I say to people, we expect to have your child on a program for around about a year, sometimes a little bit longer, sometimes a little bit less.

[00:33:36] Sally Goddard Blythe: We should not, you should not still be coming back to see me in three years time, because if what we have done has not worked within that year, more of the same is not the solution. We are quite precise in how we use those reflexes as tools. It's not supposed to be an open ended thing that, is a lifetime's therapy.

[00:33:57] Sally Goddard Blythe: Our work, if it's being effective, you should be able to see change and measure it. 

[00:34:02] Lucia Silver: And again, how hopeful and wonderful is that? And it's indicative of the ability to teach again, to go back and remodel specifically, and there is a lot of research that is linking the reflections and the effects of retained primitive reflexes on learning struggles or behaviours in class.

[00:34:25] Lucia Silver: And I found it fascinating. particularly with Quinn, with these primitive reflexes do have the most horrible names, don't they, Sally? They're so unuser friendly. But the ATNR, which is the asymmetric tonic neck reflex, the STNR, the spinal gallant, sounds like a whole nother language can have quite an extraordinary effect in the classroom.

[00:34:47] Lucia Silver: And I just wanted to explore that a little bit with you as we have done with some of our doctors in, in the U. S. because When a child is moving around in class, it is not their fault. And I think it's a really important note to education and really hoping that we can start breaking through with your programs into education to understand what is really going on for a child when a reflex or a postural reflex is immature or retained literally impacts how they sit.

[00:35:20] Lucia Silver: When they move their head, what happens to their flexor muscles in their legs? When they move their arms when they're writing, across the midline on their page, it solicits a movement that they can't help But Express, would you touch a little bit on that? Because I think it's so revelatory to understand these so called ants in your pants and children labelled with ADHD and so forth, when actually, in some cases, there is something quite simple going on.

[00:35:49] Sally Goddard Blythe: Yes, there's a mechanical, underlying mechanical problem. So if we take the one that you mentioned first, the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex, all parents will remember this from when they were expecting their baby. So their baby's all curled up inside the womb like this. And mum starts to say the baby's started to kick or to move.

[00:36:08] Sally Goddard Blythe: And baby's been moving for weeks before that. But the mother only becomes aware of it as the baby gets bigger and the movements become more defined and more robust. And what happens with this is when the baby tries to turn its head to one side, the arm and leg on that side try to straighten and the opposite one try to bend.

[00:36:25] Sally Goddard Blythe: So it's felt by mum's quite a powerful kicking or punching movement. And that reflex should get stronger through the remainder of pregnancy. It's thought to play a part in helping the baby to be born in a normal, natural vaginal delivery. And it's said to be the earliest hand eye coordination hardwired into the brain at birth.

[00:36:45] Sally Goddard Blythe: Babies in the first few weeks of life were a little bit like me before I had my cataracts done. I have been incredibly short sighted all my life. My visual world used to end about here, and babies are the same in the first days. They can't really see anything much beyond here, and even that is not in clear focus.

[00:37:01] Sally Goddard Blythe: What they see are outside edges rather than central features and so on. And this little mechanism insists It means that when they turn their head, not only does the arm straighten, but the eyes are locked into the head movement. So the eyes are forced to go from near point focus to arm's length. From central vision to peripheral vision and back.

[00:37:22] Sally Goddard Blythe: And a few days or weeks later, that hand may accidentally come into contact with a solid object. So gradually, through a combination of moving, touching, proprioceptive feedback, and seeing, the visual system starts to get an understanding of how far is that object away from me, how much do I have to move my eyes to actually reach for something over there, how do I adjust my visual attention from here to there, or from far distance to near distance, and so on.

[00:37:54] Sally Goddard Blythe: And this little reflex is just the very first lesson. But we shouldn't remain stuck on our first lesson forever. So when it's inhibited about six months of life, a lot of the visual skills have already matured by then. But if it still stays when that child goes to school and they are sitting at a desk to write, provided their head and hand is in the middle, there's no problem.

