Vestibular System and your Child

Vestibi-what? What is this complicated word and what can it possibly have to do with your child? The answer is, it has quite a lot to do with your child. You may not have heard of it, but I bet you are familiar with some of it's effects.

The Vestibular System is one of the first things to fully develop as it is so incredibly important and crucial to the functioning of the human body. The process is usually complete in the first six months of life!

This system is directly responsible for controlling the sense of movement and balance. It is also considered to have major influence over the other sensory systems that are found in the body. The Vestibular system is in charge of directing information from all the other sensory systems, from the brain to its rightful destination.

Do you remember as a child being able to spin endlessly and recovering quickly from the effects? Yet now as an adult, if you sit up too quickly... you get a head rush? That's your Vestibular system! As we age our senses age with us. This effects our reaction time to many things, including dizziness and nausea.

A study in 1994 by Cutson T.M reported the incidence of dizziness increases from 22% for adults between 65-69 years of age to over 40% for adults between the ages of 80-84 years.

So we know that this system is important... but how does it work?

1. Auditory functions through the cochlear nerve that is found in the inner ear, and sends information to the brain.

2. Balance and equilibrium functions that give us a sense of awareness in space. 

3. Visual functions via all surrounding muscle receptors.

4. Tonic muscle control through stabilization of the neck and head.

The Vestibular system should act as one large piece of cohesive machinery, that is constantly working to keep day to day life functional and easy. When an infant climb and crawls across obstacles, their entire body is working together. The sensations from these outside stimuli are adapted into stimuli the brain can comprehend and process.

One of the most important functions of the Vestibular system is increasing & reducing the amount of  neural activity, to keep a harmonious balance between all of the nervous systems. If the Vestibular system gets overloaded with outside stimuli, it can become overwhelming and produce a lowered response time. This often can be seen in the emotional responses of a child.

Did you learn anything from todays blog post? Let me know in the comments!

Signing off for now,
Coach Maygan.​