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How important is it to control drooling and other frequently asked questions
Drooling is an important problem for many individuals with CP and there are a number of interventions available to treat symptoms. If an individual with CP or their caregiver have concerns about drooling it is important to discuss with a health care provider. Care pathways such as the AACPDM pathway can be a starting point for shared decision making. In all cases, working together as a team is important in choosing the best alternative. Children and adults with CP may have trouble with drooling, or saliva management. In the medical world, drooling is referred to as sialorrhea. Saliva plays an important role in eating but also can interfere with airway clearance and breathing, as well as social participation. When drooling has this kind of impact it becomes important to consider intervention.
Photo of a young man in a blue shirt, wearing dark sunglasses with yellow rims reclining in a wheelchair with a batman printed neck pillow around his neck. He is in a hospital room and has a feeding tube attached to the wheelchair.
What is Spasticity?
Spasticity is a condition of muscles that is a velocity resistance to stretch. What that means to a child and to a parent is that if you move the limb slowly, you have a difference than if you move that limb fast. Spasticity restricts movement and it creates a break on the system. It's as if they're trying to move, but they're held back. By treating spasticity, you may improve the range of motion or the action of the movement.
Photo of Dr. Deborah Gaebler Spira
Supporting Reading for a Child who is Non-Verbal
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.
Photo of Pati King Debaun with words that say Get the child engaged in reading with you
How Does Cerebral Palsy Affect The Body?
Cerebral Palsy affects body movement, muscle control, muscle coordination, muscle tone, reflex, posture and balance. Depending on the part of the brain that is injured depends on how someone’s muscle tone will be effected. For people with spastic CP they have increased muscle tone because of the part of the brain that's injured. If causes very tight muscles which in turn effects the movement of the joints and of the limbs. For others who have dyskinetic CP they lose the ability to have voluntary control over their muscles, and they can have jerky and uncontrolled movement patterns.
Black and white photo of mother holding baby's feet
7 Tips Daily Mindfulness
As a physician and researcher, I skeptically looked forward to learning more about mindfulness practice, because there is evidence it helps with stress management, self-regulation, focus, productivity and happiness. As a mom, I felt that weird mix of guilt that I was going to focus on “not-my-children” for a whole day, excited anticipation and anxiety that maybe I would be a complete failure at this. It turns out all the mental baggage I took into the workshop was the exact opposite of what mindfulness tries to achieve. The daily practice has since changed my life.
Drawing of a person meditating with doodles of suns and happy faces against a green background
Top 5 Reasons Not To Hate The NICU
PTSD can be common in parents after a child with Cerebral Palsy has left the NICU. One of the hardest days of my life as a NICU parent was not what I would have expected it to be. It was the day I went home without my baby, after spending every waking moment since my emergency C-section by his incubator. I never knew I had a dream about what it would be like to have a baby until that dream was taken away.
Baby in an incubator in the NICU touching parent's hand