[00:38:18] Sally Goddard Blythe: But if they try to turn their head to one side to follow what the writing hand is doing. That's what the hand really wants to do. It wants to extend and it wants to open. And so this child has to find a way of controlling it. And there are all sorts of ways of doing it. You can hold it very tightly, you can use a really awful pencil grip, you can rotate your page so that you're in effect writing at an angle, or you can sit.

[00:38:43] Sally Goddard Blythe: But at the end of the day, the physical mechanics of writing never become an automatic process. So it can affect the quantity that a child can write, it can affect how their handwriting looks, or, and or, it can affect their ability to transfer information from here down onto paper because there is a mechanical interference in the process of getting it from here to there.

[00:39:09] Sally Goddard Blythe: So these are often the children who everyone recognises they're very bright, they're very verbally articulate, fantastic vocabulary, but when it comes to writing they can write two or three lines if that and it doesn't reflect what they are clearly capable of. 

[00:39:26] Lucia Silver: Yes. Oh, it's so wonderful to hear this.

[00:39:28] Lucia Silver: Sorry, carry on 

[00:39:29] Sally Goddard Blythe: Sally. So that's just one example. The other one you touched on, the symmetrical tonic neck reflex, is a response when the head is put forward, the top half of the body wants to bend, and the lower half of the body wants to straighten. If the head comes back, this part wants to straighten, and the lower half wants to bend.

[00:39:44] Sally Goddard Blythe: And the effect of that is that the top and bottom sections of the body are never fully integrated when you are sitting. As long as your head's looking ahead, the reflex isn't activated. But if you look down to look at your work, this wants to bend. We end up virtually lying on the writing surface. And it's uncomfortable, so you can't sit still for long periods of time.

[00:40:07] Sally Goddard Blythe: And occupational therapists, physiotherapists will sometimes say, Oh, there's poor truncal stability, there's poor core stability. We'll give this child a wobble cushion to sit on, because by doing this constantly, it'll strengthen the core muscles. And they'll be able to sit still for longer. It does strengthen the core muscles, but it doesn't necessarily solve the problem if the problem is coming from the neck downwards.

[00:40:31] Sally Goddard Blythe: And this is where the assessment is so important. I love that American phrase, we should never assume, because it makes an S out of you and me. Very easy to say, Oh this child, maybe they've got reflexes. And perhaps they have. But we should always test, and if they haven't got that reflex, then a reflex inhibition program is not going to be the right answer.

[00:40:53] Sally Goddard Blythe: Maybe then the physio and the OT program of giving Something that's going to improve the strength of core muscles is right. So there is no single right answer for any of these things. The key for me is to look at the child, see what that child's range of physical abilities are, and say, are there deficits?

[00:41:16] Sally Goddard Blythe: If so, where are they? Does what we have to offer address that? Or is it at a higher developmental level, in which case it should be going to somebody else? 

[00:41:26] Lucia Silver: Yes, it's it's really important to unpack and keep looking for those root causes. I think the exciting thing around the primitive reflexes, Sally, for me is that it, I guess it was that in, in many respects for Quinn.

[00:41:39] Lucia Silver: And therefore to see him just, I'm sure many parents are listening now and thinking. Gosh, my son always ends up lying over the desk or turning sideways or, and you think it's not just how they're trying to physically accommodate, but think of the stamina and the effort that could be better employed in just enjoying their lesson, but instead they are physically uncomfortable.

[00:42:05] Lucia Silver: They're restless. The spinal gallant fascinated me as well, Sally, around how that can cause an irritation or an over sensitivity sometimes in the spine, and therefore the child literally can't sit back in the chair or labels and clothes irritate. That's not just an agitation or simply that child's got ADHD.

