Kristi McVee (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to the Conversations with Kristi podcast. Today's episode is one of those conversations that really makes you stop and rethink what we think we know about children learning and behavior.
I first met today's guest, Dr. Christine Payard, at a conference last year, and I remember sitting there thinking, why has no one told us this before? Dr. Christine works in the area of neurodevelopment and learning, helping educators and parents understand how the early stages of a child's development, things like movement, reflexes, and sensory integration, actually shape the way children learn later in life. In this conversation, we talk about things most of us have never been taught, I certainly hadn't. Things like
what primitive reflexes are and why they matter, why some children physically struggle to sit still or focus, how early development impacts reading and learning, and why behavior is often the body communicating something important. This episode isn't about blaming parents, although I try and blame myself a bit there, or labeling children. It's about understanding what might actually be happening in a child's body and brain so we can better support them to learn and thrive.
I absolutely love this conversation and I think parents and educators alike are going to walk away with seeing children through a completely different lens. So let's dive in and hear what Dr. Christine has to say.
Kristi McVee (01:16)
Welcome back and guess what? I have got the best guest this week on the Conversations with Kristi podcast because I met Dr. Christine Payard in, it was last year, November, I think. And Dr. Christine, I'm gonna call you Dr. Christine the whole way. ⁓ Or Dr. Chris, but no, I met you and honestly, I spoke first at this conference.
Christine Payard (01:33)
Okay.
Kristi McVee (01:42)
And, you know, I sat down, I'm like, okay, hope I did good. And then you got up and spoke and I was like, ⁓ my gosh, who is this woman? need to know it. And you made me feel like at the same, like so much information. Anyway, I'm not explaining anything very well right now, but my listeners are used to me rambling at the start till I get my mojo. But no, what you do and what you teach was so extremely empowering.
And I can't wait for to hear more about it. But also I know that more people like for me as a parent hearing what you had to say, I was like, why didn't, why don't I know this stuff? And then I was thinking, but why don't educators know this stuff? And why don't teachers know this stuff? And that's what you're doing, right? You're trying to increase the understanding and awareness around what you do. And I'm going to stop talking now because you need to tell everyone what you do.
Christine Payard (02:30)
Mmm.
Well, thanks, Christy. That conference was a great opportunity and it was speaking to family daycare providers and I've got a very soft spot for them because they just do such amazing educational caring work. So, yeah, it was such a wonderful opportunity to share a little bit about what I do, which is helping people understand more about neurodevelopment and learning connections. So, you know, that's the big words, but...
Trying to marry the concepts of what happens to children in their first three years of life sets the foundations and the opportunities for how we learn.
It's not just about saying, you know, we're going to teach them about the world around us. It's about how do we actually learn to interact with the world around us. And that has a huge impact on children when they're actually in school. So we see, as I've heard you speaking about before, there are so many neurodivergent children now that are in classrooms. And that's a challenge for teachers to navigate. So
what's happening there and how can we actually use the information that these children are presenting with us not in their words not in their misbehaviour or those sorts of things but what is their body actually telling us about how they learn and how can we tap into that to help our educators
Kristi McVee (03:46)
Hmm.
Christine Payard (03:50)
not just help them mature these nervous systems, the neurodevelopmental things that are the foundations, but how can we help them to learn better and to be better versions of themselves? I'm not saying we go in there, it's not about curing, it's not about changing, it's about how can you be the best version of who you are and how can the teachers facilitate that because teachers really care, they want the best for their kids.
Kristi McVee (04:00)
Yeah.
See ya.
That's right. And I mean,
I think the biggest part of what you taught or what you were talking about that really hit me was that every stage of that first three years, like from learning how to roll over, learning how to crawl, learning how to lift their heads, like even the sucking reflex from a from a newborn, right? If it doesn't develop in the right processes, and those neurons don't, and I hope I'm not butchering this, but if they don't connect properly,
Christine Payard (04:33)
Yep. Yep.
Kristi McVee (04:42)
or how they're meant to connect, then that can actually leave an impact that affects a child from when they hit school and when they're trying to learn because those processes, those neural pathways that have to connect in those early years actually then prevent them from learning simple things when they become older or even things like being able to read and write, all of these other things, being able to sit still in a classroom.
Christine Payard (05:05)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (05:09)
you know, stuff that we and so I guess people and like, I can't wait to get more into that. how did you get involved in like all of this? Like, how did you become this person who goes and teaches about this stuff?
Christine Payard (05:09)
All of those things, yeah.
Bye.
⁓ it's a long story, but I'll try to keep it.
Kristi McVee (05:24)
NNNN
Christine Payard (05:27)
sort of relatively summarised. I'm actually a high school trained teacher but I've always had a fascination of how do we learn and language in particular, know, how does language impact how we learn and things like that. So I started doing some research when I was actually at uni in that but I became a high school teacher and I was gobsmacked by how many kids I had in my class couldn't read, couldn't interact and do the things that I'd wanted to. You know, you're in grade nine, you should be
able to read by this stage. And I don't know how to teach you how to read because I've assumed that that's happened in your primary education. So you know life happened and I started then working in adult education when my children were very very small and working again in adult literacy and again it was these people are smart they know how to navigate this world in a literacy based world they know how to navigate it with
Kristi McVee (06:01)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christine Payard (06:20)
with difficulties reading it and how does that happen? And my husband was a behavioral optometrist. So he understood a lot about vision. We had so many conversations about the importance of vision. Yeah. And it's...
Kristi McVee (06:23)
Hmm.
Good answer. Thing I would say.
Christine Payard (06:33)
Absolutely and it's not just you know not just the the focusing aspect is how do your eyes work so that you can actually see because there's so much involved in that and that sort of sent me down a bit of a path and again life happened yes and I moved into had the opportunity to do my PhD and I moved again into looking at professional learning of teachers and you know so much happens it's a bit of a digression might have got a really windy story I guess but
the teachers who continue to learn once they start teaching. Sure you do your degrees, but being in the field is where you really learn how to work this job out.
And we present a lot of professional learning to teachers as one hit wonders. There's sort of a shiny object syndrome, you know, and this is going to work. So we'll send you to a PD for one day and you can bring it back and teach the rest of us about it. And it falls flat, constantly falls flat. So I did my PhD on that and
Kristi McVee (07:18)
Thank
it does.
