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Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

dyspraxia

37 replies

Miffypoppy · 07/09/2010 21:17

My son is 15 and has GCSEs next summer.He has mild dyspraxia which mainly manifests itself in difficulty in organising his thoughts/work, plus he is v clumsy and lacks physical co-ordination - fidgets all the time, can't concentrate,finds it hard to organise his revision, painfully long homework,lack of depth in his written work, etc.I've have been advised to consider medication for a period of time pre exam to help him concentrate and I'm assuming it will be ritalin.

Before we consider this further does anyone have any experience with medication for dyspraxia? Are there a range of drugs available and if so are any more effective than others? Side effects? Did it make a big difference to your child?

I'm really not keen on the medication route but would consider it if the postives outway the negatives. Would really appreciate some feedback ...

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Minx179 · 08/09/2010 12:08

My son is the same age and in a similar position to yours ie, Dyspraxia, Neurodevelopmental difficulties, slow auditory processing, with similar consequences in school. His school have recently admitted they cannot meet his needs.

I must admit I have never heard of a child with Dyspraxia being given Ritalin; though that not to say it might not happen.

Is it possible for you to talk to the school, to see what help they can provide to help him rather than resorting to drugs for example my son is supposed to be getting a laptop this year to help with his writing, which is illegible otherwise and deteriorates throughout the day.

The school have applied for exam concessions to give him extra time.

We also have a meeting this month about putting in place a reduced timetable. If the school agree, this could hopefully allow him to concentrate on a limited number of subjects, which will reduce his stress significantly and hopefully enable him to build on the skills he does have. Hopefully giving him the opportunity to leave school with 2 or 3 decentish GCSE's rather than failing everything.

Miffypoppy · 08/09/2010 19:17

Thanks so much for responding - very encouraging to know you are not alone.

The school has been rubbish - it's v academic and only interested in A* students/results [easy to teach] and has no desire to really unlock the key to my son's potential and finding a way to help him learn in his own way.Support teacher is overstreched and on another planet and thinks of himself as more of a shrink! All in all v frustrating as they just don't get it.

We have sorted extra time,laptop etc and my son has just given up French [made his head explode] but the frustrating thing is that i know he can get there...i just need to get the key to unlock his learning style.

I have heard that Ritalin is prescribed for some ADD and Aspergers kids, so am going to do a bit more digging and will feedback anything I hear. Good luck with your son.

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mumeeee · 08/09/2010 22:56

I was going to suggest to you to ask the school if he could have extra time and a sribe, But I se that he is going to have extra time and a laptop. DD3 is 18 and is dyspraxic she had extra time and a scribe in her GCSE's, She was assessed for a laptop but it was decided that would cause her more trouble. She took fish oil apsules which did help her with her concentration.
Your Ds actually sounds bery like my DD. It is quite coommon for people with dyspraxia to be like that. DD3 alawys had trouble with her written work and her development is a couple of years behind other people of her age. She only got one C in her GCSE's the others were d's and E's but we were still pleased with her because she tried very hard. She took AS level Drama this year on top of a foundation cours she was doing at college and got a D although she didn't have any suport at all.She has just strted a An IT BTECH First Diploma.

Miffypoppy · 10/09/2010 11:18

Good call on the fish oil - will def give this a go. Any particular brand you recommend?

I realised after my son was diagnosed that I am also dispraxic as have all the same symptoms. We get there in the end, we just do it a slightly different way to other people!Hope your daughter enjoys college.

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tokyonambu · 10/09/2010 12:04

"Good call on the fish oil - will def give this a go. Any particular brand you recommend?"

There's no solid evidence it has any effect, but the placebo effect is not to be under-estimated.

IndigoBell · 10/09/2010 16:19

Tokyo - why do you need solid evidence? You don't care whether it helps the general population, you care whether it helps your child.

I can tell you %100 my DS (Dyspraxia and ASD) is calmer when he takes fish oil. We use one of the boots own brand.

tokyonambu · 10/09/2010 20:11

Because fish oil isn't necessarily risk free.

