Episode2 Segment 6 - What are some top tips for keeping on track?

What we find works best when you've got a child with a chronic medical condition who lives with chronic pain and has something, a disability that may impact their life and their ability to get out and enjoy life, you find what can work best for them, as in what's not going to hurt them.

So a lot of high impact activities can't be done with children with arthritis with joint issues.

A lot of things that are high fatigue or use a lot of energy levels can't be done for a lot of kids with chronic health conditions because fatigue is one of the major side affects that they battle on a daily basis.

Something like horse riding is a fantastic approach because the horse is taking the weight and the horse is doing the work.

The children are also using their muscles, stabilising their core, which they don't even realise simply by the fact that they have to tilt their hips a certain way to stay on, they've got to keep their balance to actually not fall off.

And they're using muscles that they may not otherwise use.

When you have chronic pain it can be really hard to achieve even the small goals that you set for yourself.

And that's why you should involve your parents and your carers in helping you achieve those goals.

They may have to push you a little bit.

But the goal is to achieve them, to get fitter, to get healthier, to get back on track.

And if you get a little reward for managing to do these goals, fantastic.

You deserve it.

Over many years you get told and you find out first hand that there are many things that your child can't do.

But don't give up hope of finding out what they can do.

For us it was a long process, trial and error, we tried a lot of things that we found that we had to let go or we found a way around it.

Because there's always something.

As I say to my children every day "How do you climb a ladder? One rung at a time.

" We're not at the top of that ladder yet, but I can tell you we're a few steps up from where we started out ten years ago and we just keep climbing every day.

My advice to anybody that's going through this chronic pain, in terms of physical activity is… try.

You can't do… you can't just sit back and not… try to get physically active because if you don't then you're not going to get anywhere.

So my advice is just to get active as best you can.

Small things and work your way forwards and just try to push through the pain level even though it's excruciatingly hard, just try.

And you will get there in the end.