What’s the most important thing for parents of children with spinal cord injuries to know?

I would say that that's still your child. It's still the same person that they were before they were injured. And so if they had chores to do, and responsibilities in the home, then they still need to have those responsibilities, and they still need to be treated in your family system the same way that they were before.

I think the most important thing for a parent, or parents to know about their child with a spinal cord injury, is that they need to be dealt with as though they didn't have a spinal cord injury. They need to be taken care of just like any other child. I think that the biggest mistake that anyone can make is to treat them differently. They need to have chores, they need to have responsibilities, they need all the things that all kids need. But, you know, both, hopefully all positive reinforcement, but they need to have boundaries, and all the rules that we all have as kids, or as adults.

Children truly are very resilient, and they adjust extremely well to a traumatic injury. We're always very excited to see a young child who progresses so well after they sustain their spinal cord injury. And, I think that there's a lot of hope for parents to know if their child does sustain an injury, they will have a high quality of life, and can do so many things in the world that they always had hoped they could do.