Developmental Milestones and Spinal Health: What's the Connection?

By Dr. Andrew Biggs, DC | Principled Chiropractic | Royal Palm Beach, FL

As a parent, you know the milestones by heart. Rolling over. Sitting up. Crawling. Pulling to stand. First steps. First words. You watch for them, celebrate them, and quietly worry when they seem slow in coming.

What most parents don't know, and what very few pediatricians discuss, is that every single one of those milestones is driven by the nervous system. And the nervous system, from the very first moments of life, is directly influenced by the health and alignment of the spine.

This is not a fringe idea. It is grounded in basic neuroscience. And understanding it may be one of the most important things you can do for your child's development, especially in those critical first years of life when the nervous system is growing faster than it ever will again.

Development Is a Nervous System Story

Before we talk about the spine, it helps to understand what developmental milestones actually are.

When your baby rolls over for the first time, that's not a random event. It's the result of a specific neurological sequence: the brain sends a signal, the spinal cord relays it, the nerve roots deliver it to the right muscles, and those muscles respond in a coordinated way. Thousands of these sequences fire in precise order for that single movement to happen.

The same is true for every milestone; sitting, crawling, standing, walking, talking. Each one requires a nervous system that is developing on schedule, communicating clearly, and coordinating signals across multiple regions of the brain and body simultaneously.

When that communication is clear and unimpeded, development tends to unfold naturally and on time. When there is interference in the system, anywhere along the pathway from the brain through the spinal cord to the muscles and organs, development can slow, stall, or become uneven in ways that are often written off as normal variation.

Sometimes that variation is simply natural. But sometimes it has a structural cause that no one has looked for.

The Spine and the Developing Nervous System

The human nervous system develops from the inside out and from the top down. The brainstem and upper cervical spine, the region at the very top of the neck, are among the first structures to develop, and they remain the most critical regulatory centers in the body throughout life.

This region governs:

• Breathing and heart rate regulation

• Sucking and swallowing reflexes

• Sleep and wake cycles

• The balance between the sympathetic (stress) and parasympathetic (calm) nervous system states

• Sensory processing and integration

• Motor control and coordination

• The vagus nerve: the primary pathway of the parasympathetic nervous system

When the upper cervical spine is properly aligned and free of structural shifts, these functions operate as they should. The nervous system can regulate itself, receive sensory input accurately, coordinate motor output smoothly, and support the development of increasingly complex skills as the child grows.

When there is a NeuroStructural Shift in this region, which is a misalignment that places tension or pressure on the brainstem, spinal cord, or surrounding nerve roots, the signals traveling through this system can be disrupted. And disrupted signals produce disrupted development.

When Does Spinal Dysfunction Begin?

This is the question that surprises most parents the most: spinal dysfunction in children rarely begins in childhood. In the majority of cases we see at Principled Chiropractic, it begins at birth, or even before.

Before Birth

The position a baby occupies in the womb during the final weeks of pregnancy can place sustained mechanical stress on the developing spine and nervous system. Breech positioning, transverse lie, oligohydramnios (low amniotic fluid), or simply a baby who has been in the same position for an extended period can all create structural tension before labor even begins.

Maternal stress during pregnancy also matters. The hormones associated with chronic stress, particularly cortisol, cross the placenta and influence the development of the baby's stress-response system. A nervous system that has been primed by prenatal stress may be more reactive, more easily dysregulated, and more prone to sympathetic dominance from the moment of birth.

During Birth

The birth process itself is one of the most mechanically intense experiences a human being ever undergoes. As the baby rotates and descends through the birth canal, the head, neck, and spine are subjected to significant compressive and rotational forces. In most cases, the body handles these forces without lasting consequence. But in many cases, more than most parents realize, they leave behind a structural imprint.