[00:42:23] Lucia Silver: It is a central nervous system response when something is touching that area of the spine in it. As I understand, it was very useful during the birth canal because it allows the child to flex and swerve down the birth canal as the sides are touched but if it's not made or not inhibited later, it creates an oversensitivity or a mechanical immaturity, as you say.

[00:42:46] Lucia Silver: So it's just understanding little by little that there are a whole spectrum, cornucopia of reasons why our children are behaving this way. None of which are their fault. With the INPP method could you talk to us about some of the success stories that you're experiencing with focusing on the whole portfolio of neuromotor development, primitive reflexes, vestibular, convert, all the wonderful things you've put together.

[00:43:16] Lucia Silver: Can we hear some, can we hear some stories? It sounds 

[00:43:20] Sally Goddard Blythe: awful. I always struggle with this because I think for so many years we have worked in the private sector that we have never used the stories. that have come to us because it seems unethical to do it. It's not, to advertise based on what you've done.

[00:43:34] Sally Goddard Blythe: I'm just going to try and drag some up from memory. There's one I've seen in the last couple of years, a child who was adopted, and as with many children who've been adopted in this country, the first two to three years of their life have been colored completely by either neglect abuse or The things that really we would hope never happen to children.

[00:43:55] Sally Goddard Blythe: So this child had a terrible first three years of his life. He was seriously behind in all his sort of educational markers and so on and difficulty with social relationships. So his reading age now is normally up to where, now nearly up to where it would be expected. But the things that perhaps you can't quantify are things like that he was a member of Cubs.

[00:44:19] Sally Goddard Blythe: And for the first time he had the confidence and was selected to be the standard bearer for Remembrance Sunday and led the parade through the city on Remembrance Sunday. And these are things which I think for these children were unimaginable, perhaps two or three years ago. And I cannot say that what we have done is the sole reason why he was able to do this.

[00:44:41] Sally Goddard Blythe: The parents have also done a fantastic job alongside this in support. But I think what we do is enable something that was completely blocked before to start to become possible. And I think the first change I see in children is in self confidence. Children who were unable to access things because there was mechanical difficulty suddenly get the confidence to try, find that they can succeed the first time and then go on to try and try again.

[00:45:12] Sally Goddard Blythe: Whereas before, their experiences have always been ones of repeated failure, which then starts to result in avoidance of similar activities and situations in the past. Although parents often come to us with the aim of improving a child's reading or writing. And writing does generally improve, as does reading age, unless there are other reasons involved.

[00:45:34] Sally Goddard Blythe: But as far as I'm concerned, the most important thing is that physical competence and confidence, which enables them to go on and try and develop a whole host of other skills and activities that they wouldn't have done before. So I'm not avoiding individual cases, but I don't like Pulling them out of the drawer very much.

[00:45:58] Lucia Silver: I understand. It's a very important part of the picture. It's very easy, isn't it, to focus on educational accolades. Reading, writing, as you say. But actually a child's confidence, a child's sense of self worth, a child's feeling of belonging, all of which are so impacted by the former.

[00:46:21] Sally Goddard Blythe: Yes, social relationships, being able to make friends, to keep friends, to feel that you belong in the world that you're going to live in. So many of these children have always been on the sidelines before. Yes. Allowing them to participate and to be part of everything. 

[00:46:39] Lucia Silver: And this is where there needs to be convergence between the medical, the educational, the parental, and the support structures that we can offer.

[00:46:49] Lucia Silver: And I know that your program is hugely benefiting children in the public education setting. And how would you ideally see it dovetailing? How would you see your work and education coming together to address this? Obviously with the support of parents at home but how can we change our attitude within school?

[00:47:12] Sally Goddard Blythe: In 1996, so it was a long time ago I realised that what we were able to do in a clinical setting was very time and therapist intensive and therefore we were only touching a handful of the children and families who needed something. And it was in an attempt to try and create a bridge. That I thought, could we take out of our two hour assessment that we do with an individual child a few key tests that we could train teachers how to use, so that teachers could identify children who have underlying physical factors in their presenting problems in the classroom.

