Supporting Children with Cerebral Palsy in Early Childhood

This book may appear, at first glance, to be a technical manual for doctors and professionals. Yet it speaks to a far wider audience—above all, to mothers of children with infantile cerebral palsy, who will find in it a treasury of explanations, insights, and practical guidance offered by a physician who is both competent and compassionate. Grisoni Colli devotes the opening section to pediatrician colleagues, urging them to examine children with brain injury carefully from birth onward. Everything is explained with clarity, grounded in long clinical experience, with the goal of establishing an accurate diagnosis and beginning rehabilitation as early as possible—work that must move in step with the child's own development. The author calls physicians to competence and honesty with parents; at the same time, she insists they must not stop at diagnosis. The second part, written in plain and accessible language, speaks directly to mothers—the primary architects of their child's progress and happiness, even within the limits of handicap. This section, too, is suffused with clarity and hope. The advice is rooted in common sense and experience, within reach of every mother. The physician's desire is that we be "ready to do everything humanly possible, ready to share the pain and the love, ready to take up and sustain our responsibility in a work that is joined, constant, and persistent, until we have achieved the maximum recovery, the best we can obtain… what matters is not to lose heart, not to remain passive". Every child carries so much life within them; and every life has its purpose and its end. We are not often given to know each destiny: what we are obliged to do is help, to offer our skill and knowledge, as fully as we are able, to those who need it. This book is a precious resource—a source of knowledge and hope for the progress of so many children with cerebral palsy.