Christine Payard (07:33)
looked at people's experiences with learning and professional learning and learnt a lot more about actually what makes professional learning and we learn through experience, we learn through doing and that's sort of guided a lot of the work that I've done. And then my husband was seriously ill and I actually had to take over managing the optometry practice which I did and did that for 14 years so I sort of got
embedded in the world of optometry and I'd like to say to people I could do sort of pretty much everything in that practice except say which is better one or two you know that way.
Kristi McVee (08:11)
Yeah, I mean, you probably could have, but you wouldn't have been able to do it, you know, medically. Yeah.
Christine Payard (08:15)
Nah. And I didn't want to. That was
the other thing. I didn't want to. But I still was fascinated with the kids who came in and who...
who needed more visual help than just the putting the glasses on because you know if your eyes aren't working together you can have blurred vision. If you can't focus quickly and if you there's a whole bundle of things that can happen with vision that impacts your ability to read and to understand and to decode what is in front of you and then you add the auditory aspect to it which is you know connecting the sounds to these squiggles on the page the graphene's and the
Kristi McVee (08:41)
Yeah.
Christine Payard (08:53)
letters together. There's so many things that happen that learning depends on all of these body-based ⁓ things that have to work together, the processes. And I was introduced to the concept of primitive reflexes and in particular the work of Sally Goddard Blyth and Peter Blyth from the UK and that's the Institute for Neurophysiological Psychology which is a mouthful so we call it INPP.
Kristi McVee (08:59)
Yeah, processes.
Christine Payard (09:19)
And I had the opportunity to go and train with Peter and Sally, which was just absolutely amazing. And they talked about the importance of primitive reflexes and how these reflexes establish the foundation for our body functions that support later learning. So, you know, I can go into explaining what primitive reflexes are,
Kristi McVee (09:41)
Yeah, please. don't think most people, look, until I met you, I'd never heard of it. Like, I literally didn't know exactly. And I don't think many people understand that literally what I was explaining about, you know, even the sucking reflex, the rolling over reflex, all of reflexes, they're those primitive reflexes that you were talking about. That they have a massive impact if you don't let your child crawl on their own you know, like,
Christine Payard (09:46)
okay. Yeah.
Mm.
Yeah, and they have an impact.
Kristi McVee (10:07)
one of the things that really freaked me out because I did this a lot was swaddling your child for too long.
Christine Payard (10:11)
Ha
Kristi McVee (10:11)
I was like,
that's why my child has ADHD. And it's not it's not true, people. It's not true but as you were describing, like, if you don't let you know the reflexes, so please explain. I'm sure people find it really interesting. But you know, you're explaining about the reflex and the I know this is an audio podcast. So you can't see me putting my arms up in the air, right?
Christine Payard (10:23)
Mmm, sure.
Kristi McVee (10:34)
So, you know, the reflex and you'll explain it better than I can, but that reflex and because I swaddled her for like such a long time, I was thinking, ⁓ now it's my fault.
Christine Payard (10:44)
Please don't. guess that's the biggest, if I can sort of really push that and I do that whenever I speak, say, please don't go down the, if only I had sort of avenue because there's just, you do the best you can where you're at. That's with the knowledge that you have. So what primitive reflexes are, they're actually,
Kristi McVee (10:54)
Yeah. At the time,
Christine Payard (11:02)
reflex responses. When there's a stimulus in the body, there is a ⁓ motor response and those start in utero. So it helps that they're really important for movement, for training the sensory systems and for preparing the body to survive outside of it, once they're born basically. And humans, think,
humans are fairly unique in that when they're born, if they don't have someone to nurture and care for them, they're going to perish. Whereas you look at other animals or other creatures, say turtles, sea turtles, know, once they hatch, they're ready to go. They can cross the beach and off they go and swim. Humans don't have that advantage and it takes a good long period to get to that sort of level of independence. And when we're talking neurological maturity, that can take up to 27 years for the
Kristi McVee (11:32)
Yes.
Yeah.
Christine Payard (11:53)
prefrontal
cortex to, you know, at the front to actually mature beautifully. So hopefully beautiful for people. But that's right. So there's a long time in there that there's nurturing and experience for the brain to mature to get them to that level. And the primitive reflexes are the first movements that we have. So if you have a child who, well, one of the first most
Kristi McVee (12:00)
Hopefully.
Mm.
Christine Payard (12:18)
significant ones that we play with as parents is when they're born the palm of grass brieflex you put your finger in their palm and they will grip and you just sit there and you're in love as a parent you know you just go
Kristi McVee (12:27)
Yes.
You're like,
my god, they love me back.
Christine Payard (12:33)
They do, they're holding my hand.
Look, they've got this tiny little hand wrapped around your finger and that connection is just mind blowing. It just really, it hits you in the feels. It really gets you emotionally connected. And that's the beauty of the human baby parent connection. And that's where it all starts is with those primitive reflexes. So that reflex though, if you think about it, it needs to disappear because we don't want it when you're a 15 year old kid, don't want your
Kristi McVee (12:44)
Yeah.
Christine Payard (13:02)
hand to grasp when you're trying to do something with your hand open. Yeah, you need to, it needs to mature. And that's what these primitive reflexes are. They need to, they're there to guide and develop the neurological system to get the firing and the wiring happening and the neural pathways happening. They're movement based. We don't come with batteries. We don't come with instruction sheets. It's a neurological pre-wiring to say,
Kristi McVee (13:05)
Yeah, yeah.
Christine Payard (13:28)
Primitive reflexes happen first and from that we gain our own control of our body, our own postural control and so on. But to do that, those primitive reflexes have to do their job, help train the sensory systems, help train the body, help get all the wiring and firing happening in the brain. And then they need to go backstage, not disappear. We need to integrate them into a mature system and move backstage so that they're not the
Kristi McVee (13:40)
Mm.
Christine Payard (13:55)
predominant activity. And there's a bundle of reflexes and I think I used this example, Christy, that sort of gets it always gets a response. There's a reflex called the Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex or the ATNR. And that's when a child's head turns. So say the chin goes to the right shoulder, the right limbs, the right arm and the right leg extend and the left arm and the left leg bend. So they go into flexion.