[00:47:49] Sally Goddard Blythe: And then rather than tailoring a program to the individual needs of the assessment, as we would do here, Put together a developmental movement program for a whole class of children to use under teacher supervision for 10 minutes a day for one academic year. So rather than teasing out, this child needs this bit or this bit, we say we're going to start every child at the beginning of motor development in this class.

[00:48:12] Sally Goddard Blythe: They're going to do six weeks on four exercises. And then when The whole class can do that. They'll move on to the next batch of exercises and so on, and it will take them through motor development from nought to about one year of age. So that program has been in various schools for, gosh, nearly 30 years now.

[00:48:32] Sally Goddard Blythe: We did extensive research on it in 2004 in a published study, which showed that the incidence of neuromotor immaturity in so called mainstream schools amongst normal children was much, much higher than we had anticipated, and that those children who went through the program showed an improved neuromotor function at the end of the school year compared to others.

[00:48:58] Sally Goddard Blythe: Their drawing of the human figure, which is one measure of non verbal cognitive performance, in many cases had improved by two years or more in a nine months period. And those children for whom the program was designed, so they had already had more than 25 percent immaturity and underachievement at the outset, showed greater improvement in reading.

[00:49:19] Sally Goddard Blythe: So research has been done and is ongoing and there are reports from individual schools. for the last 10, from the last 20 years on our various websites showing what headteachers have said and so on. So that program was going quite well until COVID and then this became impossible to do. And I am now, I'm not completely there yet, but I'm approaching retirement.

[00:49:44] Sally Goddard Blythe: I'm beyond retirement age, but I'm not fully retiring. It's a matter of actually training up a new generation to go into schools, to take this into schools, which thankfully I have. I have somebody in Scotland who is going to take over part of my role with schools from this year. There never seems to be sufficient evidence to satisfy the critics, but I've been doing this for a long time.

[00:50:06] Sally Goddard Blythe: I hear my critics and I work very hard to try and address what they say. Because I recognize that evidence is important. There are subsequent studies that have been done. There are studies ongoing in cooperation with universities in Poland. And there is a new international study starting looking at three reflexes in normal school age children in New Zealand, UK.

[00:50:29] Sally Goddard Blythe: Poland, hopefully the UK as well, and Spain, because what we want to establish is what should be considered normal today for children's neuromotor skills, because it looks as if there is a deterioration, that there are, as we said at the beginning, more children At an older age, whose skills are less mature than they should be.

[00:50:53] Sally Goddard Blythe: And although medics will still say that primitive reflexes, if they persist, there has to be pathology, and if there's a pathology, there's nothing you can do about it. This research and previous research shows that a lesser degree of primitive reflexes does persist in the so called normal mainstream population.

[00:51:11] Sally Goddard Blythe: that it does correlate with lower educational achievement irrespective of a child's intelligence. And what we want to establish now is what should be considered the normal for this. And if this is the normal distribution, should we actually consider it to be a normal distribution or is it a reflection?

[00:51:30] Sally Goddard Blythe: of changes in society that mean that children are simply less physically ready for the demands of the classroom than they were 20 years ago, 50 years ago, and so on. 

[00:51:39] Lucia Silver: And therefore expect to see more of the behavioural issues in the classroom, not less, if we're not given the opportunity to actually address them.

[00:51:47] Lucia Silver: So are we actually changing the paradigm, which is a horrendous thing to just accept. Let's just accept that this is the state of affairs, or the state of parenthood, or the state of our children, which I absolutely won't. You will have me cheerleading you. Certainly not into retirement. You're not allowed to do that.

[00:52:06] Lucia Silver: There's far too much good work to be done. And far too much education still required. We haven't broken the critical mass of awareness, until even 5 percent of the population know what neuromotor immaturity is, or until even a doctor, and I can say this, I know you can't, I can't tell you how many doctors I've mentioned primitive reflexes, and they don't even know what they are.

