Dyspraxia advice?

[SummerRain]

Hi all, I've not posted in this section before as although we had suspicions about ds1 being dyspraxic for a long time we hadn't started the dx process as he's never been overly bothered by the fact that he can't peddle, can't draw, falls over a lot, etc so I felt that while he was coping happily enough there was no real urgency to have him labeled as SN.

However he's started school now and the teacher raised the possibility of dyspraxia last week and feels his lack of ability to concentrate, scribbling and lack of spatial awareness, etc are affecting him and the rest of the class () so it looks like we'll be going down the official route now.

I already take him swimming and he does gymnastics (badly ) in an effort to improve his muscle tone and coordination but I was wondering if any other parents of dyspraxics have any helpful advice with regards stuff we can be doing to improve his motor skills a bit and help him cope with the school environment.

In terms of how it affects him mentally I'm pretty confidant of how I handle it as I'm dyspraxic myself so understand his difficulties and quirks quite well. I was never dx as as I was growing up there wasn't much interest in 'labelling' children like me... I was just presumed to be clumsy, disorganised and lazy and assumed those opinions were true until I realised as an adult that I tick the vast majority of dyspraxia boxes.

On top of that ds2 is under SALT and it is strongly suspected he has oral dyspraxia but no dx will be forthcoming for some time due to his age (20 months next week)

i've just printed out the list of symptoms from the Dyspraxia Foundation website and marked off which ones affect ds1 to avoid me getting confused and forgetting stuff when I talk to the nurse. It's a bit schocking actually how many of them describe him.

It's scary isn't it. It's almost like they met your child and wrote the symptoms up - that's what i found too! the thing is, you wouldn't randomly go on a website like that and match your child to the symptoms. You go on there because your child has those symptoms - even the ones you think - OMG he does do that and i never really noticed!
Worth following up with the mother about the school. Even if it does turn out to be secondary - it might give hope that there are options later on in DSs education. That is where i think i might have problems. Primary is really good for SN round here, but secondary is very split. We still have grammar schools - and unless you are incredibly low maintenance SN and gifted - they don't want to know. We have a sports academy - that would be right up his street and very few other options.
good luck for tomorrow

SummerRain just hoping you've seen the school nurse by now. I will look later on to see if you have an update.

summerRain I'll be looking too, Hope you made a bit of progress today!

Apparently the nurse wasn't there today. Wed 6th was the date we were given on the note home so lord only knows when she'll turn up now. Stuff like that can be fairly haphazard round here though and the Public Health Nursing service is generally pretty bogged down. I'll give it a week and if still no sign I'll just go straight to the GP, or call our own PHN who's absolutely lovely.

There's another Parents Association meeting tonight and the chairperson just called round to warn me the HT is going to be attending. As the issues I raised are specific to her room it's pretty certain she'll discuss them but the chairperson assured me that they haven't named names so there's no reason for me to acknowledge it was me who complained.... much as i'd love to 'discuss' her behaviour in a nice public setting it wouldn't do the kids any good. Even if she's guessed it's me (not hard in a room of 22 in which two of the kids are mine) she can't prove it.

We were at gymnastic last night and it was painfully obvious that ds1 has serious issues with sitting still and doing as he's told. I had to pull him outside at one point he was so bad... poking dd incessantly, rolling around doing his own thing and bending the mats over even after the teacher asked him to stop. Even though I know he can't help a lot of it (he was utterly bewildered as to what he'd done wrong when i talked to him outside) it's not hard to see how he's being labelled as 'naughty' if he's like that in the classroom. The interesting thing was that once they got up after the stretching and started doing more active stuff and he was being kept busy he was fine, I think auntevil has hit the nail on the head regarding boredom being the trigger for a lot of his distraction and fiddling.

I can hardly tell the HT 'sorry but ds1 finds your class boring' though can I

SummerRain Re. your last sentence.. No you can't, My DS1 told a teacher that once,
He was spot on, but HeeHee It didn't go down too well..

I'd say go to your GP for a referral,get the ball rolling outside of school,because it sounds as if they may take a very very long time.. If you don't get anywhere tonight, how about giving your LEA a ring? I've nattered to mine a few times, and have found them really helpful.

Fingers crossed for tonight! Keep us posted!

SummerRain does the school not have the phone no. of the school nurse? that's how i contact mine, added to the fact have never seen her at the school, just 'let's show our faces' events.
it's soooo tempting to tell the HT that! Perhaps if you said something on the lines of - my DS finds some teaching styles easier to follow and respond to than others. You never know, she might work it out - just like we do with their school reports - reading between the lines!
Really for you that the School nurse wasn't in. You pysch yourself up - do your homework - then they don't show and you feel like another week has drifted by. Sorry.