Kristi McVee (13:56)
Yes.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Christine Payard (14:21)
So you've got this what they call a fencing type position and if you move that baby's head to the other side, you'll see that it swaps. Yeah, so that that reflex needs to be integrated before a child is six months old. It needs to have gone in terms of gone backstage, not just a bit, so matured. So you've got that reflex and then you've got another reflex which is called
Kristi McVee (14:26)
Yep.
That's That's the switch.
Yeah. Yeah.
Christine Payard (14:50)
Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (STNR) and that's when they're in hands and knees and you lift their head and their bum falls down and you know put their head down and the bum comes up.
Kristi McVee (14:59)
Mm-hmm.
Christine Payard (14:59)
So
if you've got a child learning to swim and they're in the pool and they've got a retained ATNR and a retained STNR, it's really hard for them to swim properly and do freestyle, you know, because they have to lift their head. So they lift their head up and their bum sinks and they get the kick, kick, kick, kick, kick. You have to kick your legs. And it's pretty hard for them to do that, to lift their body up.
Kristi McVee (15:03)
Yes.
wow. I didn't even think about that. Like why some kids are struggling to even like float.
Christine Payard (15:27)
Yeah, yeah, and we're trying to put strokes in there. And we also say, you know, and then tip your head to the side. Well, if they've got an ATNR then they want to extend that those things on that side.
Kristi McVee (15:38)
They can't get their hands,
because they've got no control over what's happening with their limbs.
Christine Payard (15:42)
No,
because it's a reflex response that is just hasn't matured enough then.
Kristi McVee (15:47)
It's dominant. It's dominating
the rest of their responses. you know, things like ⁓ things that you were saying were like that. But also, I remember you saying bumbos or those seats. Don't use them people. Dr. Christine will tell you to tell you don't use them because because it stops the child. What was the reason for that? I can't remember exactly, but.
Christine Payard (15:59)
Yeah.
I'm done.
Yeah.
Well,
it's like you're swaddling and there's another reflex which is really important. you might have to, I get really enthusiastic, Kristi so you might need to pull me back in. But the more...
Kristi McVee (16:20)
I'm here for it. Go.
Christine Payard (16:22)
That morrow
reflex which people sort of know as the startle reflex. It's the beginning of the startle reflex that we have. Yeah, yeah. So that's a multi-sensory reflex and it can be triggered by changes in the balance system. It can be triggered by loud noises, by light changes and all of those. And you see it in young babies, you know, and it helps them take the first breath of life. So they come out and there's a shock system and they just go, taking a huge breath, their arms
Kristi McVee (16:28)
⁓ when they throw their arms up. Yep.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Christine Payard (16:51)
just flail out and then they come into that sort of fetal position and they crunch back up. So everything goes back in. So it's a huge extension and then a contraction into that fetal position. And they usually cry. It's got a huge emotional response to it. That reflex again needs to mature so that we can have the resilience to deal with loud noises. We can...
Kristi McVee (16:56)
back into the feed.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Christine Payard (17:16)
we can say, actually, I'm safe. It's a real nervous system methodology of saying, actually, I'm safe here. I don't need to respond. I don't need to fight this and I don't need to run away from this. It's the fight and flight reflex. So the swaddling restricts that activation.
For a primitive reflex to mature, needs to be activated. It needs to do what it needs to do, reach its zenith, and then fade off into the background.
Kristi McVee (17:42)
And then,
yeah.
Christine Payard (17:43)
And they all occur at different times and at different stages and in sequence. But that's why the swaddling is important, because we need to allow a baby to move and swaddling restricts that activation and that expression of it. So that's.
Kristi McVee (17:58)
And this is why
I have to apologize to my daughter when I say it later. I'm sorry for swaddling you for 14 months.
Christine Payard (18:06)
You know, the intention is grand. It's about giving them security. Yeah. And that's what you want to do, but you have to allow them opportunity to express that. And, you know, I'm not going to sit there and say, you must not do this. That's you do what you do to survive. parenting is a survival exercise for everyone. ⁓
Kristi McVee (18:08)
It's to giving her safety.
Yeah.
Sport. It's a survival sport.
Christine Payard (18:29)
Oh,
huge. And I, you know, I tip my hat off to young parents and just say, you're on a journey here. And it's a wonderful one.
Kristi McVee (18:37)
Yeah,
may the, you know, whatever the hunger game saying is like, may it be in your favor, I can't remember. But, you know, I think and that's the thing that really got me is that, ⁓ you know, at each stage and age, they have to like go through this process. And then it has to. And then so what happens if they don't mature and go, you know, fade into
Christine Payard (18:47)
Yeah, that's right.
Kristi McVee (19:03)
fade into the background and become like, you know, cause, cause as you can see, I think on, so a question that got asked to me this week was, did your child grow up scared? Because obviously with what I do and what I know and me talking to her about this stuff and me giving her, you know, I never went to her at two or three years old and said, don't let anyone abuse you. Abuse is when someone touches you. I...
Christine Payard (19:15)
Mm.
Kristi McVee (19:26)
I was, you know, a little bit more cautious and I used age appropriate language and I use, which I teach people now, you know, we can talk about abuse and we can talk about pornography and all of these topics without actually talking about them and scaring them by using very safe language, which is, you know, private parts, public parts, safe, unsafe, inappropriate, appropriate. And they and you know, helping children understand what safe feels like in their bodies, etc.
And I'd imagine that that just gave me a side thought. I'd imagine if children grow up in a situation where there's a lot of fear, anger, trauma, maybe domestic violence, maybe they've had a lot of trauma as a young child, that some of those things that you were talking about, you know, those reactions, they might actually numb down and they won't actually feel them when they're meant to feel them.
Christine Payard (20:11)
Yeah, yeah, there's a few things in there that you said you started sort of what happens if they don't mature. The maturation process, as I sort of said, is about experience. They need to have that opportunity to express those movements. And that's why I don't like the bumbo seats, because they do the same sort of capitalization stuff.
Kristi McVee (20:29)
They sort of hold them still and they can't move.
