Many treatments are available to help a child with CP or cerebral palsy to function at the highest level possible. Since no two children are affected by cerebral palsy in exactly the same way, individual treatment programs vary dramatically. However, all children with cerebral palsy have movement problems. You can expect that an important component of your child's treatment will be a therapeutic exercise program. Depending on your child's needs, a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, and a speech-language pathologist will work with your child to help him or her improve posture and movement.

What are other problems associated with CP?
In addition to problems controlling their muscle movement, children with CP may have some other problems too. Most of these are caused by the same brain injury that caused the CP.

Talking and Eating

Just as CP can affect the way a child moves her arms and legs, it can also affect the way a child moves his or her mouth, face and head. This can make it hard for the child to talk clearly and to bite, chew and swallow food. Children with CP work very hard just to speak a few words. CP makes it very difficult to control the lips, jaw and tongue quickly enough to easily form words. Children with CP also have trouble controlling breath flow to make their voices work.

The speech problem most children with CP have is called dysarthria (dis-are-three-a). Dysarthia means it is hard for them to control and coordinate the muscles needed to talk. The child's speech may sound very slow and slurred and the child's face may look funny when the child is talking.

Some childrens' voices may sound different too. This results from too much air flowing through the nose when talking, or not enough air coming through the nose. This causes the child to sound like he or she has a bad cold and can't breathe through his or her nose.

Many of the same muscles involved in talking are also used when eating. Some children with CP might not be able to bite and chew foods. They may also have trouble sucking through a straw or licking an ice cream cone.

Learning Problems

About one-fourth to one-half of children with CP also have some type of learning problem. The problem may be a learning disability so the child has trouble with one or two subjects in school but no other learning problems. In other cases, the child may have a more severe learning problem such as mental retardation where the child learns everything at a slower rate.

There are many different levels of mental retardation. Children with mild mental retardation may learn to read and write. However, children with more severe mental retardation probably will not. This does not mean that children with severe mental retardation can not learn. It means that they learn at a slower pace than other children, and that they will need some special education assistance. See www.specialeducationlawyers.info

Seizures

About half of all children wih CP have seizures. This means that there is some abnormal activity in the child's brain that will interrupt what the child is doing. Often, the abnormal brain activity happens in the same place as the brain injury which caused the CP. A seizure is a series of abnormal messages sent from the brain very close together. These abnormal messages may cause a child to stare and stop moving during a seizure, or may cause the child to loose control of his or her body and fall down. Some children shake all over when they are having a seizure. Seizures usually last a few seconds to a few minutes, and in most case the seizures are not dangerous. Many children take medicine to help prevent seizures.