[00:52:29] Lucia Silver: They don't know what, they don't. So, There is a big job still, still to be done. And Sally it's for us to hold hands, parents, with the medical community, with the educational community, and really, Understand that our children are not developing in a way that is helpful and allows them to realize their full potential.

[00:52:52] Lucia Silver: So with that, just what advice do you have for parents at the moment who are feeling overwhelmed and uncertain about their child's future? Neurodevelopment challenges, their behaviours, is there, what can you offer at the moment to parents listening? 

[00:53:06] Sally Goddard Blythe: I think there are two strands. I think there is what I call the orthodox mainstream strand, which should always be pursued first.

[00:53:13] Sally Goddard Blythe: If you are concerned about your child's coordination, you think there is a degree of ADHD, then you should go to your GP, and your GP hopefully will refer you to a paediatrician or to a child development team. Who can do the standard assessments, and if there is an underlying reason that can be treated medically, they will hopefully find it and they will offer you something.

[00:53:38] Sally Goddard Blythe: If you go through those processes and nothing is found. Or your waiting list is so long that it's going to be three years before you receive an assessment. As a parent, I would say then you have to start to pursue your own path, of which many of the organizations like yours, so

[00:53:58] Sally Goddard Blythe: much to provide. an information source for parents as to what is around and where they can go. But it is still a bit of a lottery as to whether the one that looks good and looks really glossy and fantastic on screen is actually the best one. But I would say don't lose faith in your search. If you think your child needs help, and your family needs help, then continue to try to find it by whatever means you can.

[00:54:28] Sally Goddard Blythe: Don't give up. Because I think, I can't remember whether it was in our pre recording chat or right at the very beginning, we were talking about how families often suffer from a sort of communal guilt or a sense of inadequacy. If there is One member who doesn't quite fit what is expected. That child either can become a scapegoat for the family's other problems or else as parents we feel inadequate.

[00:54:53] Sally Goddard Blythe: There must be something wrong with our parenting that we cannot make our child happy. We can't make our child succeed and so on. And what this work does is to identify the mechanics of the underlying problem and show that it's nobody's fault. It's not the child's fault. They don't have the equipment they need.

[00:55:11] Sally Goddard Blythe: It wasn't the parent's fault. They didn't cause it willingly, but there are things that can be done to help make life easier. And that often alters relationships within the family as well. Provided there's a flexibility. Sometimes it can be a problem if the child has been seen as the issue. The child is Yeah, take that 

[00:55:30] Lucia Silver: away.

[00:55:31] Sally Goddard Blythe: And then you're left with everything else. But generally, families do adapt to these changes and it helps. Make life easier for everybody. 

[00:55:40] Lucia Silver: Yes, that's a very important point to reflect on, because I think as, certainly as a mother, I constantly feel I could have, should have, wish I'd known all the things I could have done better, and I think women particularly do tend to, give themselves a good beating up over that, and the important thing to understand is Today is a new day and there is always something that we can do and to remain curious, to remain hopeful and for us as the brain health movement to continue to have these privileged conversations with brilliant minds like yours who have led a life of devotion in understanding exactly what's going on with our children and just if you are waiting for a diagnosis.

[00:56:26] Lucia Silver: Remain curious. If you receive a diagnosis, please remain curious. Please remain open minded. There is so much that can be done beyond simply symptom management or sometimes beyond medication too. It certainly is not a route that I have ever chosen to to give into, if you like, with Quinn, and it is something that we have only seen the most magical benefits in understanding how to mature, balance, help his central nervous system.

[00:56:58] Lucia Silver: Really, I can only be here as a seat of love and encouragement that it's, there's so much possible. So what excites you, Sally, for the future? As a last note what is here for us to look forward to? If I 

[00:57:13] Sally Goddard Blythe: could change trends that I see, I would say As I did when I wrote Raising Happy Healthy Children, we need to view children's development not from the perspective of adults or parents or cultures, but from the perspective of what are the universal biological needs of children to grow into healthy, Happy children and adults.

