Anyone know about Dyspraxia?

[MelCald]

My 7yo ds has been having trouble in school since K. He has a difficult time remembering things. Some days he knows his reading words, and the next he doesn't remember them. He can speak to me like any normal 7yo, but if I aske him a basic question..such as how old he is, sometime he looks at me blankly and had no idea.

I took him for a neuropsych exam in July. The therapist seems to think he is dyspraxic and extensive speech therapy would help him. Does anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks
Melissa

 

[RhondaL]

I don't know anything about dysrpxia....but I read somewhere that Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) has it too! Good luck!

 

[NewCrew42]

My dd is dyslexic and dysgraphic. I found this forum to be a world of help:

http://community.greatschools.net/groups/11554

There are some great people on that forum, mostly parents of children with learning differences.

I wish I could be of more help, but PLEASE go post on that forum. They are WONDERFUL.

 

[hentob]

Also look into auditory processing disorder::

http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/auditory.asp

As well as Semantic-Pragmatic Disorder:

http://www.hyperlexia.org/sp1.html


Good luck Will you update us?

PM if you have any questions about the above disorders

 

[MelCald]

I really am so confused over this diagnosis. I can't seem to find a ton of info. What I do find sounds a little bit like my ds, but not all. For example it says that kids with dypraxia have trouble making friends and poor motor skills (trouble in sports). That doesn't describe ds at all. He is the opposite.

 

[Disney_Tall_Mommy]

Our daughter has had some gross motor delays and has been seeing a physical therapist. She also has sensory issues and her PT recommended she start occupational therapy too. On the OT's report she put dyspraxia as the diagnosis. I don't think my daughter has any speech issues, but she does have problems with body awareness, gravitational insecurities, balance, and has trouble sitting and standing without moving. So I am also a little confused.

 

[LMC]

dyspraxia is the inability to plan your motor skills. my ds14 has this. he was very clumsy when he was little, now he is just extremely cautious. he has SID, is on the spectrum and I could go on. There is some good info on the UK's dyspraxia site. I have not read it in years but the link is www.dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk
my son also has difficulty "finding" his words. it's like he has to think very hard on which words to select to respond to you. that could be part of the dyspraxia or asd, who knows. he is very slow in carrying out any task.

 

[disneyelaine]

She may have put diag. dyspraxia in order to get Insurance to pay for the OT??? Maybe not, but OT is not always covered by Insurance. Plus I don't think dyspraxia HAS to mean verbal dyspraxia. I believe there is also a global type. My son, now age 13, has the verbal type and still talks somewhat choppy even after 9 yrs of speech therapy. He did have years of OT as well.

 

[Huggles]

My DD 16 has semantic pragmatic disorder which was described to us, by the speech and language therapist, as the hearing form of dyslexia. She has had to learn language very slowly and in the manner you would learn a foreign language. That said, she has a very good vocabulary but has to think each sentence through before she can say it. Her speech processing works differently from other peoples. As a toddler, if you asked her "What color is the rabbit?" she would think , rabbit, color, what. It's kind of like a spiral process to get to the target word.

Her speech is choppy but she can express herself quite clearly. When she was really small I went to sign language classes (Makaton) to help her learn to speak. The idea is that they use the signs whilst learning the words and then eventually can discard the signs when the words become second nature.....waste of time for our DD as she had decided that speech would be her method of communication.

Having said that, we invented signs to help her remember words for her French and English exams last year and she did REALLY well in them.

One thing we learned early on is, if asking a question count to 80 whilst waiting for an answer. If no answer is forthcoming then ask the question again in EXACTLY THE SAME WORDS. The reasoning for this is that although you can see it is the same question but differently worded, to them it is a completley new question with a whole lot of new words to be processed.

Chin up, you're doing all the right things, I'm sure.

 

[NHMom4]

My ds is looking likely to have this as well. http://www.dyspraxiausa.org/ is the website I have been reading. He has been hard to diagnose because he doesn't follow it exactly. He loves legos, sports and dance. However he doesn't do well and looks akward doing them. We used to homeschool so I think that is why his self esteem doesn't prevent him from doing the things he really doesn't do well. Still learning about this myself...

 

[quentina]

WOW....sounds like my 7 year old. She is in FT learning support at school due to inability to retain....keep me updated on what you find out.

 

[NHMom4]

What are the chances that out of 4 kids m 2 boys (not my girls) would both have this. My ds9 is in the final stages of testing. My ds12 is still in the middle of testing. I think my ds12 has something very similar but is very cordinated. He does have trouble recalling things and holding on to information...hmmmmm

 

[Lassie Lynne]

It is interesting the things you learn. I never heard about dyspraxia and dysgraphia before, except here on DIS. When I read through the links and studied more material, I noticed SO many of the signs/symptoms in children I had as a child, almost every single one. Everyone in my family and teachers just thought I was extremly clumsey, slow to learn basic motor skills, had horrific handwriting and could not understand how someone who could read at such a high level and verbalize so well could do so poorly at writing and simple mathematics. I still to this day, cannot color with crayons and stay in lines, nor even use a ruler to make a straight line and I still reverse my numbers and check my math three times to make sure I have done it right. The computer is my best friend, I learned early how to use it so that I would not have to write and in college did so much better since that technology was available to me than high school, were just trying to write notes was a horrific issue.

I am so glad that these issues are being brought out and dealt with at an early age for children now. I wish that had been the case when I was younger.