It's not a school nurse, we don't have those here. She's one of the county Public Health Nurses... what you'd call HVs. I have a phone number for our own PHN which i'll try tomorrow if the one visiting the school hasn't turned up. I drove past the school a few minutes ago though and there was a car outside i didn't recognise (can you tell how small a village this is ) so maybe she's there now.

I was just chatting to ds2's SALT about it all too and she said the same thing ye all have... that there are a lot of therapies that could make life and school a lot easier for him that we simply won't be able to access without an official dx.

As for the school... after the debacle of a parents association meeting last night i'll be choosing my battles with the HT very carefully. She arrived at the meeting (to which she had not been invited) with the resource teacher and the priest who chairs the Board of Management (nasty old man with backward and quite frightening attitudes to children and education). Needless to say we got nowhere with them so we're all back to square one now.

great... nurse was there but ds1 didn't get seen. She'll be back next week to see the kids she didn't get to today.

SummerRain - can I just ask about your ds2. My ds1 is 23 months and we are suspecting dyspraxia too. Apart from speech.. is there anything else at this age that you (as as been there and seen it Mum) are picking up on? Hard as toddlers are clumsy generally. Just wanted to ask to see if I can apply it to my ds1 if that makes sense.

SummerRain had to laugh at the small village comment. Do you think that the HT, resource teacher and priest all arrived to back each other up in their opinions? Are the other parents commenting on similar issues? another week to see the nurse - ridiculous.
Gilliana1 My DS1 is dyspraxic and I'm trying to remember some of the issues. When i had my DS2 - i realised how weak DS1 was in body tone, but had nothing to compare to at the time. My DS1 in hindsight showed much more interest in gross motor skill playing - doing anything to avoid fine motor activities - drawing, building, small world play. His gait when running was also 'off' His arms are all over the place. He was slow to potty train, speech was poor, posture atrocious - slumped everywhere. After he had burnt off energy running around he had to sit and rest. he couldn't walk any distance without moaning - infact we kept him in a buggy for ages as he is a giant and when he couldn't walk, he just sat down. he didn't show any hand preference, particularly when eating - which to this day is messy (now nearly 8!) There were tons of little things when you start to think about it.

At that age the biggest clue was the lack of balance... ds1 can and always has been able to fall over from a standing position and has had the most bizarre accidents since the moment he started moving. He never crawled, and in fact still finds it difficult to do so.

He's always been incredibly twitchy... he's a laid back child who enjoys watching tv and mentally was more than able to concentrate on stories, movies, etc yet he could never stop moving. Even if he is/was sitting on your lap having a cuddle or was snuggled up in bed with you he was/is incapable of remaining still.... constant twitching, twisting, flinching, jerking, flopping around.

He never really got the hang of dressing himself, he still needs his shoes put on for him and coats zipped up and it was only in the last year he learned to put pants and tops one and off (he's 4)

He's always been sensitive to 'odd' things... most notably the time he had a complete meltdown because the clouds were too fluffy. As an baby he could never cope with the wind in his face... he'd panic and start gulping wildly and occasionally stopped breathing altogether until I turned him to face away from the wind. He's woken up at night complaining of having 'rainbow hands' on many occasions and occasionally has a complete breakdown as his bed is 'too blue' or 'too bouncy' and refuses to sleep in it. He used to completely panic at loud noises... now he just covers his ears and waits them out but when he was younger he quite often lost the plot completely because a truck drove past or the baby was crying or music was blaring

He's only learned to pedal in the last few months and still can't do it properly, he just can't keep the movement going. His run is and has always been 'odd', not the typical hand flapping but strange... dp calls it 'camp' and tbh it's probably the easiest way to describe it if you can't see it!

ds1's speech has always been fabulous though, early talker, sentences at 1. And his imagination and creative play are fine.

In ds2's case it's suspected he has oral dyspraxia. His gross motor skills are fine, he's very agile and was crawling and walking very early. However he always found breast feeding difficult, couldn't manage bottles at all until 16 months, couldn't swallow his own saliva until 6/7 months of age, couldn't manage solid food until 8 months and still has moments when he struggles with keeping runny food in his mouth.

