Any other dyspraxics do this?

[54321nought]

Brush one side of your hair twice, and the other side not at all

or find you are attempting to put both socks on the same foot

or realise you have gone out with a watch around each wrist,

or carry two cups of tea, place on on the table, and then let go of the wrong one

or anything similar???

Please tell me I am not alone!

Shoelaces were a huge issue for me - remember loads of practise with DMum.

Velcro shoes fastening then elastic laces when they were younger and then DH method which is easier than mine - and it's been much less of an issue for them.

less of an issue for our children.

Not sure if they can do ties behind back with apons - I can but it came in late teens - eldest has learnt to plait own hair DD2, Y7, still can't.

I forget if I've washed my hair and end up doing it twice or put conditioner on but no shampoo

One I've done a lot recently is I go into the cloak room for my coat which also has our second fridge and open the fridge door. Then think doh coat doesn't live in the fridge

Now you mention it I do have a favourite side when brushing hair. Oh yeah the tangles at the back due to lack of brushing

Definitely guilty of out of sight out of mind a lot of the time

@54321nought

Can you guys tie an apron up behind your back?

I have to wrap the ties right around my body to tie at the front, and if they are not long enough, I have to extend them with shoelaces

Christ no! My dad brought me a face mask which has strands which need tying at the back. Not a chance in even bothering

Same with bras always have to do up at the front and twist round

Never buy clothes with a zip at the back or fiddly buttons.

On bad days even simple buttons are a struggle

I do some of these things too occasionally!😀 But I feel my Dyspraxia affects my sense of direction more than anything🤔 I tend to, for instance -
Get up from a table in a large restaurant/pub to go to the loo/get drinks, and struggle to remember where we were sitting on my way back😳 Then hear dh or a friend calling out to me, waving (often with an eye-roll)😳

• Be in someone's car in my local area (driven by someone not local), and be asked 'Which way now?' It's my local area, I'm familiar with it, but only from the direction I normally come from! It's embarrassing when the driver looks baffled as I'm mentally turning the area round in my head, thinking 'It's left from 'my' junction, so must be right from this one, hang on, are we going back on ourselves?'

I could think of more examples, but these specific ones have shown me up many times! I get anxious if I know I'm going to have to direct, and sometimes even set aside time in advance to 'practise' the alternative routes!

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has this problem!

I can't tie aprons from behind, or put my bra on behind my back. I can't do buttons behind my back. I can braid my daughter's hair but not my own. Can't tell the time on a clock with hands either because I forget which hand is which.
My best friend automatically looks at my shoes and buttons to sort me out after many years of doing it! I'm 40 bloody years old!!

My dyspraxic daughter does the brush thing - or rather will keep brushing the same area. She finds it hard to visualise where she’s brushed and rotate around her head, I think

That's the problem I have.

Can you guys tie an apron up behind your back?

No, I can't even tie shoelaces.

Get up from a table in a large restaurant/pub to go to the loo/get drinks, and struggle to remember where we were sitting on my way back😳 Then hear dh or a friend calling out to me, waving (often with an eye-roll)

Ooh, is this a dyspraxic thing? I so often get 'lost' on the way back from the toilets!

@54321nought

I will pick up a pen with the wrong hand then be confused why it's hard to write. I can actually scrawl ok with my left hand and I think it's all the accidental practice

I do this all the time!

Ooh! I don't think I know anyone else who does. Yay!

@Wisteriabloom

I do some of these things too occasionally!😀 But I feel my Dyspraxia affects my sense of direction more than anything🤔 I tend to, for instance - Get up from a table in a large restaurant/pub to go to the loo/get drinks, and struggle to remember where we were sitting on my way back😳 Then hear dh or a friend calling out to me, waving (often with an eye-roll)😳

• Be in someone's car in my local area (driven by someone not local), and be asked 'Which way now?' It's my local area, I'm familiar with it, but only from the direction I normally come from! It's embarrassing when the driver looks baffled as I'm mentally turning the area round in my head, thinking 'It's left from 'my' junction, so must be right from this one, hang on, are we going back on ourselves?'

