Floppy Child Syndrome: Child even can’t hold head straight.

Floppy child syndrome is a physical disability affecting children, in which the child’s body becomes so weak that they even struggle to hold the head erect.

In this article we will learn what is floppy child syndrome, what are its other symptoms and its possible management.

By the end of this article, you will see a video of 2 and 1/2-year-old floppy child. But, before we proceed, let’s learn something about this kind of disability.

What is floppy child syndrome?

Floppy child syndrome is also known as “hypotonic cerebral palsy”, which is made up of two terms “Hypotonic + Cerebral palsy”. Where cerebral palsy is a condition that affects the cerebrum part of the brain and the term palsy is paralysis.

Again “Hypotonic” is a term formed by the combination of Hypo + Tonic (tone). Hypo means: Decreased / Reduced.
Tonic (tone): muscle tone/ muscle power.

Thus, the definition of hypotonic cerebral palsy would be:

Definition: Hypotonic cerebral palsy is a condition that affects children where there is reduced muscle tone of the whole body.

So, it a paralysis caused by the injury in cerebrum during birth or immediately after birth. It affects the children and can happen at any stage of infancy:

• Can happen during the pregnancy.
• It may also affect during the delivery or
• immediately after the birth.

Cerebral palsy is of many types. It is a very vast topic which is beyond the scope of this article.

Clinical manifestation.

One of the most important clinical manifestations is delayed developmental milestone. It means their is delay in developmental milestone in comparision to normal.

They can not come to sit from lying. Even if we passively make them sit, they can not maintain the sitting position. forget about standing.

They even cannot chew solid food. They can not sit stand, their arms and legs hand down like rag doll. The child becomes floppy. Other clinical manifestation includes:

• Unable to sit stand.
• Difficulty it swallowing the food.
• Arms and legs hang down.
• Some of them also exhibit drooling of saliva.

Treatment.

Physiotherapy in a combination of Occupational Therapy is the proved treatment process for these kinds of kids.   We won’t go deeper into the physiotherapy and occupational therapy treatment process.  

But, in general, a physiotherapist takes care by doing exercises for neck control, gaining the muscle tone by positioning the kid.   An occupational therapist tries to achieve the same goal by giving playful activities to mother and child. They also train their parents for proper feeding and other daily living activities.  

Floppy child syndrome video

I visit the special school in my town, where I get to see many such kids. i have recorded and made this video for anyone who wants to see how actually a floppy child looks like.  

Hope this proves to be helpful.

Sunit. S. Ekka

Dr Sunit Sanjay Ekka is a physiotherapist in practice for the last 15 years. He has done his BPT from one of the premium Central Government physiotherapy colleges, ie, SVNIRTAR. The patient is his best teacher and whatever he gets to learn he loves to share it on his Youtube channel and blog.