Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral Palsy

Noticing

This report is on a male child that is 4 years old. The child is suffering from Cerebral Palsy, specifically spastic. This condition has brought about a number of conditions ranging among vision loss, speech difficulties, spinal deformities, movement disability, and emotional and behavioral challenges.

There were notable differences between the child’s chronological and developmental age based on Denver II. When it came to social contact, the baby’s developmental age was 24 months. He was able to indicate want, remove a garment, specifically a sock, and to name a friend. However, he needed help with putting on a cloth and could not play board games. On fine motor skills, the child’s developmental age was quite low at 12 months. However, I noticed that if the skills requiring vision were removed, such as making towers with cubes, the child would have scored much higher. On language skills, the child performed at 24 months. He could define words and count, but he was quite limited when it came to pointing pictures and naming colors. Lastly, on gross motor skills, he was at 8 months. Most of the movement tasks were daunting to the baby. He was unable to walk well. According to Towns et al. (2018), gross motor skills should not be used as an assessment for people with cerebral palsy..

Interpreting and Responding

The general class objective on that particular day in the Light House included working on learning sounds and pronunciations, replicating basic shapes like circle, making connections and recognizing similarities, cooperating in individual and group settings, and having a sense of self-care.

The child had personal therapy objectives. The objectives were to help with education and learning, optimize mobility, assist with basic ADLs, and help with social and behavioral education. During the lunch break, I helped the child to feed himself by helping him to locate and pick-up the food. I noticed various disciplinary measures that were used with the child. The most common was positive reinforcement. The teacher praised him whenever he worked hard, tried something new, or behaved really well. Another disciplinary measure was training the baby on how to keep emotions in check. The teacher reminded him of the importance of taking a few deep breaths or counting to 10 whenever he got angry.

During the lessons, there were distinct teaching adaptabilities meant to increase the child’s understanding. There was the use of songs and voice inflection. This is because children who are 4 years respond better to songs. Also, at this age children have a lot of energy and are always looking for ways to channel it. Teaching adaptabilities suited for his disability were the use of braille code for vision loss. There was a nurse at the Light House. I observed that the duty of the nurse was to assist with basic and practical living skills such as eating. The nurse also identified possible health services that the child might need during the school day and developed ways to meet those needs. The nurse advised about and organized appropriate care for the children. Finally, she liaised with the families, social welfare, and healthcare professionals.

Reflecting

The experience at Little Lighthouse was very eye-opening. I learned that every child with special needs is unique and needs personalized treatment. In order to serve the children well, one needs to be a critical thinker with avid problem-solving skills as children can be very unpredictable. I also learned that it takes patience, compassion, and hard work to train children with special needs. This is because the various symptoms or challenges associated with the respective disability can affect their motivation and attention in the classroom. Some of the concepts applied in the Lighthouse were new to me, such as the use of positive reinforcement as a disciplinary measure. I believe that the experience gotten from my time in the Lighthouse will be extremely beneficial to my career in the future, especially the detail and professionalism of the staff.

Article Review

Hernandez‐Reif, M., Field, T., Largie, S., Diego, M., Manigat, N., Seoanes, J., & Bornstein, J. (2005). Cerebral palsy symptoms in children decreased following massage therapy. Early Child Development and Care, 175(5), 445-456.

An intervention program recruited 20 children with CP. They were recruited from early intervention programs. Each child received 30 minutes of massage weekly for a period of 12 weeks. The findings were that the therapy led to the reduction in spasticity, lowering of rigid muscle tone, and improvement in fine and gross motor skills. Moreover, the children had improved significantly on the scores based on the Developmental Profile. The improvements were most notable in cognition, social, and dressing skills. Also, they had more positive facial expressions and reduced limb activity during face-to-face play.  In conclusion, it is evident that massage therapy is beneficial in alleviating physical symptoms linked with Cerebral Palsy.

The article supports the growth and development of children by reducing the pains they experience as a result of the disorder. Pain hinders the children from taking part in a majority of physical activities, which makes them sad, lonely, and depressed (Miller & Bachrach, 2017). With the pain gone, they can interact more with their friends. The little Lighthouse can include massage therapy in its curriculum with the help of the nurse. This information is beneficial to parents as they can, after being trained, massage their babies at home.

References

Hernandez‐Reif, M., Field, T., Largie, S., Diego, M., Manigat, N., Seoanes, J., & Bornstein, J. (2005). Cerebral palsy symptoms in children decreased following massage therapy. Early Child Development and Care, 175(5), 445-456.

Miller, F., & Bachrach, S. J. (2017). Cerebral palsy: A complete guide for caregiving. JHU Press.

Towns, M., Rosenbaum, P., Palisano, R., & Wright, F. V. (2018). Should the Gross Motor Function Classification System be used for children who do not have cerebral palsy? Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 60(2), 147-154.