If it feels like your child is always sick—constant colds, repeat ear infections, lingering congestion—you’re not alone. And you’re not overreacting.
Here’s something many parents don’t realize:
By age 3, about 83% of children will have experienced at least one ear infection and here’s what happens next: according to a large study covering over 2.1 million ear infection episodes, nearly 78% were treated with antibiotics within 3 days of diagnosis, and by age 5, approximately 94% of U.S. children have received at least one antibiotic prescription.
For many families, the pattern starts to feel familiar:
An infection → medication → temporary relief → another illness a few weeks later.
At some point, it’s natural to ask:
“Why does my child keep getting sick when other kids seem just fine?”
The Part of the Picture That’s Often Missed
Most conversations about immunity focus only on the immune system. But your child’s body doesn’t work in isolated parts.
The nervous system, immune system, and hormonal system are constantly communicating with one another. Researchers call this the neuroendocrine-immune connection. We like to think of it as a three-legged stool.
If one leg isn’t stable, the whole stool becomes shaky—no matter how strong the other two are.
The nervous system acts as the control center. It helps decide:
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When inflammation should turn on
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How strong an immune response should be
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When the body should calm back down and recover
When a child’s nervous system is stuck in a stress pattern, immune responses can become disorganized. Some kids seem to catch everything. Others struggle with allergies, inflammation, or cycles of both.
It’s not that their immune system is “weak.”
It’s that the communication system running it may be under stress.
The Vagus Nerve: A Key Player in Immune Regulation
One important part of this communication network is the vagus nerve—a large nerve that runs from the brainstem, through the neck, and down into the organs, including the digestive system (where much of the immune system lives).
The vagus nerve helps the body:
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Recognize inflammation
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Respond appropriately
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Calm the system once the job is done
You can think of it like a brake pedal for the nervous system.
When that brake works well, the body can recover efficiently.
When it doesn’t, inflammation may linger longer than it should, and kids can feel like they never fully bounce back.
Many children today live with a nervous system that’s spending too much time in “go mode” and not enough time in “rest and recover.”
How Early Stress Can Play a Role
For some children, nervous system stress can begin very early—sometimes around birth.
The upper neck is a sensitive area where important neurological pathways pass, including those connected to the vagus nerve. During birth, especially when there are added stresses or interventions, this area can experience strain. This physical trauma creates what chiropractors call subluxation—a combination of misalignment and neurological interference in the upper cervical spine. It disrupts the vagus nerve’s ability to communicate properly between the brain and body.
Over time, that strain may affect how smoothly the nervous system communicates with the rest of the body.
Parents often notice patterns like:
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Colic or difficulty settling
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Reflux or digestion challenges
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Frequent ear infections
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Chronic constipation
These challenges may look unrelated on the surface, but they can share a common thread: a nervous system that’s working harder than it should.
Why It Can Feel Like Things Just Keep Escalating
When the nervous system is under ongoing stress, the body can get caught in a loop:
Stress signals → poor digestion → weakened immune responses → frequent illness → medications that further disrupt the gut → more immune stress
Over time, symptoms may change, but the underlying pattern often stays the same. This is why many families feel like they’ve “tried everything” and still don’t get lasting answers.
Kids don’t grow out of it—they grow into it. The colic at 2 months becomes constipation at 6 months, which becomes chronic ear infections by 12 months, which becomes immune dysregulation by age 3. The nervous system dysfunction doesn’t change—medicine just gives it different labels as the same problem manifests differently at each stage.
Supporting the immune system is helpful—but if the control center isn’t functioning well, progress can stall. This is why supplements and diet changes plateau. You’re trying to strengthen the immune system while the control center is offline.
A Different Way to Support Healing
At Foundation of Stone Pediatric & Perinatal Family Chiropractic, we focus on helping the nervous system function the way it was designed to.
We use INSiGHT scans, a gentle, non-invasive technology that helps us understand how a child’s nervous system is responding to stress. From there, we use specific, gentle chiropractic adjustments to help reduce interference—especially in the upper neck—so the nervous system can communicate more clearly.
When nervous system tension eases, many families notice improvements not just in immunity, but in sleep, digestion, and overall resilience.
Sometimes kids aren’t broken—they’re just stuck in stress mode.
Trust Your Parent Instincts
You know your child. You’ve seen the patterns. And if something feels off, that matters.
Your child deserves more than “they’ll grow out of it.”
They deserve to have their nervous system looked at through a lens that honors how beautifully connected the body truly is.
If you’re ready to explore a different approach, we’d love to help. Reach out to Foundation of Stone Pediatric & Perinatal Family Chiropractic to schedule a consultation. If you’re not local, the PX Docs directory can help you find a like-minded office near you.
Your child’s body already knows how to heal. Sometimes it just needs the right support to do what it was designed to do all along.