The normal birthing process places a tremendous amount of stress on the neck. If the baby's head presents in any other than a posterior occiput position (the baby's face is down), this can cause added stress. Any intervention such as vacuum or forceps causes additional trauma to the head and neck. Cesarean section is also considered a traumatic birth when considering the effects on the spine. Many obstetricians traction the head during a normal birth, using between 40 and 70 pounds of pressure, in order to birth the shoulder. This often causes damage to the cervical spine (neck) and the nerves that exit off the spine.

Even if you child came through the birth process without subluxations, they can be acquired afterwards. Babies neck muscles are weak and are unable to support the head. Infant car seats may be designed to protect a baby in the event of a crash, but they lack support of the neck. Whenever you stop and accelerate the car their heads go forward and back and side to side, which can cause vertebrae to subluxate.

Throughout the first year, a baby's spine will grow 50%. Whenever there is rapid growth, that is the time when things can go wrong. Regular chiropractic checkups ensure that your child's spine is growing properly. During the first year, they also develop the secondary curves of the spine in the neck and low back. If these curves fail to develop, there is a greater chance that they will develop scoliosis, or curvature of the spine.

Towards the end of the first year they will be learning how to walk and will fall an extraordinary amount of times. If you fell that often, do you think that your spine would feel the effects of the trauma?

As kids get older, they get even more active with more potential for physical trauma. And, if they play sports, that potential increases. And what about the child who sits at the computer or hunches over his hand-held game! Making sure that their spines are subluxation free means that your children can endure more physical stress with a lesser risk of injury.

Physical trauma is the most obvious reason kids need their spines checked out regularly, but emotional and toxic stress can also cause subluxations in kids. Many times children have accidents and parents may believe that they are fine because there is no external evidence of damage. Spinal subluxations sometimes don't signal an obvious symptom. The earlier children's spines are checked, the earlier problems can be detected, preventing health problems from occurring and becoming serious. We recommend all children be checked regularly for nerve interference, even without symptoms present. Prevention is the best medicine.

Emotional stress, another cause of vertebral subluxation, is becoming a bigger issue for kids today as they try to cope with common scenarios like divorce, violence, and peer pressure. Our world is also becoming more toxic with an increase in pollution, packaged foods, and the number of recommended vaccines. Toxic overload can stress the body and cause subluxations. Chiropractic can help children adapt to these stressors so that they can function at a higher level.

If you know a child who is not under chiropractic care and suffers from any of the following problems, please urge the child's parent to consider Chiropractic.

Fever	Bed Wetting
Colic	Bronchitis
Croup	Coughs/Colds
Constipation	Allergies
Weakness/fatigue	Wheezing
Skin problems	Poor Posture
One leg shorter	Stomach ache
Irritability	Hearing loss
Nervousness	Asthma
Ear infection	Poor concentration
Learning disorder	Neck/back pain
Sinus problems	Leg/hip/foot pain
Eye problems	Numbness
Scoliosis	Headaches
Arthritis	Hyper-activity/Attention deficit disorder