He never babbled consonants... only vowel sounds and grunts... until very recently. And even now it's less than babies of 6-8 months would generally manage. If he's 'speaking' to us he doesn't move his mouth at all and just utters a string of 'uh uh uh uh uh' noises. He learned to say Mama just under a year but even now at 20 months he rarely uses it, Dada even less so and once ever few weeks he might remember Baba. He said NaNa twice and then forgot it again. He uses tonal babbling a lot though recently (when the sound he makes will have the correct tones but not any of the sounds) and definitely understands everything we say so the issue seems to be learning how to make his oral muscles make the sounds he needs them to.

HTH, sorry it's an essay

ah yes... the whinging when walking.... i have to admit i gave up once ds2 was born and ds1 couldn't use the buggy anyomore, now i drive everywhere

I forgot about the drawing too... ds1 still has never produced a single recognisable picture at 4 years of age, it's all scribbles.

SummerRain - I only really realised DS was twitchy and fidgety when it was pointed out to me. I had a brother who was a constant fidget, and a DH who can't sit still, so i though of it as just a bloke thing! Reading with him is a nightmare - Have you ever tried to follow a book when it is constantly moving? Camp is the ideal word for the running style. It's when the wrists bend. He also has a bit of a mincey walk!
My DS does not panic over loud noises but has no volume control himself. He is a foghorn. You can be standing next to him and he will use the same volume as to someone the other end of a football pitch.
Dressing - don't get me started. Can't manage vests, buttons, zips, shoes, socks, pants usually on back to front. DS will be 8 in Nov!
he is however, bright as a button. I have always believed that if i can get him through the education system - his 'writing/mark making/recording' is poor - he will do really well at work. Most things will be computerised by then, voice recognition etc. His memory is phenomenal - if a bit scary, so should be useful in the working world!

ds1 is the same, astonishingly clever if you look past the distractedness and lack of fine motor skills. I'm hoping that when he gets to the real world after school things will have changed a lot, most of his work mates will have been brought up in a culture of greater acceptance of people's differances and hopefully people will be able to see past the oddities to the incredibly sweet, intelligent person that he is.

Gilliana1 - I have dyspraxia, here's what I was like as a toddler/younger child

• I refused to be touched when in pain and couldn't stand people touching me or being near me when upset either (I had a bad water infection and was constantly in pain and refused to allow people in the same room)

• I couldn't use a knife and fork properly (still use fork in right hand) and prefered to eat with fingers

• Always had shoes on wrong feet, couldn't distinguish left from right

• Could read but not write for a long time, was an advanced talker at an early age

• I used to watch countdown obsessively and trace the letters with my fingers on the screen to learn to read, showed no interest in the numbers bit, even at 3 and have always been bad with maths

• Became a fussy eater at this stage, very funny about textures of food, didn't like one food type touching another food type on my plate

• Legs tired easily, short walks would cause pain and cause me to moan, used a buggy quite late (until around 5)

• Had terrible sleep issues, would not sleep without a dummy until 7 (I remember it became hard to suck on all of a sudden, think I lost my suckling reflex)

• I haven't napped (aside from when unwell) since I was 6 months old. That was when I started sleeping at night only (don't think my Mum's forgiven me yet)

• Was a chronic bed wetter (every night at that stage) and wet the bed well into late childhood/early teens

• Didn't like playing with other children, prefered to play alone and with no adult's watching either, around the age of 3 I became a very private person and demanded a lot of me time.

MintyMoo I've often thought of taking my DS - who loves curry - to a 'proper' curry house and let him see people eating with their fingers - it'll be the first time in years that he will look like he belongs! We have a mantra in our house - 'baked beans are not finger food!' i must admit to not knowing whether to laugh or cry at the thought that he may never get this eating with cutlery thing. am i wasting my breath to keep reminding him? When you were growing up were there any 'reminders' from your parents that did make a difference? for when it's funny, for when he comes out of school wearing his dinner.

auntevil - my parents are very laid back, they allowed me to eat how I wanted but were quite firm that we had different manners when in public or with guests. They relaxed and allowed me to eat with my right hand holding the fork and that way I can eat politely in public (some people made rude comments and still do, I don't eat technically in the 'correct' manner for the UK, more the American way with how I hold my fork, however, I do not usually spill too much food down me). My father has a 'stuff em, life's too short' attitude which he passed on to me. When I was little I would explain to people that holding the fork with my right hand was the only way I could eat unless I used my fingers. I think I once told someone that pointing out my bad manners (for using my fork wrong) as a child when they were an adult was far worse manners. It ended the conversation - I was 7 ffs, does it really matter how I held the fork?

Very rarely someone comments now I'm an adult, I now have a dx so I either explain or I just tell them that eating with my left hand is physically painful for me and creates a mess, if they'd prefer me to eat messily and painfully then I'd rather not eat with them.

