In cerebral palsy (CP) muscles are often shortened so much that they restrict joint range of motion and the muscles themselves are weak. Thus, ‘shortness’ and ‘weakness’ are two important needs that clinicians must address.
Bimanual therapy, also referred to as intensive bimanual training, engages patients in active play or practice to improve the use and coordination of both hands. Bimanual therapy is different from similar unimanual therapies, like constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT), because it promotes simultaneous use of both hands.
We got the diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy when Lelia was 18 months. I was really happy, as we didn’t know what was wrong with her before then. She had low tone. She couldn’t roll over. She couldn’t sit up. Of course she didn’t walk. The diagnosis gave it a name, something I could work with, and I became a kind of vigilante mother, determined to get the best care for my daughter.
The typical cognitive assessments that are used for children require them to be able to use their hands to point to pictures or hold puzzle pieces.
For a child with CP learning to move, the really important things to remember are that the child should always be active.
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.