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.
Up to 50% of adolescents with cerebral palsy have an intellectual disability, as well as a physical disability. Adolescents with intellectual disabilities still need sexual health education, they just need it in a way that's more individualized so that they can understand it and use it.
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.
Around the age of six all children are going off to school. Children move from explorative play, which is fairly informal to a much more formal day. That can be a lengthy day and it's quite structured. There are a lot of challenges faced by children with cerebral palsy throughout the school year.
There are a couple of key things to think about in helping children and adolescents make the transition into young adulthood and independence. One of those things is called mastery motivation and we can see mastery motivation early in life. It's the ability to persist in the face of challenge. If you're growing up with a disability, it can be harder to do things. If you are not challenged, if the environment is not set up correctly, or if you don't have the resources, then you start to feel that you can't master certain kinds of tasks.
We all have different towns and we all have different things that we do in the course of the day. It may be that the student is a great artist or a great writer. When it comes to assistive technology we have to think about what is going to give that student the ability to do what they love without having to see roadblocks and go, "I can't do that”. There are so many tools out there, whether it's a communication app, a video app, a math tool. With assistive technology you are not making the student into what you want them to be.
When you use alternate means of communication it can be really frustrating to go out in community. It is hard to know whether people are understanding you and whether they will take the time to listen. A lot of times it's hard for people to admit that they're not always comfortable with a device or a wheelchair or person who does things differently. So the more we can expose and educate people the better off we all will be. When we talk about acceptance, we're not just talking about people in society accepting people with disabilities. We're also talking about people with disabilities who are using alternate means of communication and how difficult it is for them to be out in the community.
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.
In order to get a good education, children need to access the curriculum. That's at the heart of their education. Some of the key challenges of getting students both their education and access to their voice in the class is simply understanding. Preparation for the student with disabilities is key. We have to foster success. We have to build a sense of success in the beginning. That starts with understanding the abilities of that student.
Many of our products today have accessibility supports in them to the extent where we don't have to purchase anything else. It's already in there. Your phone, your tablet, your smart home devices. If you're going to look for these features on your devices, you can start in your settings. There should be something in there that says accessibility. Go in there, see what's available. The manufacturers have done a really nice job of describing these features right within the settings to give you a sense of what they're going to do.
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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.
Let me tell you about multimodal communication. We, as typical communicators, all use many different strategies. We use speech, gestures, facial expressions, technology, and no-tech solutions. As communicators, we all size up the situation based upon our communication partners, the context, the environment and then we choose to use the most effective communication strategy.
For people with a physical disability, activity is a lifestyle. It's something that can start in physical therapy, but it really is something that has to be carried over into their everyday lives. What has happened over the years is we're understanding the importance of mobility.
For a child with CP learning to move, the really important things to remember are that the child should always be active.
Cerebral palsy is a damage to the developing brain in the motor part of the brain. Individuals with cerebral palsy have problems with weakness and sometimes also involuntary movements.
I'm going to be talking about AAC and reading and some different things that you might not think about when you are doing those types of activities. When you're supporting reading for a nonverbal child, whether they use a high-tech system or a light-tech system, like a paperboard, you want to make sure that they have plenty of the opportunities to contribute to the experience. You want to be able to comment. You want to be able to talk about the people, the places, the things, and maybe the feelings that they have.
Every educator needs to make a decision about technology they need to put in place. They're not sure if they should put Option A in place or Option B in place. This can be particularly difficult in the world of disabilities because there might not always be a perfect answer. Teachers can look to this solution, using the least dangerous assumption to make good decisions about what technology might be best.
Everybody tells stories, and that includes people who use communication systems. To ensure success and the ability to participate we need to make it as easy as possible. So that we can tell stories whenever we want, wherever we want, to whomever we want, and in a really easy way, so we can be successful.
