EP. 29: KinActive Kids
I've been following Dr. Emily Heisey for years as I've raised my kids and it was such a pleasure to get to know her and her colleague, Dr. Matt Otteman. They have an amazing approach to serving families through their expertise in chiropractic care and physical therapy specifically for kids as they reach key growth and development milestones.
Dr. Emily and Dr. Matt are co-owners of KinActive Kids since 2022 and they've created a unique blend of treatments to craft the KinActive Method, specifically designed to help your child reach their developmental milestones. This was such a cool conversation and their specialty has been (finally) getting national recognition!
Show Notes
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0:00:00
So this next podcast is for parents who have small ones reaching or not reaching those milestones. So, Dr. Matt and Dr. Emily are part of Connective Kids down in Texas, and I've been following Dr. Emily for years on Instagram. She has a lot of purposeful play videos and some resources on their website. They have a free milestone guide and Dr. Matt provides chiropractic care in their office. So I hope that you enjoy this podcast. Again, just covering
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milestones, what you can do, what you need to look out for, and you can always reference their Instagram for ideas on how to purposefully play with your kiddos. All right, well welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining Dr. Emily and Dr. Matt. And Dr. Emily, I know that you started Connective Kids in 2020. So if you could share your story and your journey.
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I know I've been following you as a chiropractor since you started and referring my patients to you for your Instagram exercises and all of that. So go ahead and share with everybody.
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Yeah, so it really started with my own child. She was going through some delays. She had acid reflux, and within her first 12 months of life and around 10 months, she wasn't doing anything but just like sitting there. She was a happy sitter.
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And so at that point, I was talking to the pediatrician. I was like, she's lazy. He's like, there is no lazy baby. And I was like, okay, fine. There's no lazy baby, but she's not moving. And so I really had to start getting her moving.
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And because of the reflux, it just caused tightness in her hips. So working both with myself 20 minutes a day, because that's all I could do with her, because I just, it was awful because she cried, and then incorporating chiropractic in three times a week.
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She went from just sitting there to crawling, pulling the stand, taking steps, and it was amazing. And I just knew that I wanted to build a business model based on that. And so what started as just really trying to educate and empower moms turned into Instagram catapulting
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all of that love and for knowledge into what we have now, Connective Kids, and we're the only pediatric co-owned PT chiropractic business in the world. And it's just kind of expediting results for kids and making a huge change.
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That's awesome. Yeah, I know I've recommended to some patients to go down and see you because, again, there's a huge, at least in our area, a huge gap in pediatric PT and DC specialty.
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Absolutely.
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Oh, yeah.
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And that's definitely where when, so going back to where I started, it was 2020 and I had my first daughter in 2019, end of 2019. And that's when I came across Emily's Page. I was at another clinic down the street and I was like, I love what she was doing with purposeful play. I'm like, I see families, I would love to be able to give them a little bit more, like
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once they go back home, like action steps. And as a new parent, I was like, I'm going to play with my kid. Why not do it in a way that's purposeful, that I can help their development. And at the time it was just, yeah, 20 minutes a day.
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So I reached out to her and long story short, she like sent me a couple of like the hardest kiddos you can imagine as like a test. And I didn't know it was a test. I was just like, all right, cool. Cause I was always like a sports Cairo.
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I didn't want to do pediatric. And I'm like, great, welcome to this world. And I think just looking at how we look at the body of like orthopedically and looking at how, you know, for each milestone, these are the components that have to happen.
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And then we can break it down into joint structure and kind of middle out, like spine out, and then outside and really working on the milestones and getting the body to move to rewire the brain. So it's kind of like, we're going middle out, she's going out in, but we're really just
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creating this big picture of what exactly this kid needs at the time.
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Yeah.
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I love that.
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It's crazy how kids are inherently motivated to move. So if they aren't moving, something is going on within their body, something that is causing them to want to just kind of be static. And so whether that is a muscle weakness, a joint restriction, and if you really kind of focus your mind on that instead of something else bigger is going on, it's really kind of easy to teach gross motor skills. Because once you take away those restrictions, you're just letting them start moving.
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She has such a mind of a chiropractor. Like I love that.
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I think I have the mind like a PT.
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And she has like mentality, like it's all about the brain and the nervous system. We're helping the brain connect with the body and helping this child function to their best potential. We just look through a different lens. And as long as we have that same goal, we can really align with each other.
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But we've gone through bumps and bruises and figuring out, she'll reference one thing and I'll reference another thing. And it's like, well, we sound like we're saying opposite things, but really we're just referencing
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a different part of the body.
