I have very vivid memories of 20 trainee physios watching me when I was 6, taking notes on how my body worked or more importantly how it didn't work in their eyes. I felt like an animal in a zoo being watched. I don't feel this is something any child should have to go through.

I had a very happy childhood but it was always dominated by appointments, therapies and interventions which looked at seperate aspects of my condition. This meant that as a child, I wasn't ever looked at holistically, services never came together to put together a provision plan and I really hated this. I would often get jealous of my friends that had playdates and watched T.V after school whilst I attended hydrotherapy, physio and horse-riding. Having a disability robbed me of a lot of childhood freedom and made me grow up very fast.

I hated physio when I was a child partly because of the experiences I had with trainee physios which left me feeling completely violated, partly because I knew that I couldn't change how they spoke to me or how inadequate it made me feel but mostly because I was never treated as a child with thoughts, feelings and a personality. I was just a body that needed fixing because it didn't work properly.

I would often hear 'well, this leg is very bad today isn't it?' and 'why are your arms so weak?' and get immediately defensive because I hated being treated like something that was broken instead of a child with a condition. These experiences did not make me the most co-operative child or the easiest to give physio too I'm sure! But I wanted to be recognised in terms of what I could do- to have an active role in physio. I always wished they would tell me the point of the exercise that I was doing or made it relevant to my life as after all that's how we, as trainee teachers, are told to teach P.E. and I don't see why it should be so different for disabled children.

I firmly believe that disabled people should be allowed to be the masters of their condition and that they should play a part in deciding how to get the most out of their lives by maintaining their conditions. Nobody ever asked me how it felt to have Cerebral Palsy or what skills I would like to have developed for increased independence. Nor did they make physio playful. This, I believe is a fundamental mistake.

One of my proudest moments was defying a physio to not use a hoist to get into a canoe and then happily using my arms to lower myself in. I have never used a hoist in my life and am able to transfer myself easily. So, thank you to all my childhood physio's that made me very determined to be as independent as possible (and a little defiant).