Growing up with Cerebral Palsy I often wondered if I would ever experience my happily ever after. The fairytales my mom read me always followed the life of a beautiful princess falling in love with a handsome prince. You never read about a prince and princess in wheelchairs or with any type of disability for that matter.
Children with cerebral palsy have more complex self-management and self-care demands than children who are typically developing. They have to learn how to deal with medications and they may have to deal with medical equipment. At some point, they're going to have to learn about medical appointments.
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.
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.
As 20% of women with CP surveyed experienced pregnancy, there is a need to increase awareness, education, support, and advocacy for achievement of optimal reproductive health.
This fact sheet has been created for women with cerebral palsy to provide answers to some common questions about CP, pregnancy, and birth. Women with CP should follow general guidelines about getting healthy before getting pregnant, but women with CP may need to do other things as well to prepare for pregnancy.
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.
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.