We introduce our first F word of the season, FUNCTION. The definition of function is what people do and luckily for children, play is what they do.

What we want for our children is for them to be able to play.

We discuss that in the “old days” treatment looked different, the idea was to “fix” what was wrong in order for the person to function but it never did that. These days, the focus is on doing something that is meaningful for the participant and doing it in a way that is functional for them.

When taking function into account when setting goals it's important to think how this will help with function. We discuss what this looks like for a really young child starting out in therapy not knowing what their future function will look like, how do you set goals?

Dayna explains a lot of the goals for this age are to do with play so it's important to think about what your child needs to be able to play, such as pointing to what they want, head control, sitting, climbing and all things that can lead to play.

It's important to remember function looks different for everyone and is not always how the majority of people do something. A great example Dayna uses is asking someone that uses glasses to remove their glasses because the majority of people can do things without glasses. That's not functional for everyone.

The ultimate aim is to help our children do what it is they want to do, how they can best do it so they can be happy and functional in their own way.

We're back for a new season of TheraBytes! 🥳

We have an incredibly special guest in the studio this week - we catch up with Noraishah, co-host of the 1st season of the pod, joining Dayna and Kate for a brilliant look back at our past 2 seasons!

If you're new to the pod, be sure to check out this episode, it's great place to start! 🎙️

As for Season 3 of the pod, we'll be covering even more questions and queries from the families that come to Healthy Strides and to the listeners from across the globe tuning in to TheraBytes!

From controversial, to informational, to serious and funny - we cover all the topics in between! 😁

Join us for another episode and be sure to pop by the website for a full run down of each episode, the TheraBytes blog (there's one per episode) and a handy selection of useful links!

It can be so hard to figure out exactly what's going on with our kids, especially when they have cerebral palsy. It feels like everything gets put under that one umbrella, even when we know there might be more to the story.

It's really important to remember that cerebral palsy doesn't explain every challenge our children face. They might be struggling with things that aren't directly related to cerebral palsy, and those things deserve attention too.

Today’s episode highlighted a recent study about just how common it is for children with cerebral palsy to also have other diagnoses, like ADHD and autism.

The study found that two-thirds of children with cerebral palsy also had either autism, ADHD, or an intellectual disability. This figure means we need to be proactive about getting our kids screened for these other conditions if we begin to notice impacts on learning and communication