Christine Payard (20:32)
and they put them in positions that they're not ready for. ⁓ They're not ready to sit up. If they're not ready to sit up by themselves, then don't put them in a position like that, unless you have to feed them or something. But anyway, but what this whole process does, which is associated with your child grow up scared? It helps calm the nervous system. The human, when we're born, we're born...
Kristi McVee (20:35)
truly it.
Christine Payard (20:54)
with one objective and that is to survive.
and we do whatever we can to survive. So that's where the connection is really important because we have to make that connection with our caregiver because they're the ones who are going to feed us, they're the ones who are going to comfort us, nurture us and guide us. So we need that relationship. As humans, we need that. And that connection is huge. So what happens is that the nervous system gets used to, this is what safety looks like for me.
Kristi McVee (21:05)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Christine Payard (21:23)
and all of your, the way it processes and grows, the way the brain grows, is that it's, I call it a bottom-up body first sort of process, that the body trains the brain and all of that happens before we actually start thinking in terms of this is how I'm going to respond and the primitive reflexes are all about survival.
Kristi McVee (21:41)
Hmm.
Yes.
Christine Payard (21:45)
They,
you know, it's about training the body, but it's all about survival. So at a later stage, if there is a brain injury or some hugely traumatic event, they come back out. And you can see that in elderly people. Sometimes you'll see that the primitive reflexes come back out to serve that survival purpose.
Kristi McVee (21:55)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm,
yeah.
Christine Payard (22:05)
So, you know, your question there is loaded with so many directions that I could go in.
Kristi McVee (22:10)
I know, sorry, I do that.
go, do do do do do do do do. So basically, if they don't mature properly, what do you see? Like we'll stay on that track. So what do you see when they get older? When a child gets older, if something isn't working, it hasn't matured or hasn't had the nurturing that it required. say, I swaddled my daughter for so long. Like what are some of the things we see? My poor kid, she's gonna go, you made me like this.
Christine Payard (22:18)
Well... Yeah.
Hmm.
It's only your fault!
Kristi McVee (22:37)
It's all right, I'll take it. I'll take it.
But you know what I mean? Like, so what kind of things do we see? Because at the very beginning, you said you were trying to teach kids who were 14, who couldn't read, and you're like, well, why? Why can't they read? And it's come back to this that you basically, yeah, so explain a little bit about that.
Christine Payard (22:47)
Yep.
Absolutely.
Well, as I said, by the time a child is six months to 12 months, they should have matured and gone backstage and be replaced by what we call postural reflexes. So these are ways that we can control our body. And if you look at a baby learning to control their body, learning to walk, you can see that they're getting those connections that, you know, I'm actually in control of this thing called my body. If the primitive reflexes stay front and center,
Kristi McVee (23:16)
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Christine Payard (23:22)
then it's kind of like that swimming example I gave you. If that a child's head is turned to one position then their arm has to, it's a physiological response, their movement happens that way and they have no control over it. Or the control that they have is so concentrated, they're sitting there and I've really got to sit still and I've got to sit on this mat with my legs crossed.
Kristi McVee (23:39)
Yeah, hard work.
Christine Payard (23:45)
and my body really doesn't want to do it. But anyway, I'll try and do my best because children want to please. So you'll see in a preschool situation, for example, you see these kids constantly shifting because they're trying to navigate this need to move, which is.
Kristi McVee (23:50)
Yes, all the time.
Yeah, weakling.
Christine Payard (24:01)
reminiscent of primitive reflexes that have not been integrated and they have not been matured. So when we sort of say just sit still, just think about it, just sit still and focus on what you're doing. The brain isn't ready for that. The child isn't ready for that because they're still operating from that brainstem area where these primitive reflexes are still very, very active. So the good news is we can work on it.
Kristi McVee (24:06)
Mm.
Yeah. So some kids literally can't. Some kids literally
can't sit still because their body has not, like you said, integrated all of the things to be able to. And then you've got the other child who's sitting there peacefully and calmly because they're more matured. And this is why, you know, I didn't think much of about it years had gone by. I was that quiet, calm child. I was the one who was able to sit still, but yet that was, and I can, and I think some of it was fear because I hated
Christine Payard (24:29)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (24:52)
upsetting anyone. But at the same time, I wanted to please everyone. But then my brother was a menace. Like he was a menace. would he was the kid that was running around like climbing things like, you know, walking before 12 months old, you know, he was absolutely gung ho from the minute he, you know, opened his eyes, basically.
Christine Payard (24:54)
Yep. Yep.
Yeah,
yeah. And they're the kids that we say they're the ADHD kids, you know, and we're quick to label them instead of saying actually what is causing that because, know, these these
labels and diagnoses are multifactorial. So how do we actually work out what it is that's causing that? And for many of the kids that we work with in a clinical basis, when we're looking at integrating these reflexes down the track, which we can do, it's because they have these
immature primitive reflex systems that are just saying I can't put my head down without my bottom wanting to shift. I can't sit back in a chair without wanting to wriggle and move to alleviate that sensory stimulus.
Kristi McVee (25:54)
And it's literally the neurons
firing saying, I've got to move.
Christine Payard (25:58)
Yeah, it is. It's at that brainstem level, which is the first part of the brain that starts to develop. And it's sort of stuck in that mode. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (26:07)
It's like ting ting ting ting like it's probably
shocking them almost going, you know, like I got to move because my body just and I remember my little one like when she was really little saying my body needs to move it's it doesn't want to stay still. And when you talk to little people, no and now I'm thinking far out I used to say okay move let's go.
Christine Payard (26:11)
Kinda, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and she's not making it up.
Kristi McVee (26:27)
Like, what do we want to dance? Do we want to like run around? Let's go ride the bike. What do you want to do? But this is the thing, like if your child is struggling with that or you've got a child in your classroom struggling with sitting down and they're, you it just makes so much sense when you realize that it's literally not their fault. They are literally just there. And my daughter used to because she had the language I taught her about body safety and she had that she would say things like to me, my body.
Christine Payard (26:28)
great response.
Kristi McVee (26:54)
My body is telling me this. My body is saying this. Because I used to say to her, what's your body telling you?
