It's really essential to understand how brain function works to really tap into how learners learn.
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.
There is insufficient research on adults living with cerebral palsy, (as referenced in my previous blog post on cerebral palsy and adulthood). Although there is a paucity of studies examining mental health in this population, medical researchers have speculated that the rate of depression is three to four times higher in people with disabilities such as CP than it is in the general population.
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.
When treating a child with CP, part of a pediatrician’s job is assessing and treating children with abnormal tone difficulties, as well as other muscular-skeletal problems. From around the age of two years, kids start to develop difficulties with muscle tone that can have an impact on their hip development.
When first meeting a parent who's had a child newly diagnosed with cerebral palsy, I really want to try and help them understand their baby. It can be difficult for parents to take it in all at once and many leave that first interview quite overwhelmed, but you're going to meet some really important and helpful people.
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.
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.
A speech language pathologist is someone who is trained in working with kids and adults. Everything from working with articulation errors and correcting things to what I do, which is working with people with profound physical impairments and getting them augmentative communication strategies.
The future of science advancements is endless. In this video Dr. Ted Conway discusses the possibility of thought to speech. One of the really interesting areas of research in biomedical engineering is thought to speech. The concept of thought to speech is fairly straightforward, the execution to make this a reality is a little more complicated.
If your child has cerebral palsy, there's a good chance that he or she will have a hip x-ray at some point or they may even require regular hip x-rays. It is important for you to understand the different components of a hip x-ray. Your doctor will be looking at the hip joint itself as well how well the bones are growing.
As an orthopedic surgeon I take care of children from the time they're born all the way through to adulthood . My oldest patient I have is 87 years old. As part of my practice I'm able to take care of all of their musculoskeletal problems, their problems with their bones and their joints.
The spine is made up of many individual bones called vertebrae joined together by muscles and ligaments. Flat, soft discs separate and cushion the vertebrae from rubbing against each other. Because the vertebrae are separate, the spine is flexible and can bend. Together the vertebrae, discs, muscles, and ligaments make up the vertebral column or spine.
A child may need one or several different types of treatment depending on how severe the symptoms are and what parts of the body are affected. Early intervention and treatment may help to improve function for the nervous system and musculoskeletal system.
In general, children with cerebral palsy will have stiffness around the hips and they tend to develop atypical hip positioning as a result of their spasticity. They will develop hip flexion contractures, abduction contractures, and they will have difficulty with seating as well as bathing and hygiene.
"If you don’t know the solution to the problem now, you will find it"