The upper cervical spine is particularly vulnerable. Research by Dr. Abraham Towbin, a Harvard neuropathologist, found evidence of spinal cord and brainstem stress in a significant number of infant autopsies, including infants from births that were not considered traumatic. Dr. Gutmann, a German physician who examined more than 1,000 newborns shortly after birth, found that over 80 percent had some degree of cervical spine dysfunction and that gentle chiropractic care produced improvements in nearly every case where it was applied.

Births that involve:

• Vacuum extraction

• Forceps assistance

• Emergency or scheduled cesarean section

• Prolonged pushing phases

• Rapid or precipitous delivery

• Induction with Pitocin

• Manual repositioning of the baby

...all carry an elevated likelihood of upper cervical strain in the newborn. But even births without any of these interventions can produce structural dysfunction, simply because the mechanical demands of birth are significant regardless of how smoothly the process unfolds.

After Birth

Once a child is born, the accumulation of structural stress continues. Learning to hold the head up, rolling, crawling, pulling to stand, and learning to walk all involve falls, collisions, and physical forces that are applied to a spine that is still soft, still developing, and still highly vulnerable to structural deviation.

The average toddler falls several thousand times in the process of learning to walk. Most of those falls are harmless. Over time, without periodic evaluation, minor structural shifts can accumulate into patterns that begin to affect neurological function.

How Spinal Dysfunction Affects Developmental Milestones

Now we can connect the dots directly.

Rolling Over (2–4 months)

Rolling requires bilateral coordination, the ability of the two sides of the body to communicate and work together. This coordination is governed by the brainstem and upper cervical pathways. A structural shift that creates asymmetrical tension in the upper neck can interfere with this coordination, causing a baby to favor one side, struggle to complete the roll, or skip this milestone entirely.

Parents often notice this as a preference to turn the head one direction, or an asymmetry in how the baby holds their body. These are early signals worth evaluating.

Sitting (6–8 months)

Independent sitting requires the spine to stack properly and the postural muscles to activate in a coordinated sequence controlled by the nervous system. Weakness, asymmetry, or poor postural tone, particularly in the cervical and thoracic regions, can delay sitting or produce a sitting posture that is visibly off-center.

Crawling (7–10 months)

Crawling is one of the most neurologically complex things a baby does in the first year of life. It requires the two hemispheres of the brain to work in alternating coordination, integrating sensory input from the hands, knees, and vestibular system while producing coordinated cross-body movement.

This is why crawling is so developmentally important, and why skipping it is worth paying attention to. Children who skip crawling miss a critical window of cross-hemispheric integration. Some research has associated skipping the crawling stage with later challenges in reading, attention, and fine motor coordination.

Structural asymmetry in the pelvis or upper cervical spine can make the crawling pattern uncomfortable or neurologically difficult to execute properly, contributing to either a delayed onset or an altered crawling pattern such as bottom-scooting or bear-crawling.

Pulling to Stand and Walking (9–15 months)

Standing and walking require the entire spine to work as an integrated unit. Proper weight distribution through the pelvis, correct lumbar curve development, stable cervical positioning, and coordinated balance responses from the inner ear and cerebellum all have to come together simultaneously.

Structural shifts anywhere along this chain can contribute to delayed walking, an unstable or unusual gait, persistent toe-walking, or a pattern of falling that seems more frequent than typical.

Speech and Language Development (12–24 months and beyond)

This one surprises parents most often. What does the spine have to do with speech?

The cranial nerves responsible for articulation, swallowing, and vocalization originate in the brainstem and are influenced by the structural integrity of the upper cervical spine. The vagus nerve (yes, again) which plays a central role in the parasympathetic regulation of the body, is particularly vulnerable to upper cervical dysfunction, and it is directly involved in the regulation of the vocal cords and the coordination of oral-motor function.

Additionally, speech and language development depend on the child being in a regulated, calm neurological state. A child whose nervous system is chronically operating in sympathetic dominance (fight-or-flight) has less neurological bandwidth available for the complex cognitive and motor tasks that language development requires. Reducing that underlying neurological stress can create the conditions in which language development accelerates.