Christine Payard (26:56)
Beautiful ⁓
Yeah, and that's that is such a beautiful thing that you did there, Christy, because what you're doing is you're actually helping her tune into her body to to say the body is telling me about how safe I am or what I can do. And I need to pay attention to that. And the children that I've worked with with learning challenges who have it, I've had children say to me, my eyes are really cranky.
Kristi McVee (27:13)
you
Yes.
Christine Payard (27:21)
know when
when I read my eyes are cranky and I can't I can't I just don't like it so I'm not going to read and and that's because the eyes aren't working together they don't have the fine motion to
Kristi McVee (27:27)
Yeah.
It's hard work.
Christine Payard (27:33)
It's everything's hard work. So their brain energy goes into trying to control all of this movement so that they can meet the requirements to sit still or whatever. And their brain then isn't free to do the learning that the child who has the mature system does. that by the...
Kristi McVee (27:47)
Gosh, it makes so much sense.
Christine Payard (27:50)
Well it does and by the time they get to you know year two or year three where they should have learnt quite a bit about reading and they then start to read to learn rather than learn to read you know the grade three grade four area then that's when they start to realise that they're way back behind the eight ball and they've got somebody yep and they start to say I'm really dumb and they're not.
Kristi McVee (28:08)
That happened to my daughter.
Yeah, that's that happened to my daughter.
My daughter, we didn't actually realize that she had a focus issue until she was about 11 or 12. And then, you know, she got a diag note. Yeah because we were like, she can read. But you know what my daughter was really good at? She was really good at listening. And then because she could do so many things without even picking up a book, but
It was all because she was always like listening and basically interpreting really fast. And then she was like learning that way. So she's an auditory processor. Of course she is because reading is hard for her. And she she had a problem with her eyes. They wouldn't focus like they couldn't get to that. You how you have to turn your eyes into focus. Yes, converges the word you knew you would know. And so she had and it wasn't until she got glasses at about 11 that the.
Christine Payard (28:53)
converge.
Kristi McVee (29:03)
optometrist said she's not able to push, like focus her eyes. And then we're like, what does that do? And they're like, well, she's going to struggle and it's going to be really hard to read because she can't focus on the words. And it made so much sense, but she was the end. She was musical. So she used to learn through hearing sound and then playing it. So this is the thing, like kids can work around this stuff. It just means that a lot of our kids who are really, they're really good at finding workarounds.
Christine Payard (29:26)
Yeah.
Absolutely. The human spirit is amazing in that regard. We're really good at working at workarounds. that's how I spoke about the adult literacy students that I worked with. Their skill set was just amazing. That's why said, you can't judge their intelligence by whether someone could read or not. It's definitely not the case. yeah, the workarounds, if you know that you've got a deficit in one sensory system, well, it's not a cognitive thing.
your body just works around it and says okay my vision isn't you know whenever I look at something I'm going to see two of those so I'm going to have to work out another way of getting this information. So what your the story of your daughter is is beautiful because that that's shows the resilience and the adaptability of the human spirit and the human human movement in that you know how to adapt to situations and survive.
Kristi McVee (30:00)
Yeah.
Mmm...eh!
And it makes me wonder where in her, I mean, look, no human is perfect, right? No one is perfect and no one's developing perfectly. unless we were developed in a slab and we get every part of that nurturing sequence and every part of that connection and every part of that, like, there's no such thing. There's no possibility of that, right? But I'm just wondering.
Christine Payard (30:39)
No. And we don't want it to be.
Kristi McVee (30:42)
No,
because my daughter I don't know if I told you this story, but I have said this on this podcast once or twice now. My daughter's I overheard my daughter telling her boyfriend that and she says this constantly because she's actually gone into the work workplace. So she's finished school, she's gone into the workplace in full time work. And she's like, I want things to be hard because that's how I learned and I'm like, Whoa, where did you get that attitude from? And then that's my attitude. But anyway, and she and I heard her tell her boyfriend that
Christine Payard (31:06)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (31:09)
she, he did something silly and she was like, does it hurt? And he was like, yeah, I'm really upset about it. And she goes, good, because you won't do it again. That's how you learn. Brutal, brutal. but she's also like, she goes, mom, that's how you build resilience. You have to make mistakes. And I'm like, well, where did you come from? But then I realized I probably said that to her at one stage or another like,
Christine Payard (31:21)
Absolutely.
Kristi McVee (31:32)
Not in a horrible way, but like, you know, it's okay that we've made mistakes. It's okay that we, you know, feel bad because that's how we learn. That's how we make, we won't make that mistake again. Like, I hope I said it to her like that. I'm pretty sure I did, but she's like, does it hurt? Good. You're not, you're not going to do it again. I'm like, Whoa. But, I was just thinking about things like, you know, she, she, we put her in a, and I'm happy to let the hand on her. didn't know any better. We put her, so I swaddled her.
Christine Payard (31:36)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (31:59)
she was in one of those jumping things, what are they called?
Christine Payard (32:02)
Yeah, the Jolly Jumpers.
Kristi McVee (32:04)
That's it. Probably
way too early. What else did I do to that poor kid? She, although I did, I was really good at like letting her explore and you know, so going back to the safety thing and going back to the fear thing. One of the things that I, I was really good at is letting her experience things.
without going, don't, no, it's gonna hurt, don't, you know, without stopping her. Like she climbed a tree once and fell out of it, hit every frickin' branch, coming down. And she was about five and everyone's looking at me waiting for her to scream and she didn't because she was like, and she just limped off going, oh. And I was like, they're like, how is she not screaming? And I said, oh, because I don't make a big deal when she hurts herself. She just knows that it hurts. And I sound like.
was very neglectful mother, but no, I let her experience the world and I was there to support her when she fell like or when she needed support. ⁓
Christine Payard (32:55)
And I think that's
a really, really important thing. And that is how we learn the resilience is through failure. And then we say, OK, let's keep working at it. And we can have a tendency to protect our children from experiencing adversity, experiencing a little bit of harm.
not harm, challenging situations, things that hurt them. And, you know, the best way to learn that a pot is hot is to touch that pot. It's not somebody saying, don't touch, don't touch, don't touch, because I haven't quite, yeah, you don't, until you've actually experienced the experience, you don't really know what that experience is. Now, I'm not advocating, go out there and, know.