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And we're saying the same thing, just in a different way. Yeah, right. I love that. I Love that now. I know you mentioned Emily with with yours with reflux. What is the most common? Struggles or causes of delayed milestones that you guys see
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Yeah, um, well, I mean we have a gamut of kiddos starting from they are Neurotypical and they have something like torticollis, reflux, like plagiocephaly, flatness on the back of the head. And all of these things cause shortening on one side of the body, especially let's say reflux and torticollis. Reflux, for instance, they're going to kind of curve over towards that kind of painful
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stimuli on their left side of the body and then pull themselves away and twist over to the right. That's going to cause hip tightness, trunk tightness, maybe some neck tightness. That's why reflux and torticollis go so closely together. And again, if you're always positioned like this and your head's rolled over this way, now you're sleeping a ton like babies do.
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And however the trunk is positioned, the body or the head is going to not be able to overcome that. So if the trunk is always over here, then the head's going to get flatness on the right side of the body.
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And that's all the way up until about four months. So it's really important to kind of make sure we're rotating and twisting different sides when we are sleeping, but also being vigilant that some of these things could cause delays if we're not being present with doing tummy time,
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back play, vertical play, sideline play. So there's not one thing that is the holy grail when it comes to positioning, but yes, those are some common things that I think that people don't think could cause delays, but absolutely do. And then we treat kiddos all the way into the neuroatypical, Spina Bifida, Down Syndrome, CP.
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But honestly, no matter the diagnosis, you're seeing delays that are being presented because these kiddos are, just have restrictions within their body. So, again, it could be something small that is very common, again, like reflux, or something that is a little bit more uncommon, like cerebral palsy, that could really just impede that child's ability to move.
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Sure, sure. Now for the parents that kind of feel overwhelmed that their kids aren't meeting the milestones,
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what do you guys typically recommend or your advice for those parents? Yeah, I think the number one thing, so we, a couple things. First of all, you want to make sure and educate yourself because if you're
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only listening to, you know, Suzy down the street who, you know, maybe her child's doing something that yours isn't. It can be a really dark place and you can get really worried. There's a high percentage of parents, I think 70%, 69% of parents are concerned with their child meeting milestones. So, you're not alone.
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If you are somebody that's worried about hitting milestones. So, I think educating yourself is first, understanding where those milestones come in. There's, you know, gross motor checklists all over the place. We have one for free on our website. It's connectwithkids.com. You just go there, it'll pop right up. You don't have to go anywhere. But that's a great tool because you can start to understand, oh yeah, you know, Johnny is doing this, but he's actually ahead and Myo Child's
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not quite yet, but we still have a month or so to go. So, and you can create a little bit more
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peace in your body instead of just comparing everything. Yeah, and I think number two is knowing that in the first, you know, from birth all the way up to 24 months, there's a nice little sliding scale. And so maybe they say, your child needs to be able to sit by six months independently. Well, just know that you have about one to two months on either range.
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So maybe they are eight months and they still haven't quite figured it out, you're still okay. So just know that there's not a hard rule that you have to achieve it, right, as textbook says, for instance. And then, I think number three is there's a catch-up time from around 15 months all the way to 24 months. It's like, God knew we needed a little extra time in there to pick up, so maybe your kiddo
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doesn't start walking until 15, 16 months. Well, there aren't a lot of gross motor skills that happen between 15 to 24 months. So it's a nice catch-up time. So if your child is on the later end of crawling or sitting, again, once they achieve it, they have time to pick back up and be there by two years old.
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I think one last thing to touch on, too, is you don't have to just go through this wait and see mentality. There's things like purposeful play that Emily does so well on her page of like, take a diaper box and use it creatively to get your child to do these milestones. It's really all about setting an environment
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to help your child progress through these milestones, but doing it in a way that feels like playtime to them, because you're just playing with them. You're just doing it in a really specific way. So that way you're taking action. Once you have the knowledge,
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you understand that there is a process that happens. Everything happens for a reason. And then you can take action with that. And you can say, okay, I am there a little behind, but I'm doing something, I'm doing everything I can as a parent.
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Or maybe they're ahead or they're on track, you can be proactive with your healthcare, which I think is very important too. You know what milestone is coming up, you can have some play ideas of, oh, this is what's coming,
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we're gonna start to incorporate this with our 20 minute today.
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Yeah, and as you guys have said,
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it doesn't take a lot of time. Kids respond so fast.
