Cerebral palsy refers to a group of conditions that are caused by problems in brain development and that affect how movement and motor control happen in children. Problems with walking and talking are often the way people start a conversation about cerebral palsy.
To give you an idea about genetic variation between each of us, there are about three million differences in our genetic code. They go to influence the color of our hair and the color of our eyes, the way we walk.
One of the things that we typically forget when we look at kids who have conditions like CP, is that they're first and foremost, children.
Sleep is important to all of us, but it's especially important for infants. When infants go to sleep, they start to create neural networks about what they've been learning during the day. It's estimated that as many as one in five children with disabilities have a sleep disorder, and that's higher than the rate of typically-developing children. Finding sleep interventions for these children is incredibly important so they can lay down their brain networks and continue to learn during their early childhood years.