Please or to access all these features

Behaviour/development

Talk to others about child development and behaviour stages here. You can find more information on our development calendar.

Nearly 4 year old with hyper mobility

4 replies

Peanuts33 · 27/12/2009 07:11

Hi there, I have noticed from other posts that a few people on here have children with hyper mobility. My son is hyper mobile and starts school in september. I am a bit worried about how he will get on as he is behind on some of his motor skills, e.g. holding pencils, dressing/undressing, riding bikes or scooters. He is also left handed which I know is not a major thing but together with being hyper mobile it is just another hurdle.

How did your little ones get on when they started in reception? Did you inform the school before they started?

OP posts:
chopstheduck · 27/12/2009 08:45

I'd def talk to the school.

My ds has hypermobile hoints and dyspraxia and the school did lots of gross motor work with his arms in order to help the fine motor develop. He also uses grippers to help him hold pencils, special cutlery. We helped him withdressing by making sure things were easy to get on and off. Riding bikes and scooters has jsut taken a lot of time and practice.

Have you seen an occupational therapist? They can help a lot with these issues.

chopstheduck · 27/12/2009 08:46

The school also need to be aware for PE lessons, to make sure that he isn't overstretching his hypermobile joints.

mimsum · 27/12/2009 09:25

Hi my ds is also hypermobile and dyspraxic - I think the main thing to hold onto is that most skills will come with time, it just takes longer. Definitely tell the school, because things like dressing and undressing for PE etc will eventually become an issue, although not really in reception as plenty of children have problems at that age.

Have you had any input from an Occupational Therapist? Our area has a parental advice clinic (in lieu of having any real paediatric OT service, but that's another story ...) so if you have a service like that you could tap into they should have experience of dealing with the local schools and can tell you and the school what to expect

Certainly I agree with Chops that elasticated waists and velcro are the way to go for now, so you're not overloading your ds with a whole load of new skills all at once. The other thing ds' OT suggested was to break tasks down into smaller chunks and start off with encouraging ds to do the last step, then work backwards getting him to do more and more steps until he was doing the whole thing.

Another thing to watch out for is that he may well get very tired very easily, so alhtough all reception children get tired and grumpy, he may suffer from that worse than the others, so be prepared for a bumpy first term and don't plan too many after school activities - he will just need to chill. Ds has low muscle tone, which often goes along with hypermobility, so has had to build up stamina gradually.

Things can look bleak at this stage, and you spend all your time concentrating on the things they can't do - however if it helps get things in perspective, my ds is now 10 - he can ride a bike, swim, play cricket, do joined-up writing, type (slowly, but it's getting there). He will never win prizes for speed or style with any of these activities but he enjoys them and can do them and there was a time when we thought he never would - good luck for your ds (and you)

Peanuts33 · 27/12/2009 21:02

Thank you so much for your replies. One of the problems is that the school he is going to is not very good with any kind of special needs children. As far as I'm aware they don't have an OT assigned to them.

I have been told by numerous people that he will catch up so I'm not stressing too much but I just don't want his confidence dented even more (he already has low confidence) by him seeing that all the other children are doing things that he can't do.

He is on the list to see a speech therapist as his speech is slightly delayed and also an educational psychologist to help him with his confidence issues. Hopefully will have the appointment by the end of January so that gives him a few months before he starts school.

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page