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And it doesn't have to be fancy either. Literally when I say 20 minutes, 20 minutes, okay? And it could be something as simple as if you're working on rolling, having them on their belly tracking a toy from the right to the left, which is going to help their body weight shift. That's purposeful play.
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It's not fancy, I promise. If you're working on trying to roll from their back to their belly, have them grab onto their feet and try to put them into their mouth. You can put a towel underneath their bottom, and that's going to help lengthen out the muscles on their back and help strengthen the muscles, their tummy muscles, and tuck their chin.
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All these things is what you need to roll from back to belly.
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So it's simple.
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Yeah. And we have all of these tips. We have, we created a platform called Connective Community, which is a basically take all of Dr. Emily's masterclasses for rolling, crawling, sitting, and just broke it down into segments.
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So if you're, and it gives you a checklist, this is where your child is at this point, this is where you wanna start, it's the spice level.
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Yeah, right.
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That's in there, but it's all the way from rolling all the way up to, or fourth trimester, even all the way up to walking.
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Oh, I love that.
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Is that new?
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Yeah, we just put it on a new platform to where it's all the masterclasses are now available. Before that, you would go and buy just rolling, just sitting, just crawling, but now you can get all of them. It'll take you from birth all the way up to walking.
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And like shoe guys are in there. We get on and like answer questions specifically because Instagram, there's such a big following that it's hard. We still do a good job, I think, of answering questions on there,
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but when they're in the community, that definitely takes priority. So if you have a question, we try and answer that.
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Sure, yeah, I love your shoe review. I use that for my own kids and for my patients.
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That's so helpful.
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Yeah, I was about to do one.
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I have another one coming out.
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Yeah, Monday.
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Oh, awesome, awesome. Now, as far as, you know, if a parent's kid isn't walking yet and they're, say, 14, 15 months, at what point do you recommend, what's the next step?
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Sure. So, I think there's a couple things that I look at. Number one is how long have they been pulling the stand and cruising? So, if they've been doing that for around only maybe two months and they're at the 14 month mark, then I would give them a little bit more time up until about 16 months before I'd be like, okay, pediatrician,
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I think I need a referral to PT chiropractic. Okay, but let's say they started pulling the stand and cruising around 11 months or even 10 months. And so now we're three, four months down the road and still not taking next steps and we're at 14 months. That's when I would probably say, let's go
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ahead and talk to the pediatrician about getting a referral. And why that is, is because kids aren't going to marinate in that cruising time for a really, really long time past three months. So if they're continuing to do that, something is stopping them and it likely has to do probably with their feet. That's just the biggest predictor of stability and balance is our feet and our ankles.
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And so something's probably 99% of the time, something's going on there. So that may be as easy as getting a pair of shoes that's a little bit more structured and getting a little bit more ankle support, which then propels them into wanting to balance independently and eventually take steps. So it is a kind of a dip. There's no hard and fast rule, but I would say if you had to say just across the board, I always say around 16 months is when I'm like, okay, let's take the
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next steps. Sure. Yeah, and shoes are definitely important. As a chiropractor, you know, I definitely adhere more to the barefoot as best. We want that sensory input to the feet and we do, you know, as an active, but there is a time and a place for shoes. And so if you're seeing some struggle, some instability in the feet ankle, just give them a little confidence at the ankle to strengthen muscles up the chain into their hips or their glutes that's
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kind of what they're what they're missing if they're barefoot and they're super hyper mobile in their feet and ankles it's kind of like trying to learn how to walk on sand it takes a lot of energy and a lot of brain input into just just solidifying your feet so if you give them a little bit of support strengthen the right muscles then you can take that support away and they have the muscles that strengthen,
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they're gonna be ready to go. And then you can take the shoes away. But there is a point where, yeah, barefoot is best, but if you're seeing a delay, you know, three months or so where they're cruising, they're just not, they don't have the confidence,
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you feel like there's something missing, just try adding a supportive shoe for a couple weeks and see how that helps them.
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Okay, that makes sense.
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Yeah, shoes are so important. I think there are all... I mean, this is kind of going off topic, but I will... But all of these barefoot shoes or the natives or something that just is easy and quick or... That's just not doing any kids any favors, probably all the way up to four or five. It's a fall risk. Their feet are so sweaty.
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Their feet sweat like two times more than us. And so they're slipping and sliding around in these shoes that really don't form to their feet. And they're sliding, you're gonna get blisters. So it's just like not ideal, but you know, different topic for a different day.
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Exactly.
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Now, have you guys noticed post COVID, I know that some milestones were kind of shifted. Have you guys noticed that in your field or not really?
