Our Story

CP Playtime is built upon our experience through the rehabilitation of our amazing 4 year old daughter. She suffered a brain injury whilst critically ill at 1 year old, and as a result has a diagnosis of GMFCS 2 Hemiplegic  Cerebral Palsy. This impacts her in right side weakness, and is especially prominent in her right arm/hand.

One of our early struggles was identifying suitable toys that would help and motivate her while working towards both her current abilities and our future goals. We understood the importance of play and enjoying therapy sessions, and wanted to make that as enjoyable as possible with the resources we could find.

There are lots of toys out there, and while we were able to find some examples through her OT, we found ourselves jumping online fairly soon to browse the internet for toys we thought may also help and provide some variety.

We took some inspiration from what we saw on other CP families and organisations on Instagram and other great resources, but mainly went about identifying products that we thought could help us achieve goals as we went. Once you get your head around matching the toy to their ability and not the suggested age range, it was easy to find toys that were suitable to work within her abilities and our goals.

Early on that was toys that just involved getting her right arm moving with gross motor activities like pushing down/pop up animal toys, knocking over towers of blocks, toy pianos, pop up animals etc. Anything that would do something and encourage movement of the arm. That then moved to placing things in her hands and banging them together as she had some holding function through her tone, holding a ball with two hands etc, reaching to encourage shoulder movement with balloons for example.  As that progressed further, we started working towards activities to start getting the hand open, including picking up smaller items that she could reach and grab and fit in her hand with as far as she could get it open, or larger lid crayons that she could place in her hand even if it was closed over or tight.

Anything to encourage involvement of the affected hand was our approach.

Obviously toys play only a part of the role in a broader process that includes massages, stretching, weight bearing, but we have found that engaging toys have made the more formal sit down sessions of OT we do with her at home much more enjoyable.

One of the hardest things as a parent in this CP world is finding what might help and how it’s helped people in a similar situation, and that’s where we thought we could help fill a void. We’ve used and bought alot of toys in our pursuit of helping to improve her function, and wanted to share some of that information on the chance it may be useful to others on a similar path.

And so CP Playtime was born. We intend for it to be primarily a resource for details, links, and our personal experiences and opinions on some toys. Whilst we’ve not incurred any significant costs in creating this resource, it does take some time and because of that any of the links to Amazon you find on this website are affiliate links. We’d love it if you used those links to purchase the items if you found this site to be a useful resource. It won’t cost you extra, but will help us maintain this resource and add new items as we continue. Most of all, we just hope that it provides useful to people who come across it and helps, even in a small path, towards your path and achieving your goals with your child!

D&S