Understanding Your Child’s Nervous System

So much of this website is about curiosity—exploring the world around us, discovering history, visiting new places, experiencing different cultures, and asking questions that help us better understand the world in which we live.

But curiosity and exploration begin long before a child can ask, “Why?”

They begin in the earliest moments of life.

From the moment your child enters the world, their nervous system is receiving information. They feel your touch, hear your voice, search for your face, respond to movement, experience gravity, and gradually begin discovering their own body and the environment around them. Long before they can speak or walk, their brain is already learning how to receive, organize, and respond to an extraordinary amount of information.

This is the foundation upon which later exploration is built.

The nervous system is the communication network connecting the brain and body. It is involved in movement, sensation, balance, coordination, breathing, digestion, sleep, emotional regulation, and our ability to respond and adapt to the environment. The first years of life are an especially important period in this development. The first two years establish much of the early neurological groundwork, while the years that follow continue the process of organization, integration, and refinement.

Dr. Marty and I have spent more than four decades working with children and families, beginning with pregnancy and continuing through infancy, childhood, and beyond. Our book, It’s All in the Head, grew from those years of caring for children, raising our own family, teaching chiropractors, and listening to the questions parents asked us.