Benefits of Practicing Sports for Children with Cerebral Palsy. A Literature Review

Abstract

"Physical therapy is one of the most important concerns in an infantile cerebral palsy diagnosis. Multiple studies debate in various directions about the necessity of rehabilitation and reintegration in society as functional persons. There are children who need to do physical therapy for all their life long, but there are also children who reach the main rehabilitation objectives. What should they all do more than physical therapy programs? Does the finished physical therapy sessions is enough for rehabilitated cerebral palsy symptoms? What we propose is physical activity which includes diversity from the point of view of stimulus, interests, social inclusion, and team involvement. All this means adapted sports practice along the physical therapy sessions. All the children involved are stimulated to change their routine and bring some competitiveness, creativity, fun, to participate with others in physical practice, as physical therapy is in general an activity done by him/herself. Bringing together sport and therapy, children’s development is improved from physical abilities, fine and motor skills, psychical abilities and cognitive point of view. Introducing sports between physical therapy sessions or after the rehabilitation program, we actually manage to increase the progression pace and to maintain the gains over the deficiencies. As physical health is related to mental well-being, every child who’s involved in sports is actually doing a type of treatment. This review explores the benefits of sports for a cerebral palsy diagnosed child. Keywords: physical therapy, sports, cerebral palsy, self-confidence, disabled children."