Sensory Processing and Integration

Beyond the traditional motor milestones, the nervous system is also integrating sensory information from the environment throughout the first years of life. Touch, movement, sound, vision, proprioception (body position sense), and vestibular input (balance and spatial orientation) are all being processed, organized, and cross-referenced constantly.

When the nervous system is under structural stress, this integration can become dysregulated. The result is often a child who is oversensitive to sensory input (easily overstimulated, reactive to touch, distressed by sounds or environments that other children handle easily) or undersensitive, seeming to seek out intense sensory input in order to feel regulated.

These patterns are increasingly common, and while they are often attributed to neurological differences that are treated as fixed characteristics, they frequently have a structural component that has never been addressed.

What We Look For at Principled Chiropractic

When parents bring their infants or toddlers to our office, whether because of a specific developmental concern or simply for a wellness evaluation, we are not looking for pain. Infants and young children rarely present with the kind of pain complaints that bring adults to a chiropractor.

What we are looking for is neurological function.

We assess the range of motion and symmetry of the cervical spine. We evaluate postural tone and the symmetry of how the child holds and moves their body. We look for signs of nervous system dysregulation, such as difficulty calming, sleep disruption, feeding challenges, sensory reactivity. Next, we perform a careful structural examination to identify any NeuroStructural Shifts that may be creating interference in the nervous system.

If we find evidence of structural dysfunction, the adjustments we provide for infants and young children are extraordinarily gentle, not resembling like the adjustments an adult receives. For a newborn, the most common technique involves very light fingertip pressure along the upper cervical spine, using no more force than you would use to test the ripeness of a tomato. It is gentle, it is specific, and for many infants, it is immediately soothing.

The goal is not to treat a developmental delay. It is to remove structural interference from the nervous system so that the child's Innate Intelligence, their body's own organizing wisdom, can express itself fully. In many cases, when that interference is removed, development resumes or accelerates on its own.

The Window of Opportunity

One of the most important facts about nervous system development is that it is time-sensitive.

Approximately 65 percent of nervous system development occurs in the first year of life. By age five, roughly 90 percent of the brain's neural connections have been established. This doesn't mean that development stops after childhood, the brain retains remarkable plasticity throughout life, but it does mean that the early years represent a window of opportunity that, once passed, cannot be fully recaptured.

Structural dysfunction that creates neurological interference during this window doesn't just affect the child now. It shapes the neural architecture that the child carries into school, into adolescence, and into adulthood. Patterns of dysregulation, asymmetry, and compensated function established in the first years of life can become deeply embedded, making them progressively more difficult to address with time.

This is not meant to alarm you. It is meant to underscore why early evaluation matters and why waiting for a problem to become obvious, painful, or diagnosable is not always the most effective approach.

A Note for Parents Who Are Already Concerned

If you are reading this because your child has already been flagged for a developmental delay, or because you've noticed something that doesn't seem quite right, we want you to know something important.

You are not overreacting. A parent's instinct that something is off deserves to be taken seriously, not dismissed. And the question of whether your child's nervous system has ever been evaluated from a structural standpoint is worth asking, because in most cases, it hasn't been.

We work collaboratively with pediatricians, developmental therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists. We are not asking you to choose between chiropractic care and other support your child is receiving. We are offering to look at one piece of the puzzle that most other providers aren't equipped to examine.

That piece, the structural health of the spine and its relationship to neurological function, may turn out to be more important than you expect.

Take the First Step

Principled Chiropractic offers complimentary consultations for families who want to understand whether NeuroStructural chiropractic care might benefit their child. It is simply a conversation and an honest assessment of whether we can help, no obligation.

We have been serving infants, children, and families throughout Royal Palm Beach, Wellington, West Palm Beach, Loxahatchee, and Lake Worth since 2008. We are specially trained in pediatric chiropractic care through the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association, and we are deeply committed to giving every child the neurological foundation they deserve.