Does this sound like dyspraxia?

[Strix]

I friend of mine, whose son is dysraxic, recently suggested to me that mine may be as well. I've googled a bit and some things fit but a lot doesn't. So I just wondered if I could get the view of grat collective mumsnet wisdom. DS is 8.

Stuff that kind of fits:
•He falls over
•His handwriting is terrible
•He can’t tie his shoes
•Can sort of twiddle his thumbs, but very awkward
•Spent years in private swimming lessons, and can’t swim
•Took ages to master zips and buttons, but okay(ish) now.
•Is sensitive to touch (winces terribly when I spray water on his head to brush his hair)
•Does seem to forget complex instructions half way through them.
•Falls over from standing position… or sometimes sitting. How this happens, I will never understand.
•Fidgets incessantly. More like nervous ticks, but my friend Google didn’t find a connection with dyspraxia.

However:
•Clearly right handed in writing and right footed with the ball.
•Excellent speller
•Excellent reader (although rushes through it and misses the detail)
•No language/speech issues at all
•Very good at math
•Does not lack friends, or the ability to make and keep them.
•He has dillusionally high self esteem. Seriously, he thinks he is absolutely fabulous at things he clearly sucks at (like football, he’s short and he’s the slowest kid on the field. But fear not because he will tell you with absolute certainty that he is “Really Good” and he has declared his future professional footballer career.) However, this dillusional perception of his skills has driven him to work at football and really improve over the years. So, quite frankly, we could all take a page from DS' positive outlook even if it is a complete misrepresentation of reality because it motivates him to the most unlikely achievements in self-improvement.

So.... what do you think? Dyspraxia? or not? Incidentally, I have just learned that his father had similar issues at his age. Not sure if that matters.

Oh, and whilst he has a series of nervous ticks, he definitely does not have tourettes.

Yes, he is hypermobile. But so am I and so is DD (his full sister) and we don't have any of these coordination issues. When he was three (maybe four?) I took him to a pediatrician because he fell down so much. She said he was just a "bendy boy". In retrospect, I don't agree with her.

When i look at the list of symptoms he ticks maybe half. How many does a dyspraxic child normally have?

I think every dyspraxic child is different, it's a spectrum disorder. My son has dyspraxia and watching him do group ot with other kids he could do things they couldn't and visa versa. Sounds like its worth looking into it

Hi, it looks to me like there are a lot of potentially sensory issues on your list - maybe wider than just dyspraxia. My ds has a dx of sensory processing disorder including hypermobility and sensory-based motor difficulties (we're told these fall under the diagnostic criteria for dyspraxia but he doesn't have a separate dyspraxia dx). Have you read up about SPD? It's a possible explanation for pretty much everything on your list, including the tactile hypersensitivity and the fidgeting, which I'm not sure would be explained by dyspraxia alone.

Hi, I think you've got enough issues there for it to be worth pursuing. If he doesn't have it, you haven't lost anything, after all. Fidgety behaviour definitely goes with dyspraxia. My ds has poor processing of proprioceptive input, which essentially means his brain keeps telling him to twitch, so it can figure out where his various joints are. Dyspraxia and sensory processing disorder pretty much go hand in hand, as far as I can tell. We took our son to our GP and asked for a referral to a paediatrician, who made the diagnosis.

You say his dad was like that as a boy. What's he like, now?

He has some of the things on the list, but not the same ones DS has (although there is some overlap).