A year ago, I wrote in my Forbes column about the decades-long pattern of Pride Month celebrations excluding people with disabilities. The underlying reason why Pride events were (and still are) mostly inaccessible for people with disabilities, both in terms of physical spaces and social acceptance, is that mainstream media and public don’t see them having identities outside of their disabilities.
I have cerebral palsy spastic diplegia. So it affects my legs and sometimes my fine motor skills. I walk with two canes. I do things a little slower, but I get things done.
One thing that parents can say to start a conversation with their kids is, "Let's talk".
As we all know, becoming a teenager means significant upheaval, not only physically, but in terms of friendships, in terms of learning, and life outlook. This is also true for adolescents with cerebral palsy and other developmental disabilities. We know that whilst we may of spent a lot of time focusing on their physical abilities and other difficulties it is not the only part of their life.
I spent many years and many hours learning how to make the body work better, how to bring it out of pain. But that's not the human being alone.
One of the things that was identified through research is that patients with cerebral palsy have higher rates of depression and anxiety than you would see in the general population.
Neuroplasticity is the ability that the brain has to form new connections between different cells or between different areas of the brain.
Cerebral palsy is caused by damage to the infant brain. This damage can involve not only the motor parts of the brain, but also the parts that deal with vision. This is not related to damage to the eye but is related to damage of the parts of the brain that process visual information.
I’m at that age when Facebook friends begin to get engaged and married, and shortly after, have children. So, I feel the pressure to proceed onto the next stage of my adulthood. But, as anyone with cerebral palsy knows, everything in life is a tad more complicated with this disability.
As a parent, when it comes to different types of interventions for infants with cerebral palsy, how do you know what you have, what you don't, and what you could get?
Exploration for an infant means discovering anything about that environment. If that infant needs an opportunity to be brought to them, that's okay. Let an infant explore through their senses, whether it's touch, or smell, or taste, or sight, or hearing.
Cerebral palsy is an injury to the brain, but what we find is that it has a lot of effects on how you use your muscles.
For a child with CP learning to move, the really important things to remember are that the child should always be active.
Babies develop about 80% of their brain growth over the first two years of life, and it's also when all the connections in the brain, what we call the white matter, which is the cables in the brain, grow and develop and connect to the cortex.
It has been scientifically proven that enriched environment can help children with CP gain new skills in their movement but also their thinking and communication skills.
After we got the diagnosis we met with Dr. Maitre the next day and she gave us a roadmap.
She was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at 12 months & Constraint-induced movement therapy helped her recover the use of her left side.
Owen was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at 6 months. By getting an early diagnosis his life changed forever.
A lot of parents don't realize that their baby, all the skills that they have. So they can look at you, they can follow you. They're already starting to imitate you, and through the first few months of life, they're already starting to learn to reach and grasp toys, and to have nonverbal communication with you.
Although the brain injury that causes cerebral palsy is nonprogressive, adults with CP can experience a variety of symptoms as they age which often depend on the type of CP they have, as well as the level.
Early interventions for CP should be based on the strongest possible scientific evidence for benefit and should have the smallest possible risk of harm. In the US, early intervention (EI) is a system of services available under the age of 3, to support infants and toddlers with developmental problems and their families as they interact with and care for their child.