Pediatric Acquired Brain Injury
“Children’s brains are not mini adult brains!”
Every brain injury is different, and so each patient experiencing a brain injury will likely need a differing course of care to treat their individual needs. This is true even in instances of similar mechanisms of injury impacting similar parts of the brain in patients who are demographically similar – despite these similarities, patient needs might be vastly different. In children, this is even more important.
When an adult has a brain injury, the goal of therapy is to help them regain the skills they had developed before. When a child has a brain injury, the goal is to help them regain those skills... and acquire the next set of skills... and the next... and the next... and the next...
Continuum of Care
After an acute injury, a child will likely be admitted to the hospital for care in the initial phase of their recovery. Following this, they may discharge either to an inpatient rehabilitation hospital or home with outpatient/clinic supports as appropriate. Unlike in the adult model of care, the final stage of rehabilitative care for these patients is typically done within the school system. School systems vary dramatically in how well equipped they are to support a child’s recovery from a brain injury and as many as 33% of children with a traumatic brain injury receive no supports upon returning to school.
Areas of Impact
Brain injuries can impact a variety of areas of functioning including physical, cognitive, social, and emotional. In pediatric populations, deficits in each of these areas can lead to further impact within the academic environment. When thinking about each of these areas, it is important to recognize that many of these skills may be currently developing for a pediatric patient at the time of injury and to consider how that interruption may impact their ongoing development of that skill.
Areas of impact following a pediatric brain injury.
Following a brain injury, children often recover many previously acquired skills with both time and therapy. It is often more difficult for children to regain the developmental skills they were working on acquiring at the time of injury and, as a result, later developing skills which build upon these may be more challenging to acquire. These difficulties may not be noted until later in their development as they "grow into" their areas of deficit when demands within their environment increase.
About the Author
Brynn Schor, MS, CCC-SLP, CBIS (founder of Peninsula Specialty Speech Therapy, based in Menlo Park, California) specializes in assessment and treatment of cognitive communication deficits and executive function coaching for pediatric patients in the Bay Area and across California. Consultations provided worldwide.