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Oh, yeah.
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I think that's a very interesting thing that... So what happened with COVID, everybody's trying to survive. And they're working from home and their kids are staying home and you're trying to parent and go to a workspace, which is in your living room. So what was happening was there's a lot of containers being used, which containers aren't bad, but if that's all that they're in all the time, they are going to get restrictions from that. And so what we're
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seeing post-COVID are some more of these restrictions, just, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just something that people have had to deal with. So I'd definitely say like some of the restrictions that have happened from overuse of containers during COVID, but I feel like that's gotten a little bit better since then.
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0:17:18
I mean, I almost see the opposite end. I think delays have probably always been going on with kiddos. I think being home and being around our kiddos a little bit more, we've become hyper aware of what's going on and like, why are they doing this? And then you're, but I think with COVID, it brought this need for education. And I think that's why, you know, during COVID, I mean, that's right when I started Instagram, people really searching out these resources because you couldn't go to the doctor anymore.
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0:17:51
And you know what, really us as, you know, individuals, we're starting to become more health focused instead of taking the answer from, you know, the MD down the road, trying to be more proactive. And so I think that's what education is, and that's what we were kind of forced to do in COVID. So I think being more educated. And so I don't know if maybe any of these issues or delays was more prevalent.
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It maybe was just we were more aware of it. So I think it's both ways.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Now, Dr. Matt, do you recommend any certain chiropractic for kiddos that you practice, or do you see better results with one technique versus the other, or soft tissue work added in?
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For kiddos, I definitely, so our business model is built off of be an expert at what you do. So I'm going to be the best pediatric chiropractor that I can be, and luckily, you know, Dr. Emily is such a fantastic PT that makes my job a lot easier because I can just focus on being really good at chiropractic and she can be really good at, you know, functional
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movements and PT and all of that. I don't have to try to be a jack of all trades. So I definitely, like I said kind of earlier, focus middle out. So I'm going to assess the trunk, the spine. I'm going to look for these compensation patterns even early on because kids learn how to interact with the world through their mouth. So if you're seeing a tightness
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one way, I know that there's a cascade of events that can happen later on and I'm just trying to either catch them up to where they should be or look ahead and say, okay this is the next thing that comes up. And the way that I do that is just looking almost biomechanically, right? So I know when a child is rolling from tummy to back. I know that they have to push their arms, they have to track with their necks, they need cervical, they need thoracic rounding, they need cervical rotation, and then they need to have
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lateral or lumbar lateral rotation in order to pull that over. So now that I can think of these mechanics that have to happen, I can go very specifically to the areas where these subluxations or restrictions happen and make sure that they're not there. And then once we free them with the restrictions, either give purposeful play tips to do at home or if they're in therapy for best results, fastest results, send them over to PT where they can work in these functional skills now without restrictions or without compensation
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patterns.
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Awesome. I love that. Being an expert in your own field, doing what you're doing.
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That's perfect. Yeah. You know, she knew, I mean, obviously she's very talented and very good at
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what she does and communicates very well. And she, with her own child, like saw the need for chiropractic, you know, she didn't go to chiropractic school. She's like, I'm going to find a good chiropractor. Yeah, absolutely. And do your PT work on your own? With your background
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what recommendations outside of Instagram do you refer patients to? I mean, the master class is a good resource. Is there any other resource out there that you guys are aware of? You know, I think when I, there was such a deficit for
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this type of education when I started Instagram. There maybe was like one or two PT accounts out there, or even pediatric chiropractic accounts that were really focusing on motor skills. And especially showing it in a way that's very digestible. So I show a lot of videos. That's kind of my way of doing things, because I'm just a very visual learner.
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0:21:34
I don't know if I've necessarily seen too many books or anything that help with that. But there are a ton of different resources on Instagram or TikTok. Just be sure to look at the credentials, that it is actually a clinician. It doesn't necessarily need to be a physical therapist, but an occupational therapist or a pediatrician, and so that you know that you're not getting any skewed information. There's so many resources like that out there.
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Are there any chiropractic ones that...
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I mean, I think back to, that's another topic, I think, of having like a stigma on like, oh, I need to go see a chiropractor, I need to go see a therapist because something's wrong. You can go have a conversation with a chiropractor or PT and say, hey, I'm concerned with this.
