Osteopathic Therapy for Children

You can choose to do both. You can also choose to do neither. The helmet can reshape the head (not treat torticollis), and PT can stretch the neck muscles. However, neither the helmet nor PT addresses the root causes of plagiocephaly and torticollis. Osteopathic treatment aims to get to the bottom of why plagiocephaly and torticollis happened in the first place, without making you feel guilty or judged, and you can spend less time juggling appointments.

Osteopathic treatment can help with latching difficulties/pain, colic/fussiness/gassiness, reflux/arching back, torticollis and laying in a c-shape, blocked tear ducts/goopy eyes, constipation, and sleep. Oftentimes, these challenges are related and coming from the compressive forces of delivery. Osteopathic treatment aims to free up the root causes.

The soft spots of the head come together around 12 months old, but the bones of the head never fuse, even as an adult. A fused bone has a straight line. The sutures of the skull are jagged because there is always tiny motion, which can be seen as motion artifact on an MRI. Treatment for reshaping the head should be done during the window of time that the soft spots are open because of the degree of motion available. After 12 months, very small, incremental changes can happen up to 15-18 months old.