Ergotherapy (?) and visual perception impairment

[finknottle]

Our DS1 is 10 and has been diagnosed with this by a paediatrician. It affects his concentration, writing and maths, but his verbal skills are good and his reading too.
Doc suggested ergotherapy which seems v popular here in Germany but I'm still not sure I get what it is and what it does, despite my German being Ok. Is it occupational therapy? To help with coordination?
A bit lost here, no Special Needs procedure in place at all it seems, unless a child officially has dyslexia which ds doesn't. Even then, all they do is stop giving marks for spelling.
Shall post this in Special Educational Needs too, hope that's OK? Still quite new here

It is Occupational Therapy . Sounds like the paed thinks your ds may be dyspraxic aka have DCD. Have a look at Dyscovery centre and Dyspraxia Foudnation . ds(almost 9 now) with similar problems had an assessment done in Switzerland at 6 which came to the same conclusion followed by Ergotherapie/OT but we're awaiting a similar follow up in UK and possible diagnosis/treatment.

OT works by repetitive physical exercises , play and activity based, which retrain the thought and neurological processes and movements required to carry out an action or series of actions so they become more refined and instinctive. So lots fo balance, ball, fine and gross motor actiivites and so on. It helps physical coordination (hand/eye, spatial awareness etc), concentration and "sequencing" (breaking a task down into stages and following each one through to completion). There is also a therapy called HANDLE which is a more holistic approach and may also be available near you (Friend's ds did it in Switzerland with some success).

hth

Thanks LIZS What I find hard is that I read about:
dyslexia: tick, yes he has this mildly but not that
dyscalculia: tick that, not that
dyspraxia: tick that, mild that

and it seems more complex. I know there isn't a "label" always like my short-sightedness is -5.25 and can be measured but everything seems so vague and German doctors hate specifying - and I know that from several who are friends. They won't even say, could be A, or B, we'll do test C and then take it from there.

Unfortunately there just doesn't seem to be "one size fits all" scenario in this area. Quite often symptoms and diagnoses appear to overlap. ds' spelling is awful for example, but he does n't seem to be typically dyslexic (reading fine, writing laboured but letters formed correctly) He has problems translating the phonic sounds into letter combinations in the right order, often omits vowel sounds, and lacks confidence to try. Could equally be due to a sequencing issue or gap in learning (moved from International school to UK system at 7)! atm school have assumed the latter and are working more intensively on it.

Yes, that's what I'm finding out! What makes it harder is that we don't know what role the bilingualism plays (ds's English is better than his German) and also that the school are so unsupportive. Will never forget his teacher shrieking down the phone at me when I said we were going to have ds tested, "Eine Diagnose hilft Ihnen nicht weiter!" FGS.

I appreciate there's so much overlap, just wish the doc was more forthcoming so I could understand more about how to help ds. His self-esteem is rock bottom.

Thanks for your posts