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0:22:24
I'm trying this purposeful place or anything else I should be doing and that chiropractor should be able to direct you. I know in our, so we also do education for clinicians and in our, it's Connective University and in there there's home exercise programs that those chiropractors can print out and give to the people that are coming to them for toe walking or in-toeing,
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0:22:46
port-a-colas, things like that, different like stretches. So just because you don't have to have this negative stigma of something's wrong to go to a healthcare professional, you could just be wanting more information and wanting some help on what's the best thing that I can do for my kid, which is really what we're all trying to do.
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0:23:03
Yeah, I think the resources are twofold, right? They come from the clinician, whatever clinician that is, and then it also is parents seeking it. So I think if we get it on two ends of the spectrum, then we're gonna be good and we're gonna feel empowered and not be as anxious when it comes
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to our child's development.
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0:23:24
Absolutely, I'm so glad you guys have the university. I have my pediatric and pregnancy certification, but when I found you, Emily, on Instagram, I was blown away because I didn't learn any of that. You know, I didn't control nothing. So yeah, that's really good to know that clinicians can learn from you guys as well.
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0:23:43
Because there's a huge gap.
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0:23:44
Absolutely.
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0:23:45
There's a huge need for it. And I mean, we only had one class in pediatrics in physical therapy school. And so there's a huge deficit, and that's why there's a huge need for these kids to be treated. But there isn't the continuing education out there. And the continuing education that's out there, because I just renewed my license like this
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month, is so boring. And it really isn't based on clinical experience and what truly we see on a daily basis. So you want that real life education of these are the kids you actually see. Here's what you are actually needing to do with them clinically to get results quick. And that's what we talk about in Connective University. So we're real happy to just be getting back to our professions in a way that is going to further them.
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0:24:29
Yeah, and I think there's a lot of great resources for chiropractors that are you know, learning the like wellness aspect of chiropractic. The other side of that is what we were trying to do is have a little bit more of like a corrective approach of like there's something wrong, what can we do to help
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0:24:48
help with that. Exactly. One last question, do you guys recommend any nutritional intervention with these kiddos as they're going through PT and chiropractic or what are your thoughts on any dietary interventions? Yeah I
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0:25:06
think I was just having a conversation with somebody there, they're trying to help their little one gain weight. I always say like if you if that is a concern of yours, like, write things down, do a journal, because it's hard to give advice when you don't know kind of where you're starting from. And, you know, we might think we're doing the best thing that we can, and then we look and we're like, oh, man, we gave them cheese quesadillas every day this week. Or they've eaten a lot of snacks and candy on the way home from school, and they don't
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0:25:36
eat dinner. So I think just trying to provide them with a nutritional, the best nutrition that you can, and I think the first thing to start with that is do a journal because you have to see kind of where you're at, and then you know try and eat the rainbow. I know, I mean there again, there's other people out there that are better at dealing with the intricacies of food textures and things like that, the mentality of pediatric eating.
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0:26:02
But I think there's, yeah, there's good resources out there, but I do think it's important.
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0:26:07
Yeah, and I think I would say having really healthy gut is important for children, especially when going through reflux to where they're having difficulty digesting. And so I know what I did with my own daughter was including a probiotic.
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0:26:25
I think it was, it was in powder form. It was like flora, infant probiotic, you'd have to keep it cold. Anyway, I would put that in her bottle daily and that really helped to heal some of the issues going on in the esophagus and her tummy
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0:26:45
and overall, it was allowing her to want to move and not be uncomfortable. So something as simple as just creating good gut health can really make an impact on children and their movement patterns.
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0:26:59
Exactly. So again, thank you so much for coming on. Now, if my listeners want to come and see you or if they want to take your master class or find you on Instagram, what's the best way they can do that?
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0:27:12
Yeah, we have, so our brick and mortar location is down in South Lake, Texas. So if you're locally here, we'd love to see you. We also, our mission at Connective is we want to change the way the world treats their kids. So we do that by leading by example here. We try and, you know, set a good example for parents and also clinicians. And then if you are a clinician that's looking for help, we have Connective University.
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0:27:34
And then if you're a parent that's looking for a purposeful play, you can go to Kinective Community. And that's all through our website. You can find all of that there, KinectiveKids.com. That's K-I-N-activeKids.com. And then obviously the Instagram.
1
0:27:49
Yeah, yeah. And Instagram will lead you all to those resources as well, but there's a lot of free resources on my Instagram, Kinective underscore Kids.
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0:27:58
Awesome. Well, I'll be sure to link all of that for our followers. And again, thank you so much for taking the time today. And again, thank you so much for taking the time today.
1
0:28:03
Absolutely, thanks for having us.
Transcribed with Cockatoo