Cerebral palsy is a syndrome that also known as “brain paralysis”. It can be defined as a group of movements and posture disorder that causing limitations of activity which are attributed to non-progressive disturbances that occurred in the developing fetal or infant brain.

Cerebral palsy can be divided into 4 types and each type has different symptoms:

1. Spastic Cerebral Palsy
• This type of CP is due to the upper motor neuron involvement and may mildly or severely affect the motor functions. It cause tightness in the muscles and making the patients have difficult time to control their movements. It is a syndrome that often suffered by children. It occurs in about 70% of cases. Spastic cerebral palsy syndrome also may produce hemiplegia, paraplegia, quadriplegia or diplegia.
• Kids that suffered from spastic diplegia will have difficulty in walking because both of their legs get affected. This will causes the muscles in the hips and legs become tight then turn the legs inwards and cross at the knees called scissoring.
• For spastic hemiplegia, only one side of the body gets affected. Usually, the arm is more severe affected than the leg. It is because of the damage to a brain’s part. The risk of hemiplegia is higher in premature babies. Other symptoms for spastic hemiplegia CP are speech difficulties or visual impairment, specific learning difficulties, perceptual problems or emotional and behavioral problems.
• Spastic quadriplegia is the most severe syndrome because it affected all four limbs and the trunk. It also affected the muscles that control the tongue and mouth. This will make the patients difficult to speak and suffer from mental retardation. Some children with quadriplegia will experience hemiparetic tremors which is an uncontrollable shaking that affect the limbs and one side of the body.
• The causes of spastic paraplegia are progressive weakness and increasing the muscles tone and stiffness of the leg muscles. This will resulting difficulty in walking (frequently stumble and trip), muscle spasms, difficult in balancing and urinary urgency and frequency.

2. Athetoid Cerebral Palsy
• In general, Athetoid cerebral palsy occurs in about 20% of cases. It is results from the damage or injury to the basal ganglia in the midbrain. It maybe because of the incompatibility of the blood type but now it rarely seen.
• Slow, writhing and involuntary movements are the usual symptoms of the children with athetoid cerebral palsy. This will affect the extremities or the proximal parts of the limbs and also the trunk. Besides that, jerky, abrupt and distal movements may occur to the children. These are the symptoms that cannot be avoided.
• Moreover, emotional tension will increase the movements of the kids and it will disappear during sleep. Other symptom of athetoid cerebral palsy is the children may suffer from dysarthria. This term also known as speech disorder. Children with athetoid cerebral palsy often experience speech difficulties.
• Trouble in holding themselves in an upright, steady position for sitting or walking, and often show a lot of face, arms, and upper body movements are also the symptoms of the athetoid cerebral palsy kids. They do not mean to do that but the movements occur by its own with random and involuntary movements.
• Because of their mixed tone and trouble keeping a position, they are unable to hold onto things such as fork, toothbrush or pencils. To get their hands to a certain spot likes reach for a cup or scratching their nose also takes a lot of work and concentration to do.

3. Ataxic Cerebral Palsy
• For ataxic cerebral palsy syndrome, there are about 10% of cases that occur. Because of weakness, in-coordination and intention tremor, a wide-based gait, unsteadiness and difficulty with rapid or fine movements are produced.
• The clear symptoms that can be seen for this type of cerebral palsy are jerky or low muscles tone and uncoordinated movements. Besides, having problem with balancing and depth perception makes they unsteady when walking.
• They also may have hard time to control their hands or arms when they reach for something or when they are writing because they always appear shaky or tremor.

4. Mixed Cerebral Palsy
• The symptoms of mixed cerebral palsy are not uncommon. It is a combination of all the above types of cerebral palsy. But it is most often of mixture of the spasticity and athetoid movements because they have tight muscle tone and involuntary reflex.