Someone has mentioned torticollis, or you have noticed your baby always turns the same way, and the question underneath is what happens if you do nothing. I am Nicolas Grimaldi, a pediatric osteopath, and parents ask me this constantly. The honest answer about untreated torticollis in babies is that it varies enormously from one baby to the next. Here is what I actually see, and why this is a reason to have your baby assessed and not a reason to worry.
What happens if torticollis is left untreated in babies?
It depends on the baby, far more than parents expect. An imbalance that stays in place sets up what I call spirals, and those spirals lead to different postural disruptions further down the body. At one end, very little happens beyond the neck and the skull. At the other end, the imbalance shows up as scoliosis. The imbalance itself takes several forms. It might be a deformation of the skull. It might be a real torticollis. It might be bending, or muscle spasms, or a mix of them. What they share is that they pull your baby off balance, and the body organizes itself around that pull. That is what I mean by a spiral. The imbalance does not stay where it started. The body compensates, and the compensation reaches into posture.
Can untreated torticollis cause scoliosis?
It can, and that is the far end of what I see. Scoliosis is the extreme expression of these imbalances, whether they began as a torticollis or as a plagiocephaly, a deformation of the skull. Most babies never get there. Between nothing much and scoliosis sits a wide middle ground, and that is where most babies land. That middle ground holds more than parents realize. There is fake scoliosis. There is adaptive scoliosis. There are postural disruptions with no scoliosis at all. These are different things, and they do not carry the same weight. Scoliosis is the end of a range, not the default outcome. It is what an imbalance can build toward when nothing changes.
Does every baby with a torticollis develop a problem?
No, and the variation is bigger than most parents imagine. I have looked after babies with a large plagiocephaly, a real deformation of the skull, where the deformation stayed restricted to the skull and had little impact on the rest of the body. Those babies did not develop scoliosis. I have also seen the reverse. A baby with a little something, nothing that looks like much, who goes on to develop a scoliosis. Everything can happen, so no panic. Each case is different. That is not me sidestepping your question, it is the answer. You cannot read your baby's future off the size of a flat spot, or off the word torticollis being mentioned at a checkup.
What matters more than the label?
Balance, symmetry, and mobility. Those are the three things I look at, and the third one is the one parents rarely hear about. Symmetry on its own is not enough. I want to know how freely your baby moves, in every direction, and whether that movement is there on both sides. This is why the label matters less to me than what sits underneath it. Those different starting points can all send the body into the same kind of spiral. What I want to know is where your baby sits on balance, symmetry and mobility, and what is holding them there.
What should you do if your baby has a torticollis?
Have your baby assessed. The best way to attend to these things is to see a competent pediatric osteopath, someone who can tell you where your baby actually sits on that range. That is what an assessment is for: it replaces guessing about the future with knowing what is happening now. To find one, look through my list of vetted pediatric osteopaths. Every name on it came through me. Alongside that, there is hands-on work you can do at home, built around those same three things. I do not put the techniques in writing, because where you place your hands is what decides whether they help. I demonstrate each one on video in the Fulkrum Academy 0 to 6 months program.
Learn the hands-on work with me
This article gives you the reasoning: why an imbalance spreads, why the range of outcomes is so wide, and why an assessment beats worrying. What it cannot give you is what to do with your hands. That part is taught in the Fulkrum Academy 0 to 6 months program. I demonstrate every technique on video, step by step, in the order I use them, stage by stage from birth to six months. Sign up and work through it with me. You get the full daily routine and the reasoning behind every piece of it.