Reflexes in babies
Newborn children and infants have a variety of reflexes that differ from those of an adult due to their different life situation. Infants move almost exclusively reflexively. This is helpful because they do not yet have the motor skills to maintain their balance, for example.
Thus, these reflexes serve, among other things, self-protection or nutrition. Most of these reflexes degenerate over time and are seen in adults as signs of (mostly) neurological disease. The reflexes in early childhood are congenital, but are lost in the course of development after the first months of life.
The aim of these reflexes is to protect the infant from injury and danger or to make it easier to find and eat. These reflexes are regularly examined as part of the pediatric preventive medical check-up. The individual reflexes should have regressed to certain points in their development.
If, for example, the Babinski reflex occurs at a later stage, this can be a sign of a disease of the central nervous system. This is called a pathological reflex, as this reflex response does not occur in healthy people.
- Sucking reflex: lets babies up to the 3rd month automatically suck on everything that touches their lips.
Serves to facilitate the breastfeeding process
- Search reflex: in the search reflex, after touching the corner of the mouth, the baby turns its head to the side touched. The suck-swallow reflex supports feeding
- Gripping reflex on hands and feet. The baby automatically grasps the hands and feet when these are touched.
The grasping reflexes are pronounced for different lengths of time on hands and feet: the former persists until about the 4th month, the latter until the fifteenth month.
- Moro or clutching reflex: In this reflex, children who are unexpectedly brought into a supine position should stretch their arms and fingers and then return to the body and clench their fists. This reflex should be extinguished at the latest from the 6th month of life
- Swimming reflex: with the swimming reflex the baby makes swim-like movements in the water when lying horizontally
- Babinski reflex: in the babin reflex, when the baby strokes the outer sole of the foot, the big toe is stretched and makes a counter-directional movement with the remaining toes. This infantile reflex is often tested in adults to gain knowledge about diseases of the nervous system.
- Galant Reflex (hollow back when touching the back)
- Tonic neck reflexes (stretching or bending of the extremities during neck movement)
