? Dyspraxia

[Florine]

I think my 8 year old may have dyspraxia. He struggles with gross motor skills, slightly clumsy and very poor at spelling.
Does anyone have any experience of how this is diagnosed. Who diagnosed it and what help can they get?

Occupational therapist via community paediatrician/gp.

Thank you X

Occ therapist and physio - referred by GP/Paed Team. The report went back to Paediatrician who made diagnosis after ruling out anything else that could cause symptoms.

Dyspraxia can often have overlapping things like dyslexia and ADD so worth looking out for these if he's a day dreamer and has problems spelling or reading.

I have a son with dyspraxia and other bits as above, so do ask if you have any more questions. Glad to help as we're further down the road as it were.

Good luck with diagnosis. It may take some time for appointments. I would start making note of what you observe as it will be useful for the therapists/doctors to see t from the family point of view. Functional stuff like zips and button, threading, drawing, unscrewing jar or bottle top. Can he swim/ride bike? Knock drinks over? bump into things at school? I asked teachers to write about what they see too. Just a page of observations - social, physical (PE, handwriting) etc. All useful for your file!

Dyspraxia Foundation and Movement Matters are both good websites.

Paediatrician makes the formal diagnosis based on OT reports and assessments. Our DD who is now 10 has Dyspraxia (also called DCD) and had therapy for handwriting, bike riding, and general Occupational Therapy to help with things like using a knife and fork - she still struggles to use normal cutlery.

Re clumsiness, I've lost count of the number of drinks spilled, or door frames walked into, and some days are definitely worse than others when she has a case of the "dropsies"

It does tend to go hand in hand with other conditions such as ADHD, SPD, ASD Dyslexia etc so you may also see traits such as a of lack of concentration, and the need for sensory input.

When we felt we weren't being taken seriously, we made a huge list of things that affected our DD and took them to the paediatrician to highlight our concerns and make sure they were taken seriously - it worked.