Autism & Neurodevelopmental Support

Your child's nervous system is constantly receiving information from the world around them—but it is also constantly receiving information from inside their own body.

Every movement, change in position, muscle contraction, and joint motion creates sensory information that helps the brain understand where the body is, what it is doing, and how to respond.

For children with autism, who may already experience the sensory and physical world differently, supporting the body's movement and neuromusculoskeletal function can be an important part of supporting the whole child.

At Mojica Chiropractic Care, pediatric chiropractic does not focus on changing an autism diagnosis. We focus on the body and nervous system beneath the diagnosis—movement, joint mobility, proprioceptive input, body awareness, and the brain-body communication involved in adapting to everyday life.

Your Child's Brain Needs Information From the Body

The nervous system is constantly receiving and organizing information.

Some of that information comes from the outside world: sound, light, touch, temperature, and movement around us.

But a tremendous amount of information also comes from within the body itself. Sensory receptors located throughout the muscles, joints, skin, and surrounding tissues continually send information toward the spinal cord and brain.

The nervous system receives this information, processes it, and continually adjusts movement and motor output in response. This ongoing conversation between the body and nervous system is part of normal human physiology.

How Does the Brain Know Where the Body Is?

One important part of this brain-body communication system is proprioception.

Proprioception is the sensory information that helps the nervous system understand body position and movement without having to constantly rely on vision.

It contributes to:

Healthy movement continually provides the nervous system with opportunities to receive and process this information. This is one reason movement is so important during childhood.

Children are not simply strengthening muscles when they crawl, climb, jump, balance, reach, push, pull, and explore. Their nervous systems are also receiving enormous amounts of sensory information from those experiences.

When the World Already Requires a Lot of Processing

Children with autism can experience movement, body awareness, physical sensations, sensory environments, and changes in routine very differently from one another.

These experiences are complex and cannot be explained by one joint, one reflex, one sensory system, or one chiropractic finding.

But they remind us of something important: the nervous system depends on information. And the quality of movement and sensory information coming from the body is part of the overall neurological environment the child is processing every day.

An Adjustment Is More Than a Mechanical Event

A chiropractic adjustment is a controlled mechanical input applied to a joint. From a mechanical perspective, the goal is to support healthy joint movement and function.

But joints are not simply pieces of bone moving against one another. The joints, muscles, connective tissues, and skin surrounding them contain sensory receptors that continuously communicate with the nervous system.

When movement occurs, those receptors generate neurological information. That information travels through sensory—or afferent—pathways into the central nervous system, where it becomes part of the information the nervous system processes about movement and body position.

This is why chiropractic care is not only about whether something “hurts.” At Mojica Chiropractic Care, we are also interested in:

A pediatric chiropractic adjustment provides another brief sensory and mechanical input into this system while addressing joint mobility and neuromusculoskeletal function.

Regulation Is About Responding and Adapting

When we talk about nervous-system regulation at Mojica Chiropractic Care, we are not simply talking about whether a child appears calm. Regulation involves the body's ability to receive information, organize a response, and adapt appropriately to changing demands.

Those demands may include:

The nervous system is constantly deciding:

Because sensory input from the musculoskeletal system contributes to this continuous flow of information, we view healthy movement and joint function as part of the body's neurological foundation.

Chiropractic adjustments provide mechanical and sensory input into that system. By supporting joint mobility, movement, and proprioceptive input, chiropractic care may support the body's ability to organize and respond to physical and sensory demands more efficiently.

For an autistic child, this does not mean chiropractic is treating autism. It means we are supporting one part of the body and nervous system that participates in how every human being moves, responds, and adapts.

The Nervous System Is Always Adapting to the Body It Has

The nervous system continually adapts to the information it receives. When movement is easy and efficient, the body has one type of sensory experience.

When movement requires compensation, excessive tension, altered positioning, or additional effort, the nervous system receives a different pattern of information.

Children are incredibly adaptive. They find ways to sit, stand, walk, climb, play, and move even when those strategies are not necessarily the easiest or most efficient. Over time, compensations can become familiar movement patterns.

Our chiropractic evaluation looks beyond whether a child reports pain. We are also interested in how the child moves, where movement may be restricted, how the body is compensating, and whether the neuromusculoskeletal system is providing a strong foundation for continued movement and development.

Sometimes Parents Notice the Body Before They Know the Neurology

Parents may begin exploring chiropractic care because they notice physical or movement patterns such as:

Primitive Reflexes Are Another Part of the Movement Story

Primitive reflexes are automatic movement patterns that play important roles during early development. As a child's nervous system and movement abilities mature, these early patterns normally become less dominant while increasingly complex voluntary movement develops.

When primitive reflex patterns remain strongly influential, they may affect the way a child organizes certain movements or postures. They do not cause autism. And a retained primitive reflex does not diagnose autism.

At Mojica Chiropractic Care, primitive reflex findings are considered within the child's larger developmental and movement picture. Chiropractic adjustments themselves are not described as “integrating primitive reflexes.” Instead, chiropractic care supports joint mobility, movement, proprioceptive input, and the neuromusculoskeletal foundation upon which movement experiences occur.

What We Are Looking For

When Dr. Liz evaluates a child, the question is not:

“How do we fix autism?”

The questions are much more specific:

• ●How is this child's body moving?
• ●Where is movement restricted?
• ●Where is the child compensating?
• ●How is posture being organized?
• ●How well are different areas of the body working together?
• ●What does their neuromusculoskeletal examination show?
• ●What objective patterns do their INSiGHT scans show?
• ●And where can chiropractic care appropriately support this child's physical and neurological foundation?

Together, these findings help us understand how your child’s body is moving, adapting, and communicating with the nervous system — so we can tailor chiropractic care to support their unique needs.

Looking at More Than Symptoms

When appropriate for the child's age and ability to participate, Mojica Chiropractic Care uses INSiGHT™ scanning technology as part of the evaluation. Depending on the child, this may include:

These technologies provide objective information about physiologic patterns that Dr. Liz considers alongside the child's history, physical examination, movement patterns, and chiropractic findings.

Supporting the Foundation the Child Moves Through Every Day

At Mojica Chiropractic Care, we view movement as an important source of information for the developing nervous system.

That brain-body conversation is happening all day, every day. Our role as pediatric chiropractors is to support the neuromusculoskeletal foundation participating in that conversation.

For children with autism, that means we are not trying to change who the child is. We are supporting the body that child uses to experience, move through, and adapt to their world.

We Meet Your Child Where They Are

A nervous system that processes the world differently may also need a different approach to an appointment.

We do not expect every child to behave the same way in order to receive care. We adapt the pace, positioning, communication, and approach whenever possible while still obtaining the clinical information we need.

Frequently Asked Questions