What’s the most important thing for parents to do after a child is diagnosed with a spinal cord injury?

Get into a good rehab program. You know, really do your research, find out what's the best fit for your child. If you need to visit those rehabilitation places, then visit. Get a feel, trust your gut, you'll know what's right for your child, your child's an individual, and you know them, and trust that. And stay organized. There's going to be a lot of things that you're going to be learning, and you're going to be told and taught, and the more you can get it in writing, and keep it organized, the better you'll have references later, because it's very difficult under a time of stress to keep that all in your memory.

I think one of the most important things for parents to do after a child sustains a spinal-cord injury, is to really learn as much as they can about spinal cord injury and what that means. That knowledge will help them to be able to make the adjustment to the child's spinal cord injury, and also help their child adjust to the spinal-cord injury. As they start to seek out that information, one of the other things that happens is that they start to connect with other people who have had spinal cord injuries, or other parents who've had their children sustain spinal cord injuries.