Kristi McVee (33:13)
Things that hurt them.
Yes, I know.
No one learns from that.
No, no, don't don't make your kids go on like
run home five kilometers or anything like that. No, no. What we're saying is that we need to not protect our kids from those developmental things. And I think one of the things that was, you know how people always pick their kids up and make them stand. You know, when they're trying to stand and you, yeah, that's what I remember you saying, like, you know, and we think we're helping them. We think we like helping them by standing them up again and like standing them up and going,
Christine Payard (33:39)
No, no, no, you know.
That's right.
Please don't.
Kristi McVee (34:03)
you can do it and we're pushing them to walk or we're getting them to get to a stage that they're actually not mature enough yet for because their reflexes aren't ready.
Christine Payard (34:12)
Yeah, and it's you can't rush kids where you can, but you shouldn't rush kids through those developmental stages because they serve neurological purpose. They serve. They're really important, like I said, for laying their foundations for later learning. But they they help us learn how to use our body and structurally, we're not ready to stand yet until we have sat and crawled. So you're putting too much on pressure on the system, I guess, if you're putting them in.
Kristi McVee (34:37)
Yeah.
Christine Payard (34:38)
⁓ in their jolly jumpers and things like that, which are great fun. There are some kids that just absolutely adore it. And I'm not saying don't ever do it because there are times, but don't make it your constant. That's the major thing is sometimes, like I said, with the bumbo seats, you actually need to put a kid in a baby in a seat so that you can feed them. And that's the only way that you can do it if they're on their solids and things like that. But
Kristi McVee (34:46)
No, just in right time.
Christine Payard (35:04)
don't put them in there and leave them there. It's there for a particular purpose and then you let them experience the world on the ground. The best training device they've got is their body, you know, their fingers, they're fascinated by their fingers and how they move and that trains the vision is, you know, that that reflex. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (35:06)
and leave them in there.
Hmm.
Yeah, that following light and following changes in light and stuff. I also
remember my brother and I forgot about this. He used to scoot on his bum. He never crawled and then he was walking. And so like when you think about different things like that, I think, wow, that explains a few things.
Christine Payard (35:31)
Yeah.
Yeah,
crawling is so, so important. And we tend to overlook it and sort of say, you know, well, no one's still crawling now. And I didn't crawl and I'm okay. But you sort of, if you say that to, that's exactly what a reflex integration specialist would sort of say. They'd say, really? you? But yeah, that's right. So it's, and.
Kristi McVee (35:50)
Are you?
You can't sit still!
Christine Payard (36:00)
That's one of the concerns that a few years ago, the CDC in the US actually revised their milestones for children and crawling just sort of disappeared into the background altogether. Yeah, and it wasn't seen as a significant one. And that's just, I'm going to be blunt, that's just garbage.
Kristi McVee (36:10)
Really?
We wouldn't have it if it had it. We wouldn't have the
need to crawl if it wasn't necessary at some stage.
Christine Payard (36:21)
That's right.
And it's a natural progression. And the child who does the bum shuffling or does all of these weird sorts of of crawling that you see on your social media things, my heart just goes out for those kids. I sort of think, ⁓ that means this isn't developed and you haven't integrated that. And that can present some issues down the track. It's not it's not prescriptive that you will develop issues down the track. But we sometimes look from a teaching perspective
Kristi McVee (36:45)
No, no.
Christine Payard (36:50)
a children who have these learning challenges and we can say, well, let's actually work backwards. If you've got problems with reading, let's work backwards and see, do you have some of these retained reflexes and these oculomotor issues that are associated with retained reflexes? And if we can address those, then you'll find that it falls into place. So one of the stories that I love of one of the children that I've worked with in an individual capacity, he was in grade two going into grade three.
Kristi McVee (36:55)
Yes.
Christine Payard (37:17)
So really bright, wonderful kid, fit as an amazing sporty child. But reading was a challenge. And I did the assessment with him and he had quite a few retained primitive reflexes. He had some ocular motor issues. His balance was, his static balance, his ability to stay still was really pretty shot. Great at, you know, riding motorbikes and riding all of those sorts of things. But his static balance was a bit shot.
Kristi McVee (37:35)
No.
Mm-hmm.
Christine Payard (37:45)
So we started working on his vestibular system, so the balance system in between the ears there and you know where's my head in space. And we just did one exercise for 10 minutes a day, not even that, five minutes, which was working slowly on calibrating his, his and maturing his vestibular system. And within two or three weeks his mother rang me and she said, I just need to tell you
Kristi McVee (37:50)
Yes.
Christine Payard (38:09)
He's reading now and he wasn't.
How does this simple exercise that you've given me have that impact? And it's because that was just the slight missing piece for him that we needed to address. There was much more that we had to work on. That wasn't the be all and end all, but it was the missing piece for him. what that stabilizing his vestibular system and maturing that impacted his eye function and enabled his eyes, gave him gaze stability, which enabled him to read more effectively. So he went from a
Kristi McVee (38:14)
Hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Christine Payard (38:39)
child who I really hate reading and I'm dumb to actually I can read this and he start he moved beyond decoding the letters and the words to actually reading and understanding.
Kristi McVee (38:48)
Hmm, understanding.
Christine Payard (38:51)
And that was just amazing. So that's why I'm so passionate about educators knowing this, because if they can see that in the classroom, what tends to happen is that teachers say, well, look, let's take you down a reading level or let's just give you more readers. And it's more of the same. And if we don't have that perspective that says, let's look at the body, let's look at what's happening there. And maybe if we can address that, then
actually we're going to find the missing piece for these kids and I think if teachers have that vision and have that understanding and perspective it makes such a huge difference because kids are calmer and yeah.
Kristi McVee (39:26)
⁓ massive, massive.
And imagine if they just had like, ⁓ you're gonna have to create this. Imagine if they just had like, at the start of every day, they did a series of exercises that, you know, worked on the worked on some of these little things, you know, from
Christine Payard (39:40)
funny you say
that because it is created. We've got it. Yeah, we've got a program that we're, and this is my passion play for the moment, I guess, and I call it body to brain learning at school. it's ⁓ based on, I talked about the INPP work that I went to learn with Sally and Pid live.
