The Reflex That Was Never There

When her daughter turned ten months old, one mom in our community started noticing the same pattern she had seen with her older two kids years earlier. Her baby was not sitting yet. She was not army crawling. She was mostly staying on the ground, not moving much on her own. She already knew about primitive reflexes from her family's own journey, so she was watching closely and getting worried.

Here is the part that surprises a lot of parents, and honestly, a lot of providers too. When we go to check a reflex and it does not show up, the assumption is almost always the same: good, that one is not a problem. But sometimes a reflex is missing for a completely different reason. It was never there to begin with.

Two Very Different Reasons a Reflex Can Be "Missing"

Most of the time, when we talk about primitive reflexes, we are talking about ones that stuck around too long. A baby is supposed to grow out of certain reflexes on a fairly predictable timeline. When one lingers past that window, it can get in the way of walking, talking, coordination, and more.

But every so often, a reflex never shows up at all. In those cases, checking for it does not show a problem, because there is nothing there to see yet. The brain never built that foundational connection in the first place. And without that first step, the milestones that are supposed to build on top of it, sitting, crawling, walking, talking, can get delayed too.

What She Did

She did not wait to see if things would sort themselves out. She started working with her daughter on simple, targeted exercises, cross pattern movements for her hands, done consistently with her husband. Within one to two weeks, her daughter started army crawling. It was not perfect at first, a little uneven, favoring one side, but it was movement. Soon after, she was sitting on her own. Not long after that, she was crawling.

This is the part worth sitting with. The exercises did not force a skill that was not ready. They gave her daughter's brain the input it needed to build a connection that had not formed yet. Once that connection was there, the next milestones came quickly.

Why This Matters for Your Family

If your child missed early milestones like latching, babbling, sitting up, crawling, or walking on time, it is easy to assume every reflex check tells the full story. Sometimes it does. But sometimes a reflex needs to be drawn out first before there is anything to work on integrating. That distinction changes everything about the plan going forward, and it is exactly why reassessing along the way matters so much.

Final Thoughts

Not seeing a reflex does not always mean it is not part of the picture. Sometimes it means the story is just starting a step earlier than anyone expected, and that is often the piece that unlocks everything after it.