I could think of more examples, but these specific ones have shown me up many times! I get anxious if I know I'm going to have to direct, and sometimes even set aside time in advance to 'practise' the alternative routes!

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has this problem!

Growing up it was a standing joke in my family I never knew whether to turn left or right out of the gate to get to anywhere, even really familiar places. I was in my early 30s when I suddenly realised that our house was about two fields away from the river path we used to walk down - I thought as we'd been walking 'away' from home for quite a long way it must be very distant, without realising the path took us in a big loop. I also get 'lost' in restaurants etc. where I have to get back to the table.

But I almost never have problems driving on my own. I might not get back in the most efficient way possible (dunno), but I never feel totally lost. For various reasons I've driven the backroads of my local area much, much more than DP and she tells me it's obvious it's never occurred to me I can drive some routes both 'there' and 'back' - I just don't seem to recognise I can reverse the direction - but I will always confidently duck down a side road if I need to, and get to where we need to end up. Weird, isn't it?

My handwriting is barely legible and it physically hurts to write more than a paragraph. I thought that was completely normal and everyone had severe pain when handwriting anything.

I have no sense of direction and get so lost in shopping centres. I'm fine from the entrance but when I come out of a shop it takes me a minute to work out where the hell I am.

When I'm tired or stressed it affects my speech so I stammer or lose my words if I'm trying to do something physical at the same time.

I'm glad it's not just me (only in Italian though as I use it less), I'll just say a completely different word that starts with the same letter - like bagno instead of banana (bathtub and banana)

I'm also a bit scared of taking things out of the oven I've burnt myself so many times.

I also struggle to follow google maps - I literally have to walk back and forth until I understand which way the arrow goes.

I stammer when I'm tired too! And get a tic. I don't recognise cars so I make words out of the reg numbers and use that. I've got into so many wrong cars before I started doing it.

I hear you.
I put the dirty washing in the tumble drier all the time instead of the washing machine - or try to put the wine bottle in the dishwasher.
I dread hoovering - having to manage the hoover body and the hose and the noise - usually end up bruised, so happy to have a robovac.
I know how to get from A to B or B to C but not A to C without thinking very hard.
I am not safe driving down a slip road with milliseconds to work out a complicated road sign and understand the speeds and distances of all the other cars around me.

Could I ask how those of you that drive got on with learning? Dyspraxic DS is 17 now so it's on the list of things to think about but I think coordinating the gears, pedals, indicators etc will be hard. He has a good sense of direction and good awareness of what other cars are doing but its making us both nervous.

@ExtremelyDisorganised

Could I ask how those of you that drive got on with learning? Dyspraxic DS is 17 now so it's on the list of things to think about but I think coordinating the gears, pedals, indicators etc will be hard. He has a good sense of direction and good awareness of what other cars are doing but its making us both nervous.

I took two years of very regular lessons to learn to drive; it really was a lot and I pity my parents who shelled out (worse - I was not the slowest of their dyspraxic children to learn! ). But I did get there. And yes, co-ordinating was really hard, as was following instructions.

My first (lovely) instructor didn't always use 'left' or 'right' but 'this way' or 'that way' (they can do this on the test too). He never got angry if I made a turn the opposite way from what he'd directed, so long as I did it safely. He also let me practise a lot. It really helped as I need lots of repetition to build muscle memory. It took me ages to understand which way to turn the wheel in reverse!

My dad (who is awful in a lot of ways) was, weirdly, the person who helped me reverse park. He just told me to take an enormous amount of space and try, and that gave me confidence. So I think being able to accept you might not learn in the same spaces/times as other people is helpful.

I will say, I've been driving almost twenty years now, and I have (fingers crossed) never had a serious accident. I've only once had to go through insurance - I reversed and hit someone else's car, but at a very low speed and in the end I didn't have to pay as she was also in the wrong place and it wasn't really clear which of us was responsible. Other than that, I hit a concrete pillar in a car park a few months after I passed my test, and put a ding in my mum's car.