[00:57:38] Sally Goddard Blythe: So what are the nutritional factors? Why do children need the physical engagement, the closeness that a child hopefully has with its mother in the first few months of life? Because that helps to nurture the non verbal understanding of Feeling, empathy for other people's emotions, and so on.

[00:57:58] Sally Goddard Blythe: Understanding that as a species of mammals, we need to be engaged in rough and tumble play to help understand and develop social boundaries. To look at physical readiness, the whole child's readiness. for education to find a way of identifying that, which is, I think, partly what we've done with the school program.

[00:58:20] Sally Goddard Blythe: It was one of the aims of the school program was to screen children as they come in and identify those with greater physical needs and look at putting a physical program into place and recognizing that results, educational results, are the outcome of having been put through a tunnel of an educational system.

[00:58:42] Sally Goddard Blythe: And before a child goes into that tunnel, we need to look at, is the equipment in place? And if it isn't, what does that individual child need? And that's not just in terms of physical intervention programs. It's looking at how teaching is targeted at a child, saying it's no good just teaching the same thing over and over again.

[00:59:03] Sally Goddard Blythe: If a child doesn't understand it, we need to ask, where is that level of child's understanding in this subject, in this area? And we need to go back to where he is and start to teach from there upwards, instead of starting from here and assuming that somehow, miraculously, this child is going to come up to reach.

[00:59:22] Sally Goddard Blythe: So I suppose it's looking at development, putting development back into every part of preschool, care, parental care, child development, and then again into education for teenagers who are the parents of the future. about what do children really need, will need from them when they become parents to grow up into the sort of children they hope they can be.

[00:59:52] Lucia Silver: There's a thought. Our teenagers are the parents of the future, indeed. And I'm hearing loud and clear, Sally, and thank you so much for not just the science and the passion and the dedication and the research, but the connection, the reminder of how important. our human connection and engagement is, and that readiness is all.

[01:00:17] Lucia Silver: Yes. Readiness is readiness for life and readiness for school, readiness, preparation, solid foundations, understanding from that perspective, as opposed to being so outcome driven. So gratification driven. It's very much about coming back to a quieter, stiller space and understanding how we can breathe into this and slow down 

[01:00:46] Sally Goddard Blythe: so thank you.

[01:00:48] Sally Goddard Blythe: I have a logo, a brain, which is like the top of the tree. And although the brain directs everything. Unless the top of the tree has the, a secure trunk and roots in place, which is where it's come from, that brain is never going, or that tree is never going to flourish properly. And that's how I see our children and education and life really.

[01:01:11] Lucia Silver: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. This is an absolute jewel in the crown of our. offering to our parents. Just in conclusion, besides love and boundaries, freedom to move, and freedom to play, freedom to connect, are the most important gifts that parents can give to their children. And in Sally's book, which I thoroughly encourage you to read, Raising Happy Healthy Children, she's showing how a baby's relationship with its mother has a lasting and deep impact.

[01:01:43] Lucia Silver: We've looked at how recent social changes, delayed motherhood, juggling work life balance, stress, rubbish diet, limited uptake of breastfeeding, use of parents substitute baby equipment, electronic devices, all these things. are interfering with some of the key developmental milestones that are essential for well being in later life.

[01:02:06] Lucia Silver: But I just want to finish on some words of Sally's that I read. We need a society that gives children their parents, and most of all values motherhood in the early years. So let's just remember that our connection, our huge power, presence, to be present with our children, to be connected to our children, to put down the phones, to switch off the televisions and really be as a family.

[01:02:37] Lucia Silver: Thank you so much Sally. Lots of love. 

[01:02:40] Sally Goddard Blythe: Bye bye.