Friday 15 August 2008

Cerebral palsy and walking

The Scene, newsletter of The Spastics Centre, New South Wales, Australia has created a blog which this week has a very interesting, controversial entry about cerebral palsy and walking:


This was first published in 2006 by Iona Novak, a researcher and reports the responses of adults with cerebral palsy to efforts made in their childhood to help them walk. It is suggested that the time would have been better spent helping them to have independent mobility rather than concentrating on walking

While it is natural for parents to want to do all they can to assist their child to walk independently, with the benefit of hindsight in years to come, independent mobility, not walking per se, is likely to be seen as more important. What all parents want most for their children is a happy and fulfilled life. Walking independently is not the only way to achieve this

It would be interesting to have conductors' comments on this, but as I see it the last two sentences sum up what every conductor aims to do!

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