Practice makes perfect :) Your DS will pick it up - how old is he? I was 14 before I could pour my own drinks without over flowing, I'm much better now though. It takes time.

Definitely take him to the Curry House - sounds awesome!

MintyMoo - good on you. I'm with your father on the life's too short attitude. TBH he struggles with cutlery full stop. He is 8 in nov. I'm the laid back one, but worry about other people's comments when we're out - at school etc. DH is the eating police. I 'throw' him looks from the other side of the table if he is getting in a mess. DH who sits next to him really loses it sometimes. I think he thinks that he's not trying if he doesn't even have a fork in his hand! DS loves his food. He appears to be the complete opposite to you - he is what i think they call a super taster. He loves to try new and exotic foods, he knows the flavours of most spices and herbs and can pick out negligible ingredients - food critic in the making! (too lazy and possibly clumsy to work professionally in the kitchen!

auntevil... ds1 is like your ds... loves food, lots of it and a wide variety. He can eat curry as hot as dp and I like it (quite hot) and will try anything, and if he doesn't like it the first time he'll try it over and over again just in case ds2 is the same.

I was the opposite as a child, far more like Minty.... I hated sauces, strong tastes, the texture and bitterness of most veg, the sourness and textures of fruit (apart from granny smiths oddly enough which were about the only fruit i liked) and pretty much anything other than the very short list of foods i liked. I remember being in a very classy restaurant at about 10/11 with my parents and some of my father's business clients and ordering a piece of fish but not wanting the sauce or sides. I just wanted the piece of fish and nothing else. The restaurant were happy to do it but one of my father's clients was passing comment and made me feel horrible about it.

I was also quite adverse to eating in general, I rarely felt hngry and would go for days refusing to eat.... giving myself chronic migraines in the process which left me sobbing in pain and vomiting. Yet despite knowing i'd cause the migraine i couldn't eat... and if i did eat it was never more than a few bites. That all only changed when i was pregnant and breastfeeding dd and suddenly it was like a hunger switch had been turned on... during the pregnancy i still couldn't eat much as i was so uncomfortable but once she was born I was stuffing my face. It's wearing off a bit now though (6.5 years straight of pregnancy and breastfeeding later) and I find i'm often going all day with nothing... today i've had 4 biscuits and I only forced those down as i was starting to feel ill and headachey... if i don't start to feel ill i often just don't eat... i can't explain why, i'm not phobic about food now and eat a wide variety compared to when i was a child, and love cooking, but i simply can't seem to slow down for long enough to eat... there's always something i'd prefer to be doing.

I can eat with knife and fork but very rarely do, i'm comfortable with fork in right hand and even if i use a knife and fork i'll have to swap the fork to my right to bring the food to my mouth as i simply can't co-ordinate my left hand well enough.

Auntevil - your DS will be fine, I was like that with cutlery at his age and no-one really notices I use my right hand for the fork often :) Just make sure he's not self-conscious about it and practice will make perfect!

I was 10 before I cleared a plate of food, until then I was very fussy. Not too bad now and learning to love foods I used to hate (brocolli, sweet potatoes, tomatoes etc). I eat sauces now as well like mint sauce etc

Summer - Granny Smiths were about the only fruit I would eat as well!

lol... how odd! There are other similarities between us too... I was an early talker and have always struggled with maths. I also found walking torturous, not great with a mother who loved walking, shunned the car and had no patiance for my whining. She walked off and left me on more than one occasion when i couldn't keep up

My mother took my dummy at 3 (I still remember the trauma I felt at losing it) but she gave me little cloths to suck on instead (no i don't understand her reasoning either) and I used to chew pencils and pens to shreds all through school... still do if i have one in my hand and i smoke simply because i like the sensation of a cigarette in my mouth.

Did you find school difficult? I was always alright if the subject interested me but struggled with 'motivation' and simply wouldn't work at things i found difficult. I've dropped out of college twice but have now started an OU degree and find that much easier as i can do the work on my timescale (usually late at night in my case)

Summer that is mad, my parents used to walk away from me too but I pushed their resolve and they always came back (they never went far). I too am terrible with sucking and chewing pens etc, especially when I was at school (i was always the kid who went to far with biros and got a mouth full of ink). I don't smoke but I do like to hold a pencil in my hand as if I was smoking, my father has a friend with Dyspraxia (well clumsy child syndrome in the 50s) who smokes for the same reason you do. Sometimes I like to pretend I'm smoking, I enjoy the motion but I've never tried a cigarette except one time when I was 12.