You do have to jump through hoops to pass the test, but after that, what helps is knowing you can always change plans. My instructor really hammered that home. If you suddenly realise you've lost count of the exit you need on a roundabout, just take what's safe, drive on, and sort it out when it's safe to pull over or turn round. If you think you can't safely park in that space, don't. And so on. It's never the end of the world if you make mistakes on a journey, so long as you can be safe for other road users.

Argh, that was an essay. The other dyspraxic skill: precis.

Could I ask how those of you that drive got on with learning?
I bloody hated it and found it very difficult, in hindsight I'd have done it much faster if I had gone for an automatic because gears were the hardest part for me. Make sure he finds a good instructor who can explain things in a way he understands. Don't stick with a bad instructor, it's not worth the time or money.
I had a word with my examiner before my test and told them I struggled with directions and left and rights so could he please go slowly, repeat requests and use visual landmarks. He was great about it and I passed but I'm glad I won't have to do that again. Best of luck to him 👍

Thank you both, I really think he needs to try manual because one of the careers he's interested in would require driving vehicles and auto only would be limiting. I totally get the "this way that way" thing, at the moment I get him to navigate using his phone when I'm driving and it has been interesting! He does know left from right but tends to say "this way" instead, fortunately he's got a good sense of direction and is good with maps (thank you Scouts). I'm good at the "doesn't matter if you miss a turning" thing and am trying to model that for him.

@randomlyLostInWales

less of an issue for our children.

Not sure if they can do ties behind back with apons - I can but it came in late teens - eldest has learnt to plait own hair DD2, Y7, still can't.

I'm nearly 60, and I still can't...

@Wisteriabloom

I do some of these things too occasionally!😀 But I feel my Dyspraxia affects my sense of direction more than anything🤔 I tend to, for instance - Get up from a table in a large restaurant/pub to go to the loo/get drinks, and struggle to remember where we were sitting on my way back😳 Then hear dh or a friend calling out to me, waving (often with an eye-roll)😳

• Be in someone's car in my local area (driven by someone not local), and be asked 'Which way now?' It's my local area, I'm familiar with it, but only from the direction I normally come from! It's embarrassing when the driver looks baffled as I'm mentally turning the area round in my head, thinking 'It's left from 'my' junction, so must be right from this one, hang on, are we going back on ourselves?'

I could think of more examples, but these specific ones have shown me up many times! I get anxious if I know I'm going to have to direct, and sometimes even set aside time in advance to 'practise' the alternative routes!

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has this problem!

yes.

I changed jobs last year.

it took me the full year to reliably and automatically remember which direction to turn leaving reception to get to my new office. Before that I was wrong half the time, or just had to hesitate and look around every time.

Hate the dark, can't find my way from my bed to my bedroom door in pitch black, and I've slept in this room for 30 years.....

@vampirethriller

I can't tie aprons from behind, or put my bra on behind my back. I can't do buttons behind my back. I can braid my daughter's hair but not my own. Can't tell the time on a clock with hands either because I forget which hand is which. My best friend automatically looks at my shoes and buttons to sort me out after many years of doing it! I'm 40 bloody years old!!

my children do this.....

@ExtremelyDisorganised

Could I ask how those of you that drive got on with learning? Dyspraxic DS is 17 now so it's on the list of things to think about but I think coordinating the gears, pedals, indicators etc will be hard. He has a good sense of direction and good awareness of what other cars are doing but its making us both nervous.

I tried to learn for years, and eventually gave up - driving just isn't for me. As my last driving instructor said " some people are born to be driven".

Took me 4 times to pass driving test. Still can't swim properly despite lots of lessons as a kid.
Does anyone struggle to walk in a straight line? If I don't concentrate, I'll end up squishing people walking with me against walls - used to happen on the way home from school with my mates!

Ps don't know if I'm dyspraxic but have often suspected something's going on!!

DD does this, @GinJeanie - also when we’re walking on the pavement forces me into the road if I’m not careful!