is never looking where you are going an AS trait?

[misdee]

we will soon be back on the road to dx with dd2.

i am at my wits end with her clumseyness. its not her fault i know, but feel like i am constantly shifting her out of peoples way when walking as she just isnt aware of others. tonight she has smashed a dog bowl by not looking where she is going. she walks into walls, doorframes, tables etc etc.

i just dont know how to deal with this. i cant expect her just to know when 8yrs of 'correction' and trying to teach her about it hasnt worked. but she is a danger to herself and others.

I think it can be - either due to dyspraxia type problems or due to hyperfocus on something - something visible or train of thought distracts away from awareness of the environment iyswim.

she has some degree of hypermobility as well. not as pronounced as dd1+dd4, but is there. her balence isnt great.

i just dont know what to do. we are having dc5 in dec, and know that as dd2 just doesnt 'see' things (her sight is perfect btw), i cant use a baby bouncing chair, swing or anything lowlevel. i tried with dd3+4, but had far too many accidents which fortunmatly werent bad ones, but could've been. and def would be now as she has got bigger.

I used to describe Dd1 as like a pin ball machine, she would literally ping from wall to wall aound the house, tripping over things as she went. I used to put Dd2 and 3 in a bouncy chair, in the playpen so I knew they were safe. Could never have left them on the floor.

That sounds like DS1. He's permanently covered in bruises from bumping into things. He just seems to have such a poor awareness of his physical environment.

she spends alot of time crawling about the floor, head down. i have to tell her to get up and walk.

bouncey chair in the playpen is a good idea, might have to pinch that one.

My boy is soooo like this. I have to stand behind him on crowded streets to steer him. Very literally!

glad i'm not the only one who 'steers' as well.

No, I steer as well, Dd1 and 3 are always convinced that people are walking into them, but they are completly unable to negotiate crowded places. I thought about telling the new pead about this, If we ever get one.

I got told in the supermarket today how nice it was to see a mum and her son so close -i had my arm round him - didn't have the heart to tell her it was to keep him from bumping into stacks of displays/shelves etc

You see DD1 (not as often as we should) but omg she is like a walking accident!

I'm still steering DS2 (ASD) and he's 13. He walks into everything..and has no idea of personal space either, so walks into people , gets too close etc.
He literally can't go thro door without hitting the frame!

DS1s funniest worst habit is sitting on people at bus stops. He has no idea of space and thinks he can sit in a 2cm gap. Most people laugh, but now he is getting bigger and heavier, there is less laughing. It doesn't help that size wise he is 10/11 but age wise 7.

Aw my DS is like this too (as am I ) love the human pinball analogy.

I realised the other day I was utterly fed up of saying 'be careful' and that if it hadn't sunk in by now it wasn't likely too so am trying to stop saying it.

DS2 is like this, it is almost as if he has a magnetic force within him that makes him attracted to the nearest person/object . I'm forever steering him out of harms way.

I know you said eye sight OK, but was this at normal opticians?

My son used to be a clumsy, bump into people, trip over low objects etc. His sight was judged Ok by high street optician and NHS optometrist. Yet when we went to Behavioural Optometrist we found he had retained reflexes and a narrow field of vision. Years of treatment he is not so clumsy, doesn't tend to run into trees that have 'jumped' out in front of him!

Partly it's because we can't 'see' shadows, which look like objects to us.

Partly it's because we get three times more detail from our sight than most other people do, and our brains can't process it that fast.

Partly it's because our eyes are always looking for data, patterns, sparkly bits, which means we might miss something totally obvious like a table in the way.
And sometimes it is indeed dyspraxia that means we are generally clumsy (which I am )

So yes, definitely common for us to be clumsy/unco-ordinated

thank you.

will be adding in this detail when i start the diary.

just wasnt sure if it was a trait or not. (belive me, she has loads of them)

My sister was giggling at me and my two kids the other day. We all had a cookie. My older dd (almost certainly on the spectrum) and I dropped crumbs obliviously, then ended up with smears on our clothes/face from melted choc. My 4 year old carefully picked up crumbs then looked at her hands and went and washed them - it just wouldn't occur to me to check.

I drop things/stand on things without noticing. I am always covered in bruises from walking into things. I drop stuff, fall over while standing still, knock things over. Am known as a walking disaster area.

It would be good to get into your mind HuckingFell as even though i try to understand DS1 i do struggle sometimes. I cannot work out how he can stand right on top of my shoe when he is barefoot and not notice. When you tell him, he has to look at his foot first, to see if it is on my shoe. It's things like that which although i accept is him, i can't understand whats going or not going on inside at the time.

I think for my son (who has LD, ASD ADHD)it is an attention thing- ie he is unable to pay attention to his surroundings unless his full attention is on the path ahead and only that! He walks into trees and falls over puddles, but is often quite agile and surefooted on an adventurous walk or climb which requires full concentration. As soon as the tricky bit gets less intersting its back to having to steer him literally around trees and precipices! Its as if he can only think on one zoned in channel. I am not sure if being aware of surroundiings is an executive skill but weaknesses in executive functioning is common to most developmental disorders.

auntevil I think it is to do with hyperfocus. We are so single minded at times we tune (unintentionally) everything else out.

I can drive a car but not ride a bike. I fall off the bike as I loose focus, forget to pedal, think about other things etc.

If I don't have anything specific to do I get overloaded v quickly with noise/smells/things to look at. If I am concentrating on something else I won't notice someone saying my name right next to me and can tune out all the sensory distractions.

I can tune out being tickly - i suspect it is related. I can do ballet - concentrating on one thing, but not team sports.

I notice if people have different shoes/new earings, jewellery on but wouldn't recognise them out of the place where I usually see them,

HuckingFell - that was good info - you and my DS sound like a pair. It's the smell thing with him - get's him everytime. He can be in mid conversation and then announce a smell - and then the conversations gone. He is the only one in the house to notice if anything is new/out of place. And the cycling - hmmm - so true the forget to pedal bit. He struggles to do more than a few pedals at a time - stops and 'notices' something - then falls off, because he's forgotten he's on the bike.
I'm sure one day I'll get my head around why he does things!

scooter better than bike i would think - more focus needed on the task iyswim.