Post 46: Celebrating the Inch Stones
Why Small Wins Are the Whole Point for Children With Cerebral Palsy
There is a moment that happens in almost every family I work with.
It’s not the dramatic breakthrough. It’s not the appointment where the specialist finally says something hopeful. It’s a quiet, ordinary moment — usually when no one is watching. A thumb that uncurls while a child is resting. A sound that isn’t quite a word but is unmistakably intentional. A mouth that closes around a spoon for the first time in years.
And the parent who witnesses it stops completely. They go still. Because something in them knows, even before they can name it, that what just happened matters.
Then, almost immediately, the doubting voice arrives. Was that real? Is it going to last? Is it enough?
If you are raising a child with cerebral palsy, you know this moment. You have probably lived it many times. And I want to talk about it — because I think the way we relate to those small moments has more to do with your child’s progress than most people realize.
Why We’re Wired to Focus on What’s Wrong
When your child has cerebral palsy, the world around you is organized around deficits. Every assessment, every report, every therapy goal is framed around what your child cannot yet do. The language of the medical system, however well-intentioned, trains your eye to look for problems. It teaches you to measure the gap between where your child is and where they “should” be.
And after years of living inside that framework, it becomes the lens through which you see everything. You stop at the thing that is still tight. You notice the movement that still isn’t coming. You sit with the silence where a word should be.
I understand why this happens. You are an advocate. You are paying attention. You are fighting for your child to get every opportunity they deserve.
But there is a cost to this way of seeing — and I’ve watched it quietly drain families over and over again. When everything is filtered through the question of what’s still wrong, the things that are going right become invisible. And when the small wins become invisible, something else happens too: the parent loses steam. The energy it takes to keep showing up — for the exercises, for the calls, for the daily work — starts to feel heavier and heavier because there is never any evidence that it’s working.
The wins were always there. They just weren’t being seen.
What I Call the Inch Stone
In the world of child development, we talk about milestones — the big, measurable markers that tell us a child is on track. First steps. First words. Sitting independently. These are the moments that get celebrated, photographed, shared.
But for a child with cerebral palsy, the journey rarely moves in those large, visible leaps. It moves in something much smaller. Much quieter.
I call these the inch stones.
An inch stone is the moment a hand that has been fisted for months begins to open. It’s the first time a child closes their lips around a spoon instead of just receiving the food passively. It’s a thumb that releases — not because you stretched it, not because you forced it, but because something inside the body shifted and let go.
It’s a child who has never spoken spelling out a word on their communication device. It’s a parent who realizes their child is chewing — actually chewing, with jaw movement and tongue engagement and lip closure — when two weeks earlier that wasn’t possible.
These are not small things dressed up to seem important. These are genuinely significant neurological events. They are evidence that the nervous system is reorganizing.
That the fascia is responding. That the work you are doing is landing somewhere real inside your child’s body.
They deserve to be celebrated. Not noted and moved past. Not filed away while you focus on the next problem. Celebrated.
The Parent Who Almost Missed It
I want to share something that happened recently on one of my coaching calls — without naming names, because the truth of it belongs to every family I’ve ever worked with.
A caregiver had been doing fascia therapy work with a child with cerebral palsy for months. Consistent, dedicated, showing up even when it was hard. And one day, while she was feeding the child, she wasn’t paying particularly close attention. She was just doing what she did — feeding, supporting, being present.
And then she noticed the sound.
Why are you eating so loudly?
And then she realized: the child was chewing. Mouth closing. Jaw moving. Tongue engaging. Lips coming together. A full, coordinated oral movement that hadn’t been there before — and it arrived so naturally, so quietly, that she almost missed it entirely.
That is how progress works in children with cerebral palsy. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t arrive with fanfare. It slips in on an ordinary afternoon when you’re not looking for it.
And then a few weeks later, the same child — who had never spoken a clear word — became frustrated during a lesson with a teacher who wasn’t listening. She had been offered two choices. The teacher wasn’t connecting with her. And so she did something she had never done before: she made herself heard.
