How to do language rehabilitation training for children with cerebral palsy?

  Children with cerebral palsy are mostly characterized by random motor dysfunction and often show uncoordinated swallowing, breathing, vocalization and phonation. Such children start with correcting basic movements such as breathing and vocalization, starting with tongue exercises, breathing and blowing bubbles in the mouth, and gradually transitioning to monophthongs, diphthongs and phrases. Children with cerebral palsy have certain obstacles in language, movement and intelligence, so there are many kinds of training for them.  1.Oral sensory stimulation: use silicone finger cushion and toothbrush to stimulate the perioral area, lips, cheeks, tongue, gums, buccal mucosa and pharyngeal capsule, twice a day for 10 min each time. 2.Mouth and face muscle group movement: use ice to stimulate or fingertips to repeatedly snap the perioral area, cheek muscles, etc., twice a day for 5 min each time. If the child can cooperate, ask him/her to bite the teeth as hard as possible; open the mouth as wide as possible and then shut it, repeat 10 times; after the lips are closed tightly, open them suddenly, repeat 30 times a day. Wash the child’s fingers, ask him to suck his fingers, repeat 30 times a day; the purpose is to enhance the function and motor coordination of the orbicularis oris muscle, buccal muscle and biting muscle, reduce salivation and enhance the oral control of the food group.  3.Tongue muscle motor training: Wrap the thumb and index finger with gauze, gently pinch the tongue body of the child with cerebral palsy, carry out left and right, up and down movements, then release the tongue body to return to the original position, repeatedly for 5 min each time, twice a day; use the tongue depressor to apply repeated pressure to the central part of the tongue, 20 times a day; if the child can cooperate with the training, he/she should be induced to extend the tongue, swing it sideways, lift it up and pop it. The purpose is to increase the tongue’s ability to control the food mass to prevent it from passing through the mouth prematurely and leading to misaspiration before swallowing.4. Swallowing training: Use a silicone toothbrush dipped in a little ice water to gently stimulate the soft palate, tongue root and posterior pharyngeal wall; use the thumb to apply pressure to the hyoid bone to induce swallowing action and improve swallowing strength for 5 min each time, twice a day. The purpose is to enhance the swallowing reflex and avoid pre-swallowing aspiration caused by a weakened or delayed swallowing reflex.  Low intelligence, impairment of thinking, memory and auditory recognition lead to cognition, language comprehension, and reduced language expression ability of the child. In addition, such children often have emotional abnormalities, which are manifested as irritability, distraction, short duration, and poor self-control, etc. The key key to language training for such patients is to communicate with the child about the relationship and gain the child’s trust.  Then, physical teaching is the main focus to improve their cognitive ability to gradually transition to speech training, and to integrate education into entertainment. As we all know, pediatric cerebral palsy language rehabilitation is long-term and hard, parents need to have great patience and perseverance, and education and training should be persistent so that they can make gains.  First of all, language training starts on the basis of the pediatric cerebral palsy patient’s ability to control his head and trunk. First of all, let the child sit steadily, keep his head in the middle position, hold his hands to focus his attention, and let the parents face the child’s eyes and talk to each other, making sure to keep the same height level, which is good for pronunciation and seeing the mouth shape and expression clearly.  At the same time, be careful not to use childish language, which will be corrected later with great effort. It is better to teach them to master formal language, otherwise it can cause language poverty and affect their interpersonal skills. When teaching children to speak and calculate, they must be connected to objects so that they can learn the language in understanding and understand it while learning it.