anyone with a child with dyspraxia please (or anyone who knows anything about it)

[marymoocow]

I have had my suspicions about ds 9 for a while, and have finally looked at the dyspraxia site for a 'checklist', to see if any of it applied to him.
I am quite surprised at just how many things seem to be just like him.
His handwriting is poor, he has poor concentration, he gets distressed easily, is pretty poor at team games ie. football etc. He really struggles with swimming (its as if his limbs aren't really attached to the rest of his body), he doesn't like trying anything new, or anything he doesn't think he is capable of. He has struggled with maths.
These are just the ones i can remember off the top of my head.
However i can add 'buts' or excuses to some of those, as in his handwriting is poor but he is left handed and a boy, his concentration is poor but more so at home than at school i think, his struggle with maths has been constant, but it has recently improved with lots of hard work.

So the question is do i really have enough to go and ask someone about it, or is it just him and a coincidence that he matches some of these. Surely wouldn't the school have mentioned this to me if they thought it was a possibility (will they think i've gone mad?)

Sorry for long post, just thought maybe is should have put this in SN, but hopefully someone will reply.
Thanks

He sounds similar to ds, also 9, who an Occupational Therapist has suggested is Dyspraxic so yes I think you should follow it up. The school can refer (which may be the quicker route to an assesment ) in which case see the SENCO or your gp could. It is pretty commom (affetcing about 1:20 chidlren) so he may simply cope well enough within the classroom and comparable to some others, aprticualrly if he behaves well.

Be warned though that you may have to wait for an assessment(areas vary) and again for any therapy. Also they tend not to prioritise older children with functional as opposed to medical needs ds waited 18 months to be seen by an OT and then got 4 sessions (at my insistence) and a home programme.

Good luck

Your DS sounds like mine. I said to someone once about the handwriting as mine is also left handed and she told me the left handedness is part of the dyspraxia and not a coinicidence.

Like Lizs we also waited a very long time for OT then only got a few sessions. Our best help came from cranial osteopathy (you have to pay for it but can claim from the HSA).

Do follow it up as he will be entitled to extra time in school exams and possibly a school laptop, once he gets to secondary school.

My dyspraxic DS is almost 20 now. He got good GCSE grades and passable A levels and is now at uni. I used to despair of him getting through junior school.

Mine is left handed dyspraxic with Aspergers. He's five.

gosh. Thanks for all the replies. I sort of thought you would all come back with the "don't worry he's just a normal 9 year old boy".
It doesn't bother me either way, as we have all got used to him, but like you say he will need help when he gets to secondary school. And at least i might have a reason for the daydreaming .

Have got an open afternoon at school on Thursday so will try and bring it up then.

As someone said he is very well behaved, so does possibly just melt into the background a bit iyswim.

ds is 7 and dyspraxic and right handed.

To get a formal diagnosis you will need to be refered to and Educational Psychologist. And as the others have said, you may well have quite a wait.

We had to pay and it cost £350.

If you want to do something helpful while you wait then the 'Write from the Start' scheme was recommended to us by the ed psych. If you look on amazon you can find it for sale. It consists of graded pencil exercises that help with word formation

thanks for that, will have a look at that.

DD3 is 15 and Dyspraxic. She was very simular to your Ds when she was younger.
She does still have problems but is now in year 10 and has started her GCSE Courses. She is on Schoool Action Plus. She has extra handwriting and english lessons once a week, has a learning suport assistant in some classes and gets extra time in her exams.
Have a word with your sons school as they may be able to refer him. Thatss what happened with my daughter.
She saw an OT when she was 5and the school refered her to an Educational Phsycholagist. We found out when she was 7 that she was dyspraxic.

My DS3 is 18, and has dyspraxia, Aspergers and dyscalculia. I would get your DS assessed-it will help him to have a dx once he gets to secondary school, where speed in notetaking becomes more important. My DSs dyscalculia was dx after a specialist assessment by the Dyslexia Institute by the way-it was paid for by his school. You could ask your DSs school to get an assessment done for this too, given his difficulties with maths.

my ds2 who's 7 has many of the same problems - he actually has a diagnosis of asd, but personally I feel dyspraxia is more appropriate. He's very unco-ordinated and his arms and legs seem to go out at odd angles when he runs and his pencil grip is painful to watch. Writing is very difficult for him, but his teacher says he's not particularly worried as even though he's not writing that much, the content of what he writes (i.e. concepts, grammar, spelling) is fine. He's now got an alphasmart (small laptop) for any extended writing he needs to do and has been referred for OT - he had some sessions last year but the funding ran out even though everyone involved with him says that OT is what he needs above all