Explaining a condition to a child.

Wretham

Hello. How can I explain to my 7 year old daughter who has fairly mind CP what she has so she can then explain it to others? Really stuck on this one!

barneypup

My 11 year old daughter has severe cp, however, i do have two other daughters, one is 10, the other 6.

My disabled daughter has the cognative development of a baby.

We clearly have very different situations but as my girls grew and realised they had a different life to their friends due to having a severely disabled sister, I decided to help them to see themselves as more lucky than their peers and not less so.. visiting a childrens hospice open day helped this as they saw themselves as part of an elite group of people and became very proud of their sister..

I was wondering if something similar may help you to enable your daughter to see herself as special and different... the parolympics may help broach the subject too..

After re-reading your post, i may have misunderstood.. what about a puppet analogy where the strings aren't as strong as they should be..??
Really hoped something I've written helps and good luck

mollymoobarnes

Hiya

Wierdly I've just discovered that Scope has produced a little printable story book (search the website - it's there somewhere) called something like 'Jacobs Journey' which describes a mother and child going on a car journey from a to b but not being able to use some roads because of 'holes in the road' and so the journey taaking much longer than normal. It helped me explain my son Tom's brain injury to my 4 year old daughter Molly. simple yet effective.

Maria x

mollymoobarnes

Sorry - Jacob's Traffic Jam is what it is called. Type into Scope's search box and you'll find it xxxx