Penny and Peter de Vries had triplets in March 1987 when their first-born son, Michael, was two and a half years old. Talk about an instant family – four children under three years old!! The triplets, two girls and a boy, were born in Cape Town. They were eight weeks premature but all seemed to thrive in time. Graham and Julia went home after five weeks and Lesley followed after eight weeks (she had been the tiniest).

However it was Julia who landed up having difficulties. After many tests, she was eventually diagnosed as cerebral palsied at about 6 months. When the babies were 7 months Peter was transferred to Durban and the family have lived in Pinetown ever since. Julia is Cerebral Palsied. She doesn’t walk but fortunately she has no speech difficulty.

Penny went back to work when the triplets were three years old and has been a business woman for the last 15 years. Michael is going into his third year at university and the triplets are all in matric (2005) - after a long haul with many significant challenges along the way. The next challenge will be supporting Julia in finding a suitable career path as that is one little lady who wants to gain as much independence as possible!

Diary of a Cerebral Palsied Child (later Teenager) is an account written by a mother (of a cerebral palsied child) of some of the ups and downs experienced in raising a child with a disability. It was started in 1992 when Julia was 5 years old and was included in Skallagrigg (The Newsletter sent to members, friends and donors of the KZN Cerebral Palsy Association) as an attempt to help parents, of other children with special needs, who may feel isolated.

The idea being, if they could read something that seemed familiar and possibly similar to what they were experiencing, it would help them. At the same time, it provides tremendous understanding to able bodied people of the challenges of the disabled AND more importantly, the challenges of able bodied people to appreciate that these special people, are just like all of us.