Dyspraxia and road safety

[suzy13]

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone can help me. My son is nearly 7 and has dyspraxia. We walk to school each day and he has had a number of issues with road safety. I tell him it's safe to cross to the middle of the road and he steps out a little further (he has been VERY close to a moving car) he have both tried talking to him about it and it just doesn't seem to make any difference. I also have my 3 year old with me so I need to keep an eye on her to, but she seems much more road aware already. My son sometime goes to school on his scooter and sometimes walks but it has happened where he steps out into the road when walking or on the scooter. I know this is related to having dyspraxia but I am really worried he could get run over one day and I want to be able to help him be more road aware. Any ideas would be really appreciated.
Thanks

Have you tried reins for both your kids? Or get a mat with roads on it and model cars running over and killing dolls. This might make him understand why you have worries about his behaviour.

Two kids in my DCs class have this and when we go on play dates, I hold their hands. Even at 10 and 8 they haven't a clue about roads and fast cars.

Some parents really lay down the line, and tell their kids very loudly to stay in by the fence and they shout if they move to the kerb to get back to the wall!

It's difficult, I feel for you.

My dyspraxic ds is a bit like this. He is now 15 and I still worry about him crossing roads. He has problems with time and order and so he would insist he had looked before he stepped out whereas we could see that he looked at the same time as stepping out. He found it hard to spot the difference to begin with so we had to really work on drumming this in. So it became Look, Pause to Think, then Cross if safe to do so. It took a long time to get this. He would also step off a pavement to overtake a slower moving person without looking behind. It has improved as he has got older but we had to just keep on at him. We did find we had to pretty much scare him before he got it though.