Developmental medicine and child neurology
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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. ⋯ 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.