dyspraxia

Thanks - will do. I’m new to mumsnet!

@Suemumof4 I suggest you start your own thread saying age/year group and what issues/advice you want, otherwise half the people will reply to the long gone OP. If you do that I'll reply as I have 2 with dyspraxia

That doesn't sounds like mild dyspraxia to me, sounds like there's more going on that hasn't been diagnosed - especially if you are thinking he needs ritalin.

Hi there I know this is a long time ago but I’m in the same situation- any advice in retrospect?

Well done. I hope you get the advice you need. Love to know how you get on.

Tokyo I know Ritalin is regarded very much as a chemical cosh is the UK and I am not recommending its use as I am no expert on the effects of drugs but I am aware of the utter misery caused to children in schools by these conditions. They are very common and and therefore normal but their effect on a child's progress and confidence is huge.

Having looked through a number of reports/articles by medically qualified people, it does seem true that the drug is more favourably regarded in some quarters and in America so I see no harm in looking into it further with informed opinions from professionals.

Nottirednow In my experience as a person with dyspraxia I agree with you that its much more than just the physical issues, however also in my experience as a dyspraxic person as well as a mother of dyspraxic children dyspraxia doesn't automatically mean poor educational performance or outcomes. In my family, the people with dyspraxia are the people who are academically outstanding.

One of the things we have had to battle against is that first impressions of DDs' school work (and mine when I was a kid too, I guess.....) would indicate - bad students who don't care about what they are doing and who are either lazy or worse. The penny drops soon enough but it can be so frustrating (for the girls mainly) and this can reflect in their mood.

No. :( It wouldn't be wise.

theta can you drive?

I have dyspraxia. Both my daughters have severe dyspraxia. I find this thread....amazing really. I think people are confusing challenges arising from dyspraxia and challenges arising from other conditions (eg ADHD).

I'm seriously impressed with the dyspraxic DS who can skateboard - I wouldn't dare go near a board - but my severely dyspraxic daughters can both surf (not brilliantly but they can do it without wiping out). So I know dyspraxics can do some amazingly 'co-ordinated' things if they learn the knack, especially if there isn't actually much hand eye coordination (or leg eye I suppose) involved.

OP, just wondering how your son was diagnosed ie by what sort of medical professional and who is recommending medication?

Yes, because powerful addictive stimulants are an entirely proportionate response to "mild dyspraxia and lack of concentration".

If you want to try fish oil I think you can buy organic oil at great expense. It is not absolutely proven to work though.

A senior member of staff at my daughter's school has a daughter with mild dyspraxia and lack of concentration. Not enough to cause terrible problems but enough to stop her achieving so that she felt stupid and unhappy.

An American psychologist suggested Ritalin. It is used much more over there and generally doesn't have such bad press as it does here. I don't really know why.

The mother baulked at first but researched and decided reluctantly to give it a try and her daughter is transformed as she is suddenly able to settle. She is so much happier at school now. If you look on proper medical sites you can find some useful information and you could take your findings to a doctor/paediatrician if you want to discuss the pros and cons of possible medication further.

"tokyonambu - should you really ONLY eat farmed oily fish?"

No, because they're mostly fed on fish oil, and I don't see how you can extract that meaning from anything I've written.

But I did dinner for four last week with three quid's worth of fresh Sardines. Mackerel is one of the cheapest fish you can buy. Sea-caught Salmon isn't overly expensive if you're going to eat is (a) once a week and (b) as an alternative to processed fish oil, which isn't cheap. Sea trout is suffering from the waste from salmon farming, but still isn't expensive. Fresh tuna is all sea-caught (and the risks of mercury are in general wildly less than the benefits of the fats - shame the fatty tuna is all sold as a delicacy in Japan). Eel is dirt cheap. Kippers are, too, although there's arguably a balance there because of the annatto dyes.

Canned equivalents are mostly dirt cheap, and Sardines on Toast is one of the great comfort foods.

As you move up the food chain, anything accumulative will tend to accumulate, because each link in the chain will be accumulating the stuff all the things below it have accumulated during their lives. If you then introduce a feedback loop into that, by (say) feeding fish on fish oil, that effect is further intensified. Factory farmed fish isn't great in quantity because of this, but non-farmed fish is cheaply and easily available. Hell, you could live on fresh sardines when you can get them, canned sardines every other day of the week and be all the better for it.

See the FSA guidance here. Note the lack of limits on canned fish, because most of it is ocean-caught.

My ds has just done his gcses and is dyspraxic.We didn;t know until he was about 12/13 which was late and he had help at school but refused to use the word processor because of peer pressure in class.he did however use it in exams.I used fish oils and they did help but getting a teenager to do anything is a job and he stopped those.Revision was a nightmare but we persisted and he got 9 gcses all good grades!We nearly fainted with shock.No drugs here but his SN person at school just suggested we repetitively practised certain things and although he will never cook a 3 course meal he can cook a few things now. oddly he is an amazing skateboarder and the person who diagnosed him just said it was pure pigheadedness that got him there as he just liked it so much.He has found his calling as it were in film making and is at college now doing that and came home smiling ear to ear friday because he had been in the darkroom all day and NO WRITING! Don't give up and try to get as much help from the school as you can xx

" has anyone yet looked at whether EFAs levels are low in dyspraxic children"

See page 5 of this

"btw friends child was EFA deficient (parents had private insurance and was tested by proper consultant, not a quack)"

Yes, you can measure fatty acid levels and compare them with required levels. The open question is what, if any, relationship that has with behaviour, academic work, etc. As ever in fringe nutritional theories, that you can measure variable levels of some nutrients is not in dispute, and that extremely high or low levels are bad for you is also not in dispute. The question is if small variations, too small to cause obvious health problems, cause difficult to assess differences. And the studies looking at that tend to be anecdotal, uncontrolled and unblinded. The Durham fish oil trial was a brilliant opportunity to carry out a really good trial; unfortunately, they went out of their way to make it worthless.

Optimist - I use the boots own brand.

Tokyo - thanks for all the info. It is all useful. We are not doing chelation. And it wasn't the MMR that irrepairably damaged my boy. It was the 3 month DTAP - which has since had the mercury and the 'A' removed from it, becasue it was dangerous. And even at the time was not used in the US because the FDA had declared it dangerous.

My boy went blind and developed nystagmus (conditions that you don't normally get together) within 24 hours of his jab. So there is absolutely no doubt at all in my mind that it was the jab that caused this. What I don't know is whether it was the mercury or the 'A' or something else.

Luckily by the time he was 12 months he had regained most of his sight - but he was very developmentally delayed and went on to be diagnosed with Aspergers and Dyspraxia.

However the zinc and copper and iodine and magnesium things are stuff I'm currently researching...

To IndigoBell

Which brand of fish oils from Boots do you use? I used HaliboOrange Fish Oils till Last Easter, but open to trying something different?