The author presents a follow-up study of thirty-four children with cerebral palsy. Eight years previously twenty-three of these children were attending a special school for handicapped children, and eleven were attending regular schools. The author evaluated the children and their families through formal and informal interviews and by administering parent and teacher rating scales of the children's behavior. He found that the development of these children between the ages of ten and fourteen was highlighted by their increased awareness and their parents' awareness of the permanence of their handicap and their consequent search for personal and, ultimately, occupational identity in the face of their parents' emotional withdrawal.