DS has an appointment at the children's centre about his dyspraxia

[Alambil]

It's our first appointment - she wants to see me, talk a bit and then assess him....

Does anyone know what sort of assessment they do?

We are going to the centre due to a mixup in communication when she came to the school - it's quicker this way, but a lot of Ds's writing problems are not so bad on a 1-1 basis. Will she take that into account?

i dont know anything about assessments for dyspraxia, im sure someone will be along soon who does, good luck anyway

thanks brandy

Is it an occupational therapy assessment? DS1 has had one of those: he had to do some fine motor stuff - writing, cutting plasticine with a knife, copying shapes etc. and also gross motor activities - many of these were designed to see whether he had
any 'retained primitive reflexes' which apparently are very common in dyspraxia. It was all done in a fun way; he enjoyed it and didn't feel pressurised. Hope that helps!

thanks sphil, yes I think it is - I am not sure

she said she'll chat to me first and him, then assess him - will take about an hour

We had something that sounds like what sphil describes, they did LOTS of different activities and it did take a long time. I actually left them to it and sat in the waiting room so ds1 wasn't distracted. The tests are very clever and do take account of different influences. They are looking for evidence of motor planning difficulties.

You should get a rough idea at the end of the assessment but in our case it was a few weeks later when the tests were all added up and sorted that they did say it was dyspraxia and gave us the exact results. We got three different percentiles for different aspects of motor control, which were low enough to indicate dyspraxia.

ds had the Assessment Battery (Motor ABC)-basically a series of fun exercises and games to observe his effort and results compared to the typical child of his age . Things like pencil skills - drawing shapes and copying diagrams , joining dots, how fast he can write and legibility - threading and doing puzzles to time, balancing , throwing and catching, hopping, remembering sequences and saying things back in order or reverse. You will be asked about his birth, early development, what issues you perceive, any behavioural and sensory traits etc

my eldest d had her assememnt at a center and it was really good drawing between ines cutting patterens finger games these people know children really well and know that they will always get better results one to one than a teacher can get in a calss room