Kristi McVee (39:44)
What?
Yeah.
Yes.
Christine Payard (40:03)
And Sally's written a book for assessing neuromotor readiness for learning. But as a teacher PD program, this didn't in my eyes, it doesn't work terribly well because it's one of those one hit wonders. You you just come in and you go. Yeah. So this is sort of where my my lives have converged, my understanding with ⁓ professional learning and what works for teachers in professional learning. And then this information about neurodevelopment, they've sort of blended here. So I've written a program called Body to Brain Learning at School.
Kristi McVee (40:13)
Mm-hmm. You come in and you go. Yep.
Christine Payard (40:32)
and it takes teachers through this. Why is this important? What is it that you see? If you see a child sitting in this particular way or these particular learning challenges, what is it that this is telling you about how they learn? How is their body telling you how they learn?
Kristi McVee (40:45)
Wow.
Christine Payard (40:47)
So it takes them through that and then there's a screening program that we can take or teach to the educators and a movement approach that we can use that helps and makes a huge difference. And you're in WA, aren't you? You're in Bunbury? Okay. ⁓ There's a school there that is using this program and with great effect. And they're just sort of saying that it's changed their school.
Kristi McVee (41:04)
Yes, yeah, I am.
Christine Payard (41:14)
and the tone of their school because it just helps address so many of those issues. And you know the sensory toys that they're given, you know, here's a chew toy or here's a wobble cushion and things like that.
Kristi McVee (41:26)
Yeah.
Christine Payard (41:26)
This school has had huge resources for those and they've found that since they've started using the body to brain learning at school approach, they don't need to use those anymore and they're getting better interaction, they're getting better engagement from the kids. So there is something.
Kristi McVee (41:40)
If I just can see,
I can just say, well, this is my life's mission now is to make sure people know about it because I can just see that I well, one of my last missions, many I've got many, but it'll be on the list. But this is the thing that I was just I was just thinking, you know, like you think about how many kids are mislabeled and how many kids are just treated like they're difficult. And all it came down to is if they had some support. And we know, I mean,
Christine Payard (41:48)
Thank you.
You only go.
Kristi McVee (42:07)
I know through my own personal journey with my own trauma, with my own learning, with my own psychology and counseling and stuff like that, our bodies hold so much of our traumas of our, you know, there's this whole, the body holds the score, right? And so, and imagine it, you know, and like there's somatic stuff and we're, Western society, we're not very good at, you know, following that kind of belief that
our bodies actually and years gone by and I'm like, I'm going all off on a tangent, but years gone by and you'll love this story because it's not, it's relevant. So I have had horses for all my life. So I had horses and when I was in my early twenties, I decided to become a horse massage therapist, right? So random, my careers are all my things, but anyway, I became a horse massage therapist and this woman I met from the US,
she did myofascia release on horses. And myofascia release, and this was, I'm talking early 2000s. Now myofascia release is actually a thing that we see in everyday ⁓ modality and healing now. But myofascia release was like new age technology basically. But all it is is that the fascia, which surrounds the muscles holds.
trauma. So if you have a car accident, for instance, and it's all like bundled up like a fishing net that's had its strings pulled, and it's holding all of those muscles together, and until you let them until the fascia releases. But what was most, like mind blowing to me was that when we release that fascia, it's not just releasing the fascia, it's actually bringing up the trauma that happens when you had that fascia when when that all happened, right. So
your body literally if something happens to you as a child or happens to you in utero happens to you as an adult whenever it is, your body is holding on to that until you release it. And so I knew about this 20 something years ago, 25 years ago. And so I'm still dealing with my own things right now. And everyone keeps saying to me, somatic release, Kristi somatic release, go and do some somatic work. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're what you're saying is, is that
kids' bodies, the development of them, they retain it. If we don't go through the process properly, they retain it. But then it becomes something that it keeps adding on. It's like, you know, when you add a little bit more and you add a little bit more and it becomes this bigger thing. And people will go through life thinking that they've got problems and possibly it's just something that wasn't really treated when they were little.
Christine Payard (44:35)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's, mean, that's this whole progression from a psychology develops in tandem with our physiology. your personality, sure, you're born with your genetic predispositions and things like that in your experience, but your physiology and your psychology develop together. So and, you know, we could probably go into real deep academic discussion about that, you know, how much of your physiology actually determines your psychology.
Kristi McVee (44:53)
Yes.
Christine Payard (45:02)
you know, an example of that is I still have retained reflexes. I was the child who couldn't read, you know, and then to have discovered this work and now this is my work, you know, it's what happens there. But the whole concept of
the body mind interconnection is huge and it doesn't have a place in education training and it needs to have a place in education training. And it tends to be something that we outsource a bit to OTs, speech language trainers and things like that. And that's probably why I'm so passionate about it because I think teachers, you've got this, you are the best place to work with this. You've got this if you have the knowledge.
Kristi McVee (45:24)
Hmm.
days.
I know.
Christine Payard (45:42)
And the ones who do have the knowledge just go, my gosh, this makes so much sense. they use it and it just teaching, teaching work at the moment is absolutely difficult, you know, really, really hard. We've got
teachers exiting the profession everywhere. And a lot of that is because of the challenges that they're facing in the classroom and how to navigate that and how to navigate expectations within those contexts. And if you're trained as a teacher, you're trained to just look at the academic layer of learning. You're not trained to look at what comes in underneath. And, you know, I talked to you about the brain bow. We do.
Kristi McVee (45:57)
Yeah.
Yep. Yep.
Yeah, we've got it all backwards. We've got it all backwards because
it honestly teachers, you know, they have such a big place and I don't it's in the last 50 years it's gone from helping kids, you know, learn at their own pace almost to they need to be at a certain level at a certain date at a certain time. And no wonder kids are falling behind when they haven't even been given the opportunity to take it at their own pace because not every child learns in the same way like
I learn through repetition. My daughter learns through auditory. My husband learns through kinesthetic learning like he has to do in order to learn. You know, he's very good at it. We all learn so differently. And until you understand each different type of learning, if you only offer one type of learning, then there's three quarters of the class is not going to get it.
Christine Payard (46:57)
Yeah.
