davcose

Not OP but the dad of a child with CP. Not an embarrassing question at all, I wouldn't have known these nuances before I experienced it myself.

Every case is different, similar to how every brain injury suffered by an adult would be different. It can range anywhere from just a mild stiffness in a single joint to complete immobility to move, and from full cognitive function to severe impairment.

The damage is permanent, but through therapy patients can build new neural pathways which minimize it. This works best with very young patients as our "neuroplasticity" - basically the ability of our brain to physically adapt itself, is very high in newborns and immediately begins to drop which continues in a more or less linear fashion throughout our life. The younger a patient begins rehab the better they will adapt.

My son just turned three and is living with "mild" CP, he has hemiplegia (one-sided weakness) on his left side which affects both his left hand and left foot, but his other side is fully able. This works out well in some ways, he has at least one "good" one of each limb, but also causes a lot of imbalances in posture and development that we work on.

I noticed you speak two languages. I'm wondering if you had a lot of difficulties learning to speak in the first place. Currently while my son has begun to catch up to his age in gross and fine motor skills, his communication is still quite a bit behind and something we work on constantly with SLP's.

Obviously every CP case is different, but I'm curious what difficulties you've had learning languages, and learning overall, and how have you overcome them?