Cerebral palsy, my approach to children. I often get the question about how I draw conclusions about certain conditions, how I know them, why I look at them in a certain way in a child.
What I find very important and what gives me the energy is a question that I always ask myself: what is the inner feeling of a child facing a particular functional problem? And I always ask myself that question – cerebral palsy and living with it. I believe that everyone is asking the same question about many things. For example, when you see a man on the top of the Himalayas on television, you will wonder what it feels like to be on top; or when you see someone surfing, you will wonder: what is the feeling? But when you see someone walking, you will not wonder what it feels like to walk. Every time you see someone doing something you have not personally experienced, you will wonder: what does it feel like?
However, the instinctive thought of most of the people when they see a child who has cerebral palsy or any other type of disability is: I can’t even imagine what it feels like. Of course, most are sorry for the child, but they can’t imagine what it feels like because they can’t experience something like that. On the other hand, when they see someone on a surfboard, they can imagine what it would feel like to be on that surfboard; but they are unable to imagine how it feels for a child with cerebral palsy.
For example, I, personally, can imagine how it is feels to be the moon. This idea of mine may be wrong, but it does not present a problem for me to imagine it. However, it is very difficult to imagine what a sense of spasticity is. Or how tremor, primitive reflexes, or a bow-shaped body twist feel like. It is difficult to imagine and understand how a child experiences all of the above.
Cerebral palsy – your expectations
When they come to class, parents often expect me to talk about why all this happens, then about the connection between the brain and body, structure, what processes happen in the body. Of course, I talk about that, too, but they get to be surprised when I try to make them understand and imagine how a kid feels. One might think this is impossible. I have no cerebral palsy, and then, how can I ever imagine how a child with cerebral palsy feels? But then again, I have never been to the moon, and yet I can imagine how it feels to be there; so, why wouldn’t I be able to imagine and understand how a child with cerebral palsy feels? So, this is actually possible and during the lectures I try in many ways, especially by demonstrating certain things on the parents, to enable them to imagine and understand how their child feels.
Cerebral palsy – why do I care?
The reason why I find this to be very important matter is that, when I was working with children, I used to try to understand why, but not how they feel nor what it feels like to experience something like that. And then, while taking into account only my understanding, as well as what should be done according to different therapies, I worked on spasticity, on primitive reflexes, but I still couldn’t understand how it felt, how a child felt. I couldn’t imagine it and this bothered me a lot. It bothered me and caused negative feelings every time I’d see spasticity, a bow-shaped body twist in a child, or some other neurological response. The problem is that these neurological responses are not separate from the child, they are actually part of the child, and when I reached the level when I was finally able to imagine what the child was actually experiencing, only then was I able to understand and accept all those neurological responses and think about what I could do to help the child.
Spasticity, primitive reflexes ceased to be my enemies and became only a part of the child’s condition.As a result, my work has become much better and I am glad that by sharing my experiences I can help parents imagine these conditions and I love seeing their faces when they finally understand and accept their child’s condition. Of course, this is not happening because I do not want to change the child’s condition, on the contrary, I do want that, and want them to be better, but this moment when parents finally understand their child’s condition at another level, is very important to me.