You're assuming that the fish oil has no potential implications other than the desirable ones; no drug powerful enough to work is free from side effects and risk, and you tolerate that dependent on how well it works. Fish Oil is potentially a source of PCBs, and those are nasty enough that if it's just a placebo, then convincing my children Vitamin C is good for their school work may be as effective at lower risk. Don't think "oh, I can tell it's not a placebo", you really can't, and a combination of placebo effect and the Hawthorne effect makes studies of this sort of thing very difficult to design.

That's why we need decent large-population studies: if fish oil is genuinely beneficial, as a lot of people think (I give it to my children as well), then we can assess the risk relative to the issues with PCBs; as things stand we can't, and the shambles of the Durham trial and its friends make it very difficult. We're gambling on the effect as compared to a sugar pill being sufficient to outweigh the risk of PCB, dioxin and mercury contamination.

IndigoBell · 10/09/2010 21:40

I had no idea fish oil had PCBs in it. What are PCBs? And what's wrong with them?

I get what you're saying about studies - but seeing as no other child is exactly like my child and I (luckily) have only one of him - no study would prove whether or not fish oil would work for my child - besides giving it to him.

I have given it to him and it has worked. Study over :)

Even if you can prove it doesn't work for 99% of children it still doesn't mean it wouldn't work for my child. You'd have to prove that it didn't work for 100% of children for me to be interested (or prove that the side effects are more dangerous to my child than the benefits I am seeing.)

tokyonambu · 11/09/2010 00:27

Polychlorinated Biphenyls are extremely nasty. They were used as, amongst other things, a non-flammable transformer oil and a basis for paint, from their initial production in the thirties through until their complete banning in the 1970s. They are stable, so don't break down, and they're accumulated in the food chain. One place they are strongly accumulated is cod liver, as in cod liver oil, and speaking as a slack parent who usually doesn't give a monkey's about food scares I wouldn't let a bottle of cod liver oil within ten feet of my children. They're also related to dioxins, which are naturally occurring (or occur in otherwise benign combustion) but are just as poisonous and just as accumulative. PCBs and dioxins, along with mercury, are the reasons why there's a recommendation to only eat farmed oily fish a few times a week.

In practice, the levels are low, but any process which concentrates the waste from fish processing is bound to concentrate anything that fish accumulates: PCBs and dioxins. And farmed salmon gets a lot of its calories from fish oil, and the waste loops back into the oil process.

There are testing regimes and the levels in commercial products are usually low (although there's an active court case in California against fish-oil producers that isn't entirely spurious) and the safe dose for dioxins in children is essentially zero.

There's no plausible mechanism for the claimed benefits of fish oil in children for ADHD etc, so I'm inclined to think it's placebo. You may disagree, but in your putative study of one there's no way to tell and the published studies are utter crap. There is significantly more evidence that the Omega fats are of benefit for long-term cardiac health, and therefore I've been giving it to my children on the basis of placebo for education and more clear-cut long-term benefits for them. I take it myself for the same reason, along with Vitamin C and a few other things.

But: PCBs are nasty stuff. If there were a suggestion that UK fish oils had measurable levels in them, I'd drop the supplements, as the risk of PCB and dioxin poisoning - long-term, accumulative, very nasty, lifetime safe dose very low - are unlikely to be justified by a dubious association with childhood behaviour and a weak association with heart health.

Don't get the idea that fish oil is inherently safe because it's "natural" and "full of vitamins": it isn't. But even if it were, so what - you don't need to eat many polar bear, seal or husky livers to die a lingering, nasty death from Vitamin A poisoning. At the moment, fish oil is probably safe and there may be some benefits: that's a risk/return ratio to keep an eye on.

Minx179 · 11/09/2010 03:12

I used Equazen EQ fish oils for about 4 years. They appeared to work when we first used them, but when we stopped to check if they were having an effect, we didn't notice any discernable difference.

Loads of places do fish oils, but from what I can remember from reading round at the time it has something to do with the EPA and DHA levels (I think). The higher the content of each in the capsules the more beneficial to the person taking them.

