It looked like a seizure when little Alexzandra Gonzales jerked and then went limp, barely breathing. A frantic race to the hospital led to a diagnosis her parents found hard to believe: Just days before her first birthday, she had had a stroke.

"We never knew that children could have strokes," says her mother, amanda Gonzales.

It's a common misconception, yet several thousand U.S. children a year suffer strokes and some specialists fear they're on the rise. Only now are efforts under way to detect strokes faster in these smallest patients and begin figuring out how to treat them, to help rescue their brains.