I found school mixed, I was good at subjects like English, History and Geography but bad at maths, PE, music etc. I was good at science until year 11 when my poor maths caused me to fall behind (the school predicted in year 7 that would happen). I was predicted 3 As at A level (I was a late bloomer, my GCSEs were average) but I got ABC instead with a B and an E at As level also. I was good when things were interesting to me but I always missed As by a few marks, I find it hard to express myself and time management was a problem prior to A level. Also concentration was an issue! I have a 2.1 for my degree and preferred Uni style learning as I could study when I felt like it and take as many breaks as I needed. I also have an ability to hyper focus (like writing half my dissertation in 2 days) so at school being dragged out of hyperfocus in Geography to go to French was annoying.

The neurologist who diagnosed me, one of my GP's and the neuro-psychologist I saw all looked at my notes and gave me a startled 'you have a degree???!!!' so I guess school can be a problem for people with Dyspraxia, that's why it's good that more people recognise it in young people now than they did in the 90s when I was a kid!

what course are you doing? I really want to do another undergrad with the OU but they don't offer the right Geography course for me :(

Both SummerRain and MintyMoo this apple malarkey is very strange. My DS never really liked fruit - everything else but - except he had a love of sharp apples. He was recently diagnosed with a fructose and sucrose intolerance. Gastro team say the body naturally tries to avoid substances that they have difficulty in digesting.
This leads on to some of the research i have since read about this type of intolerance. The theory being fructose is a sugar. If you can't break down/digest sugar properly, you can't store it properly. if you can't store it properly, you can't 'reclaim' it quickly when it's needed. that burst of extra energy you needed when out walking may just not be readily to hand.
It's an interesting thought - and i suppose in my mind gives DS yet another cause of lack of energy sometimes.
I know my DS is bright for his age - although there has always been a ? as to Aspergers - but you have both given me more hope that he can go far.
MintyMoo totally agree with the hyperfocus - but have you got any tips on the time management issue? I am DS's time management police at the moment - but of course this can't/won't be forever!
Re the geography - some unis do distance degrees - masters etc but are not OU. DH has just finished a Masters from Teesside. I think he only went on a couple of day courses up there in the last couple of years. Might be worth a try to find the course you want and ask?

Minty - i'm aiming for a BSc Environmental Science but have a long way to go yet. The module I did last year was a fairly intense science course which i was really worried about... my maths has always been shocking and I dropped out of chemistry in my final year of school as my teacher kindly pointed out that he could see how hard i was trying and still only scraping D's so it wouldn't be worth my while killing myself for the exams only to barely pass. However the way the OU course explained things i found the maths skills far easier to understand (I even got 'good maths skills' comments on all my assignments!) and while it was certainly tough going I got my head around scientific concepts that I'd never understood in the classroom.

I also missed out on good grades in school a lot despite being more than capable... exams really don't suit me at all, I get panicy and frazzled and rush myself to my own detriment. I should have gotton A's in English, German, Geography, Social & Scientific and Biology easily based on my understanding and grades throughout the year but let myself down badly in the exams. Failed Maths entirely though which was no surpirse to anyone!

The hyper focus ability definitely applies to me too.... I can do a huge amount of work in a short space of time (entire assignments in one night, read books cover to cover in a few hours, play video games for hours on end ) but my ability to disctract myself when i need to focus is equally as strong an influence on my life unfortunately.

Were you diagnosed as an adult? I haven't asked for diagnoses as I can't really see what purpose it would serve at this point in my life (other than to wave at my mother and shout 'see i'm not just useless and lazy!' ) but I do wonder whether it would be of any benefit for ds1.

anutevil.... I found time managment was my biggest point of difficulty for year (even dropping out of college once because i'd missed every one of a paticular compulsory class for 7 months and couldn't figure out how to fix it.... I had distinctions in almost all my other subjects already and I hadn't even done the final exams)

Since having the kids though I find I dicipline myself more carefully.... I was worried when dd was at playschool as she did miss a lot of days just because I couldn't get organised properly but since they've been at school we've been fine, never more than a couple of minutes late and never missed a day other than for illness. Knowing that the children would suffer because of my incompetance is a strong driving force. I find sticking to a simple routine in the mornings absolutely religiously definitely helps... in fact having a routine for most things helps, cleaning doesn't get done unless i get a bit regimental about it... i've never mastered 'clean as you go' or doing bit here and there, if i clean a room i bloody well scour it from top to bottom or else i just don't bother, haven't found a middle ground yet.