With some brands when you compare the levels they are really low, and you may as well just be taking cod oil tablets.

IndigoBell · 11/09/2010 06:32

Thanks Tokyo. Very useful stuff. I will do some more research as I am very concerned that my DS already has Mercury poisoning. So does look like I need to do some more research....

Minx - my DS only takes them term time and has a break in school holidays. And we can tell a diff between the two. However I will keep an eye on this and if at some stage we stop being able to notice the diff then we will stop.

tokyonambu · 11/09/2010 08:31

"I will do some more research as I am very concerned that my DS already has Mercury poisoning."

Please, please, please talk to real doctors and not quacks. Chelation, a process for removing heavy metals from the body, has acquired a voodoo cult, although it's incredibly dangerous, has no conceivable benefit and is simply a way to separate desperate parents from their money.

Acute mercury poisoning is relatively easy to diagnose, and the reason quacks have to make wild claims about testing is that they are attempting to show that levels orders of magnitude below credible thresholds are significant. In fact, they usually aren't testing for elevated mercury at all: they're doing tests on hair, finding the level of mercury to be low and then extrapolating that to claim that it's therefore being retained in the body. An alternative, and credible, hypothesis is that children with ASD et al are for some reason unable to get enough copper, zinc and so on, and are therefore directly excreting the metals before it goes anywhere.

To give children powerful drugs designed for acute heavy metal poisoning because you can't find enough heavy metal in their hair and therefore it must be in there somewhere is crazy, especially when you end up killing the children: here.

If you have been told that there are levels of mercury in vaccines (the usual claim is about thiomersal) sufficient to get remotely close to levels that are required, you've been misled: there's less mercury than in a couple of tuna steaks, even if it's present in the vaccines at all, which for MMR (the usual whipping boy here) it isn't.

Please, there are some claims about the basis for ADHD (etc) that may or may not be plausible, but the potential treatments are at least relatively harmless so at worst you are wasting time and money and at best it might woirk. Chelating drugs are extremely dangerous, and the levels are mercury available to your son - unless he drank thermometers or something - are not remotely close to any clinically significant level.

optimist66 · 11/09/2010 09:09

To IndigoBell

Which brand of fish oils from Boots do you use? I used HaliboOrange Fish Oils till Last Easter, but open to trying something different?

IndigoBell · 11/09/2010 10:43

Optimist - I use the boots own brand.

Tokyo - thanks for all the info. It is all useful. We are not doing chelation. And it wasn't the MMR that irrepairably damaged my boy. It was the 3 month DTAP - which has since had the mercury and the 'A' removed from it, becasue it was dangerous. And even at the time was not used in the US because the FDA had declared it dangerous.

My boy went blind and developed nystagmus (conditions that you don't normally get together) within 24 hours of his jab. So there is absolutely no doubt at all in my mind that it was the jab that caused this. What I don't know is whether it was the mercury or the 'A' or something else.

Luckily by the time he was 12 months he had regained most of his sight - but he was very developmentally delayed and went on to be diagnosed with Aspergers and Dyspraxia.

However the zinc and copper and iodine and magnesium things are stuff I'm currently researching...

nottirednow · 12/09/2010 10:15

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nottirednow · 12/09/2010 10:21

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tokyonambu · 12/09/2010 12:17

"btw friends child was EFA deficient (parents had private insurance and was tested by proper consultant, not a quack)"

Yes, you can measure fatty acid levels and compare them with required levels. The open question is what, if any, relationship that has with behaviour, academic work, etc. As ever in fringe nutritional theories, that you can measure variable levels of some nutrients is not in dispute, and that extremely high or low levels are bad for you is also not in dispute. The question is if small variations, too small to cause obvious health problems, cause difficult to assess differences. And the studies looking at that tend to be anecdotal, uncontrolled and unblinded. The Durham fish oil trial was a brilliant opportunity to carry out a really good trial; unfortunately, they went out of their way to make it worthless.

nottirednow · 12/09/2010 12:39

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tokyonambu · 12/09/2010 12:46

" has anyone yet looked at whether EFAs levels are low in dyspraxic children"

