Huge improvement in Dyspraxix/ADHD ten year old

[lostinwales]

I have just come back from parents meeting in tears. My wonderful, yet underachieveing 10 year old has a diagnosis of Dysparaxia with ASD and mild ADHD. After a wonderful afternoon with an OT we discovered he is hypermobile which is the root of most of his problems. (He has other physical problems too, but this seems to be the main one).

After the assesment he was issued with

1. a wedge to put on his school chair that had bobbles on to stimulate his body.
2. Elastic bands that mold to his fingers so he can grip a pen without pain.
3. Bluetack to fidget with.

His school work has improved in three months so much that I didn't even recognise his work. He wrote a story, in handwriting, with an ink pen that was not only a page long but flowed and was enjoyable to read. His maths and spelling have also improved massively and he is up to average with his peers. I still have tears writing this. After years of being faced with so much negativity at parents evenings I can't believe a wedge chair, elastic bands on his pen and bluetack to fidget with can turn a child around so much!

So he still has no control of volume and can be utterly (but adorably) random, but he is a fabulous individual, as everyone should be!

That sounds great. I can sympathise with the tears at parents' evening. My ds is dyspraxic and hypermobile with ASD.

I am intrigued about the elastic bands. Can you describe them a bit more?

What a lovely post-this gives me real hope for my poor DS (5) who is crashing and burning in reception-he is hypermobile/dyspraxic and on the spectrum. So so pleased for your DS...and I think a bit of eccentricity is what makes the world go round so think his randomness sounds just lovely.

great post, it's great that he is making such fantastic progress

MelonCauli, the elastic bands are no more special than the ones posties drop on the pavement! Brilliant resource for schools as they are vvv cheap. He tried lots of pen grips that can be bought to help with his finger ends bending back when he held the pen, and boring old elastic bands came top as they mold to how he is holding the pen and are easy to replace as he loses everything.

Good luck oddgirl, I've been there. Although I resisted him being assesed as I didn't want him to be 'labeled', I can see with hindsight that we could have made life easier for ourselves if we'd made these changes a little earlier. I don't know how early we could have made these changes though as they largely help with his sitting and writing which has been a increasingly big problem.

If I won the lottery I think I'd buy the wedges for seats for every school, they provide sensory input and reduce the wiggle factor. Asked his teacher if such a big change could come about with such a small seating change and she said 'I don't know but I'm not taking it away to find out'! I can't find it on the net at the moment but I'll post a link if I do.

Don't know if any of your lot have troulbe concentrating on evening telly of sleeping but my DS1 now has a sleeping bag (ordinary camping type) and he's much more settled having the all round feed back. I wish, wish , wish I'd know about these things earlier.