She said a word. Out loud. With intention and clarity and a little bit of righteous frustration behind it.
That was her first word.
And it came not in a speech therapy session, not during a formal assessment, but in a moment of ordinary life where she needed to be understood and found a way.
Why Celebrating Small Wins Isn’t Just Emotional — It’s Therapeutic
I want to be honest with you about something. When I encourage parents of children with cerebral palsy to celebrate the inch stones, I’m not just trying to make you feel better. I’m not offering comfort to get you through a hard week.
I’m telling you that the act of recognizing and celebrating progress is itself part of the therapy.
Here’s why.
The nervous system of a child with cerebral palsy is working harder than it should have to. It’s navigating a body where the usual pathways for movement, sensation, and coordination are disrupted. And one of the things the nervous system needs — genuinely needs, the way it needs input and movement and gentle pressure — is a sense of safety and success.
When a child experiences a new movement, a new sound, a new level of coordination, and the people around them respond with genuine joy, that response becomes part of the experience. The nervous system registers not just the movement itself, but the emotional environment in which it happened. Safety. Warmth. Celebration.
That environment makes it more likely to happen again.
Conversely, when parents are tense, discouraged, and laser-focused on what isn’t working, children feel that too. Not because parents are doing anything wrong — but because children with cerebral palsy are often exquisitely attuned to the emotional states of the people who care for them. And a nervous system that is already working hard doesn’t open and explore and take risks in an atmosphere of tension and disappointment.
It opens in an atmosphere of joy.
What This Looks Like in Real Life
I know that shifting this mindset is not as simple as deciding to do it. When you have been living inside a deficit-focused framework for years — reinforced by every medical appointment, every therapy report, every well-meaning professional who hands you a list of what your child can’t do — the habit of looking for what’s wrong runs deep.
So here are some small, concrete things I invite families to try.
Keep a wins journal. At the end of each week — or each day, if you can — write down one thing you noticed. Not a goal met, not a milestone reached. Just something that was a little different, a little freer, a little more present than it was before. An eye that tracked. A hand that rested open. A sound that had more shape to it than usual. Write it down. Date it. Come back to it.
Say it out loud. There is something powerful about speaking a win into the room. Telling the other adults in your child’s life — the other caregivers, the grandparents, the partner at the end of the day. Not as a report. As a celebration. She chewed today. He opened his hand. She said a word. Let it land. Let it matter.
Let your child see your joy. Children with cerebral palsy — even children with significant communication challenges — are watching you. They see your face when they do something new. They feel your energy. When you light up, they know. And that knowing is medicine.
Resist the immediate pivot. This one is hard. The moment something new happens, the mind wants to immediately move to the next problem. Okay, but now what about the walking? Now what about the hands? Try to stay in the moment of the win a little longer before moving on. Let it be complete in itself.
The Long Game
Here is what I have observed across more than two decades of working with children with cerebral palsy and the families who love them.
The families who go the distance — who sustain the work over months and years, who keep showing up with energy and hope even when progress is slow — are not the ones with the easiest cases. They are not the ones whose children are making the fastest progress.
They are the ones who have learned to see.
They have trained themselves to notice the inch stones. To mark them. To treat each tiny shift in their child’s body as the significant event that it is. And because they are tracking these small moments, they have evidence. They have a record. They have something to hold onto on the hard days when everything feels stuck.
The wins were always there. The work was always working. They just learned to look.
If you are raising a child with cerebral palsy and you are tired — and I know you are tired — I want you to try something this week. Look for one thing. Just one. One moment where your child’s body did something it hasn’t done before, or did something familiar with a little more ease than last time.
Find it. Name it. Write it down.
That is not settling for less. That is understanding, at the deepest level, how change actually works in a body with cerebral palsy. Slowly. Quietly. One inch stone at a time.
And those inch stones? They are the whole point.
Ready to Start?
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