See page 5 of this

noddyholder · 12/09/2010 12:48

My ds has just done his gcses and is dyspraxic.We didn;t know until he was about 12/13 which was late and he had help at school but refused to use the word processor because of peer pressure in class.he did however use it in exams.I used fish oils and they did help but getting a teenager to do anything is a job and he stopped those.Revision was a nightmare but we persisted and he got 9 gcses all good grades!We nearly fainted with shock.No drugs here but his SN person at school just suggested we repetitively practised certain things and although he will never cook a 3 course meal he can cook a few things now. oddly he is an amazing skateboarder and the person who diagnosed him just said it was pure pigheadedness that got him there as he just liked it so much.He has found his calling as it were in film making and is at college now doing that and came home smiling ear to ear friday because he had been in the darkroom all day and NO WRITING! Don't give up and try to get as much help from the school as you can xx

nottirednow · 12/09/2010 14:40

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Miffypoppy · 12/09/2010 23:54

luckily DS does like fish and we have it at least twice a week.Generally he has a pretty good diet which is why i've never thought about supplements before. Now after reading all the comments i'm now not sure about taking them as it all sounds so arbitrary plus all the PCB and mercury stuff sounds ghastly.

tokyonambu - should you really ONLY eat farmed oily fish?

noddyholder - great to hear that your son did so well.Conratulations!Am gritting my teeth for a year of hell as I know the only way to help DS is if i get a complete handle on all his topics and work really closely with him [just love it after a 10 hr day at work!]. DS did his sciences this summer and got good grades but crashed and burned other school exams cos he couldnt revise everything at the same time. Noddyholder did your son follow any particular revision method? Interesting that he is so good at SB but dyspraxia effects people so differently. Sadly my DS rubbish at sport.

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tokyonambu · 13/09/2010 08:39

"tokyonambu - should you really ONLY eat farmed oily fish?"

No, because they're mostly fed on fish oil, and I don't see how you can extract that meaning from anything I've written.

But I did dinner for four last week with three quid's worth of fresh Sardines. Mackerel is one of the cheapest fish you can buy. Sea-caught Salmon isn't overly expensive if you're going to eat is (a) once a week and (b) as an alternative to processed fish oil, which isn't cheap. Sea trout is suffering from the waste from salmon farming, but still isn't expensive. Fresh tuna is all sea-caught (and the risks of mercury are in general wildly less than the benefits of the fats - shame the fatty tuna is all sold as a delicacy in Japan). Eel is dirt cheap. Kippers are, too, although there's arguably a balance there because of the annatto dyes.

Canned equivalents are mostly dirt cheap, and Sardines on Toast is one of the great comfort foods.

As you move up the food chain, anything accumulative will tend to accumulate, because each link in the chain will be accumulating the stuff all the things below it have accumulated during their lives. If you then introduce a feedback loop into that, by (say) feeding fish on fish oil, that effect is further intensified. Factory farmed fish isn't great in quantity because of this, but non-farmed fish is cheaply and easily available. Hell, you could live on fresh sardines when you can get them, canned sardines every other day of the week and be all the better for it.

See the FSA guidance here. Note the lack of limits on canned fish, because most of it is ocean-caught.

jem44 · 13/09/2010 12:39

If you want to try fish oil I think you can buy organic oil at great expense. It is not absolutely proven to work though.

A senior member of staff at my daughter's school has a daughter with mild dyspraxia and lack of concentration. Not enough to cause terrible problems but enough to stop her achieving so that she felt stupid and unhappy.

An American psychologist suggested Ritalin. It is used much more over there and generally doesn't have such bad press as it does here. I don't really know why.

The mother baulked at first but researched and decided reluctantly to give it a try and her daughter is transformed as she is suddenly able to settle. She is so much happier at school now. If you look on proper medical sites you can find some useful information and you could take your findings to a doctor/paediatrician if you want to discuss the pros and cons of possible medication further.

tokyonambu · 13/09/2010 13:29

Yes, because powerful addictive stimulants are an entirely proportionate response to "mild dyspraxia and lack of concentration". Confused