Yeah, and you know, there's a whole school of thought about that sort of approaches to learning too. And you know, that's how people learn. But I'm gonna push back a little bit and say, we actually use our whole body to learn. It's just that you found that one works better than the other at times. And that's your way. what we, yeah, and we need to, we can.
Kristi McVee (47:18)
or you've trained yourself to learn that way.
Christine Payard (47:22)
support learning more effectively by looking at this more holistically and for teachers my question is how do the kids in front of you, how do the students in front of you actually learn and we we tend to go right into the head stuff you know they're motivated that we talk about executive function we talk about regulation and it's all sort of they're in control we assume that they are in control of their body and what we're saying is actually there's a whole lot
Kristi McVee (47:38)
intrinsic.
Christine Payard (47:49)
of stuff going on that they may not be in control of, that they need to get control of first so that we can let them access learning opportunities. you know, in our first encounter with each other, I talked about the brain bow, which is a model that I use. And in academic learning, we just tend to talk about the top level, one layer of that, of, you know, how the brain develops and how it impacts our learning capacity. And
Kristi McVee (47:54)
Yes.
Yes.
Christine Payard (48:16)
teachers need more insight into that and that's what the whole body to brain learning at school thing is and that's like I said my passion and driving force at the moment.
Kristi McVee (48:24)
And honestly,
I think if we could go on for hours talking about this and I think the thing was, could, we definitely could. want to, I would love for educators to know more about your work. So where can they find you? What can they look up and how can they ⁓ get more information about what your program basically?
Christine Payard (48:30)
I
Sure. So I'm on social media platforms as BodyToBrainLearning and there's bodytobrainlearning.com is my website. That's probably the best places to go. I'm on LinkedIn under Christine Payard as well, but that's probably the best thing to jump on is the website is bodytobrainlearning.com.
Kristi McVee (49:02)
Yeah.
Yeah. And honestly, if you can get in front of it, go and listen to Dr. Christine Payard. Any chance she's amazing. She, I reckon you could have done about three hours of talking and I would have been there. I would have been like, I was completely and utterly gobsmacked by what you were telling the group that we were there and like family and family daycare educators, because, you know, I just realized just how
Christine Payard (49:12)
Thank you.
Kristi McVee (49:29)
just how important it is that we give kids, we try not to label them and we start listening to what, and we help them learn to listen to their own bodies. It's funny because we make a joke in my family now all the time because my husband wasn't diagnosed with ADHD till he was 30 and my daughter was 13. And we joke about it because my daughter always goes, well, how did you not know, mom?
I hummed all the time, I was singing all the time. I was always in trouble at school for like, for, you know, and I had to get people to explain things to me and stuff like that. I was like, yeah, but now listening to you, I realize a lot of those things, the humming and the singing were her auditory stuff and like she, music is important and regulation. But also like the getting other people to explain things to her was because she couldn't read.
Christine Payard (50:10)
and regulation.
Yep.
Kristi McVee (50:20)
And so she
was getting people to explain it so that it was easier for her to understand because she could easily like process it. It was quicker. And so, know, like certainly.
Christine Payard (50:27)
Yeah, but what a
wonderful story, again, of how adaptable we are and how good we are at surviving and making us who we are. you know, all of this stuff is, if it's a problem, then let's look into it. But if it's not a problem and you're just an amazing person and look at the mum that she had who adapted to who she had in front of her. You know, that's what's great.
Kristi McVee (50:46)
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I just said to you, I just say to her all
the time, well, you were just my daughter. just, you know, to me, you not a problem, you were just doing you, you were just being you. And I was like, how did I know I didn't know because I wasn't looking for a problem. I was just looking at the person in front of me.
Christine Payard (50:56)
And that's it.
And that's the key. Who is it that we have in front of us and what is the whole
system telling us about how they operate and survive in the world? And if we can interpret that correctly, we can support them better.
Kristi McVee (51:17)
and you've got all of the tools there to help kids. And you know what, like you said at the very beginning, it's not like, this is not the be all and end all. This doesn't mean that all their symptoms go away. It just might make their lives easier.
Christine Payard (51:27)
Yeah, and that's the goal. Let's help you be the best that you can be. yeah, it's not a deficit model. It's saying you come, you're already an efficient learner. You're already really good at learning by the time you get to school. But let's just help improve that journey for you by seeing if there are other things that we can help tweak. You tune the engine of the car. Let's help tune this a little bit more.
Kristi McVee (51:50)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Well, Dr. Christine Payard, I'm going to be singing your praises from the hilltops. I want all of the, like as many educators that I know and early childhood educators to know about your work, because I think it's revolutionary. And like I said, it might not be revolutionary to you because you've been in this space for a long time. But for me, hearing what I'm hearing, seeing what I'm seeing, I wish I had known it when my daughter was younger.
Christine Payard (51:58)
well, thank you.
Kristi McVee (52:18)
because I think I did the best with what I had, but I could have done it better. And sometimes that's, you know, we can all do better. You know, we don't know what we don't know.
Christine Payard (52:27)
Exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Like I said, I could talk to you more because there's all the trauma stuff that comes into it as well. that's ⁓ another day. Thank you, Kristi. I really loved it. was a good opportunity. Okay.
Kristi McVee (52:29)
Well, thank you so much for being with me.
Maybe add part two to this. All right. Thank you.
Kristi McVee (52:42)
That was my conversation with Dr. Christine Payard and I honestly could have kept talking with her for hours. What really stood out to me in this conversation is something I say often when I'm talking about children and safety. Kids are always communicating with us. They really truly are. Sometimes they just don't have the words yet. And what Dr. Christine shared today is that sometimes behavior, learning struggles or even restlessness in the classroom isn't about a child being difficult not trying hard enough.
Sometimes it's the body telling us something. And if you're an educator or someone who works with children and you want to learn more about Dr. Christine's work, you can find her at bodytobrainlearning.com and on social media under @bodytobrainlearning. Her work is all about helping educators better understand how children develop and how we can support learning from the body up, not just from the head down. She was amazing, right? As always, if you found this episode helpful, please share.
with someone, another parent, teacher or educator who benefit from hearing it. Because the more we understand children, the better we can support them. Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.
