"A cold summer's day", by Susie Mallett20th August 2010
Sony wii and other cerebral palsy-related articles
I have no idea who writes this blog, if in fact any one person does. It could be a collection of articles from other sources compiled by Google. One of you experts out there will perhaps find out. It arrived in my in-box this morning just in-case I was interested!
It hit my Google alert box because of this article mentioning conductive education in connection with the Sony wii console. It is a bit different to some one the articles that we see, so I decided to look deeper inside the site to find out whether there is more about conductive education or more about who is writing all the articles.
I have seen some of the wii action at the Petö Institute in the You Tube video and have spoken to the conductor who initiated it and has been involved its introduction and use. I know several people who have this equipment and have tried it out with them. These include one family who watched the Petö Institute films with me and decided to buy it for their four children because they thought it would be something for their disabled son to join in with; and another family who bought it for their two young sons, one with cerebral palsy, because they are mad on sport. All of the sporty family have great fun with the wii and the disabled son is thrilled to be able to take part in so many virtual sports.
The other family, with the four children, were I believe also right in hoping that this "game" would be something to encourage development of movement and also motivation in their disabled son. But in this case I think that wii needs to be used with him under the guidance of a therapist or educationalist, just as it is in the Petö Institute.
I have observed him playing just with his siblings. He quickly becomes despondent and gives up. He has no interest in playing with it alone. He needs quidance in the movements and in the choice of activities that he plays. He also needs motivating to have fun with it, whereas the disabled sporty child will play alone or with whoever wants to join in and is motivated by all the charts that show his so-called improvements. He has a lot of fun with it.
I am certain that the despondent lad would enjoy very much the type of organised use of wii that can be seen taking place in the Petö Institute. He does not really enjoy playing with the wii in the family setting.
That was my thoughts of the day on wii.
They were inspired by seeing the Google Alert in my in-box. I then went on to open the site that Google alerted me to, only to discover that actually there was even less about the use of wii and cerebral palsy than I have written in the past on this blog. All there is about it is:
The Wii-fever (Wii - the name of the new Nintendo console sounds like 'we,' which emphasizes that it is for everyone) has spread to the distant area of conductive education. During the last two years a successful "Wii-therapy" has been launched in the Peto Institute for children whose motor impairments originate from damage to the central nervous system.
Then it goes on to describe conductive education, from a slightly different angle to some articles that we come across, but again with no reference to where the information comes from.
Somewhere else in the blog, while I was trying to find out whose blog it was, I found the sentences below, in blue. They jumped out at me because this paragraph includes something, but not quite the same something, that I advocate about conductive upbringing. My conversations would never include the word "however" as it does here. I always say to my clients and their families and carers that conductive upbringing as I do it, is teaching the whole family how to live, despite the disabilities of the child, as actively as they possibly can. It requires, as all upbringing of children does, or as the learning of new lifestyles, or learning and educating in any situation does, a lot of patience and a lot of very hard work by all involved.
These are some of the treatments that are carried out to help the people cerebral-palsy so that they can lead a better life and to reduce their dependency on other people. However, all these treatments are very time consuming, and they require a lot of patience from the patient as well as his family. These methods and techniques have so far been very successful to a great extent and for treating cerebral palsy
For me the inclusion of the word however here indicates something a little bit negative, perhaps that therapies are not hard work but "treatments", which is where conductive education usually fits in, are. I read here, between the lines: "so think twice which one you choose, the therapy or the treatment, the hard work or an easy option"! This is probably not what is meant at all, just my mistrusting self when I delve a bit into all these site and see the masses of information there.
And masses of information there certainly is, on this blog
The more I poke around it the more I find, but the less I know about who is writing it. A teacher? A parent? Perhaps a young sufferer of cerebral palsy?
Below are just a few more of the articles that I clicked on in my continued search around the blog, looking for a person or a centre behind it and possibly more on CE. I discovered neither. I found something on massage which I suspect is why it turned up in the same alert that contained my last posting. I found information on autism and different forms of cerebral palsy. I opened one that was headed "The importance of sleep in growing taller", but I did not read that one as it crashed my computer for about an hour!
Luckily my writing was saved, somehow. By technology, not by stupid me!
I am not sure what I think about the whole site, I have enjoyed reading some of it other articles are not really in enough depth to learn anything, but I am sure that there is information there that some parents, people with cerebral palsy, teachers and others, are looking for. I did not find what I have been looking for for ages, and have put out two pleas for on my blog, information about elipesy and cerebral palsy. The search goes on.
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