Self-concept of young children with cerebral palsy

Abstract

Several measures of self-concept and self-esteem were applied to a sample of 15 'mainstreamed', upper-middle-class, cerebral-palsied children aged between four and eight years, and to 15 matched controls. Over-all self-concept scores were similar for both groups, although they tended to be lower for the handicapped group. Teachers rated the handicapped children as having lower self-esteem than the controls in the classroom, but behavioral ratings by parents of their own children at home revealed no group differences in self-esteem. These tentative findings, supplemented by interview data, support the hypothesis that children with cerebral palsy begin to regard themselves as different as early as four years of age. However, these self-views and their potentially negative effects on self-esteem do not appear to crystallize until the children are in the primary grades at school.