How Do Children with CP Get Involved in Physical Activities?

If you keep up with the news, you've probably seen a lot of stories lately about children with CP being involved in athletic activities.
A child with CP who enjoys dancing, for instance, was recently profiled on KSL.com. She has been dancing since 2006. Other children with CP have been profiled after running foot races, wrestling and performing other activities. How do they do it? They usually need a bit of extra help, but children with CP can do some surprising things.

Understanding the Disorder

CP is not a monolithic disorder. In fact, it's actually a range of disorders. These disorders affect the sufferer in different ways and with different degrees of severity between one case and the next. If your child has CP, you may already know quite a bit about this.
Some people with CP are confined to wheelchairs, but they may actually get around quite well in them, allowing them opportunities to get involved in sports that involve competitions between athletes in wheelchairs. Other children may have difficulty walking, but are able to balance themselves well enough that they actually can participate in events such as foot races and charity walks.
It takes adults and coaches who know how to make this possible for the children who participate to get involved. Sometimes, accommodations are made that include finding leagues where children with CP compete against one another and, in other cases, the child may actually have enough muscular control to compete against people without CP. It depends upon the individual.
There are some sports where children with CP have been actively encouraged to participate by other children. Wresting, for instance, doesn't necessarily require that the competitors stay on their feet for long, and there have been stories in the media about wrestling teams who try to get someone with CP and a love for wrestling involved.
CP always has an impact on the sufferer's quality of life, but it's sometimes not so devastating that they cannot enjoy working their bodies hard and working toward athletic achievements. There are some CP sufferers, in fact, who do quite well in such events and who get a great deal out of competing at all.
If your child has CP as the result of medical negligence, contact a cerebral palsy lawyer about filing al lawsuit to seek compensation for the injuries that your child suffered.