If your child has cerebral palsy, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind moving into the future. First, your child is obviously going to have some special needs. They’re also going to have many of the same needs that any other child has. Their condition will likely mean that meeting some of those needs that they share with other children will be extremely difficult. Even going outside and playing, for instance, can be challenging if you have a mobility impairment.
Accommodating the needs of children with cerebral palsy will require that you think about some common things in different ways.
Daycare and School
If your child needs to be watched during the day while you are at work, you’ll have to make sure you have somebody providing daycare services who is qualified to work with children with cerebral palsy. This may be quite expensive. Such individuals have a lot of specialized knowledge and specialized knowledge does not usually come cheaply. If your child has cerebral palsy, getting extra help is something you need to consider, as well, and daycare and school needs are parts of this.
Doctor Visits
Visiting the doctor is going to be a lot more frequent an occurrence for any child with cerebral palsy. It’s also going to be more expensive, in all likelihood. People with cerebral palsy oftentimes require sophisticated treatments and those treatments sometimes come at a high price.
Transportation
If your child has severe mobility impairments, you’re going to need some sort of a specialized vehicle to get around. If your child has a wheelchair that has special adaptations on it, such as accommodations to carry batteries or other equipment, folding it up and putting it in the car is probably not going to be feasible. Mobility vans are available in many different designs and offer some great options. They can be expensive, however.
There are also specific classifications of cerebral palsy, such as dyskinetic Cerebral Palsy or ataxic Cerebral Palsy, and in some cases, people with are diagnosed with more than one form of the disorder. If you have questions, speak to your pediatrician.