I have Dyspraxia. No not Dyslexia – many people get this confused with Dyspraxia which are two very different conditions, although people who have Dyspraxia do have a higher chance of also having Dyslexia, but it isn’t a given. People with Dyspraxia are also more likely to have Autism (like me) and Dyscalculia, which is a condition similar to Dyslexia but instead it’s with numbers and equations, although I have not been diagnosed with Dyscalculia I would not be surprised if I did have it as I am absolutely useless at maths.
But anyway, this post is about my life with Dyspraxia. The condition is not super straight forward to explain but to put it as simple as possible it is a disorder of the brain’s motor control that affects fine and gross motor skills, it needs to be strongly noted that Dyspraxia does not affect intelligence, although people with Dyspraxia can have trouble remembering things, this most profoundly affects short-term memory (for me), which can make it hard to remember to complete all the day’s tasks without forgetting something, and people with Dyspraxia tend to be good at losing things – because we forget where we’ve put it down. Attention span can also be poor in people with Dyspraxia, that’s certainly the case with me. Dyspraxia does not affect life expectancy.
Problems with fine and gross motor skills affect things such as balance and coordination, which can make us lose balance more easily and more liable to accidentally break things or trip and fall over, I have broken an uncounted number of mugs, glasses, plates, and bowls. It can make it very hard to learn how to tie up shoe laces and can make it hard or even impossible to attain neat hand writing skills, my own writing is pretty terrible and can be hard to read. People with Dyspraxia may also find it hard to type on a computer, luckily for me this is not the case. Each person with Dyspraxia is not completely the same, some people have it more severely where it can be evidently noticed in their gait and posture, while with others it can be harder to visually notice, and each person with Dyspraxia struggles differ from others with Dyspraxia.
Dyspraxia also makes things such as effective planning and organization more difficult, it’s easier for us to get things jumbled up or become completely overwhelmed with something or a set of tasks that a neurotypical would typically be able to handle themselves. This can often make work-life and employment for people with Dyspraxia more difficult unfortunately. Organizing things can be done poorly by us, and may make doing work and day-to-day activities harder, so for example with me I am doing a side-hobby of writing a novel, and my organizing of all information for it is pretty bad, and it is making things very difficult, as I can often forget where I have put information down or just become overwhelmed by my own information.
Education can also be harder for us to as we may need more time to do a task or lesson or a piece of work, and we may need things to be explained more clearly and in simpler easier to understand terms, and to be repeated. People with Dyspraxia can also be slower, such as cleaning stuff up, putting things away, writing things down, and so on, it isn’t uncommon for someone with Dyspraxia to be the last to leave the class! I know I always often was, which made me a bit uncomfortable, no matter how quick I tried to go I always ended up being last out. Dyspraxia obviously also affects physical activities such as in PE classes, again more likely to have an accident and take longer to learn an activity or sport.
Following a set of tasks and instructions can also be hard as we can again forget some of them or get them jumbled up and possibly do them in the incorrect order or in some other unusual fashion.
It can take longer for someone with Dyspraxia to learn skills but that does not mean we cannot learn skills; we just need more time and patience. I can say I didn’t properly learn to tie my shoe laces until I was around 16 or so and it took me a long time to learn to ride a bicycle, it can also take longer to learn to dress. People with Dyspraxia can still become very good at things, again we just may take longer to do so. It can take many of us longer to learn how to drive, and some of us even choose never to learn to drive as we feel safer not doing so, I myself still have not learned to drive yet although I had been planning to – but you know, coronavirus – but I am hoping maybe some point this year I can begin, but I do suspect it won’t be so easy for me, I may be looking out to get a driving instructor that is specially adapted to working with Dyspraxics and others who face challenges.
One particular problem can be having a blank mind, it can be very hard to think of things sometimes which can impact a wide range of areas from work to school and just goals and activities you’ve set for yourself. Blank mind can also make it harder to articulate yourself in conversations or finding the right words to say, we may often need more time to think on this, which can make conversations nerve-inducing and uncomfortable for us, especially if one also has Autism and Selective Mutism on top of that (me). Sometimes words can also come out all jumbled up, which can be embarrassing.
Coming back around to fine motor skills using things such as potato peelers and can openers can be extremely frustrating. I much prefer to just have cans with ring pulls on them but that isn’t always possible unfortunately, some Dyspraxics may also struggle with ring pulls! For me when it comes to can openers the vast majority of them, I just can’t get them to work correctly, more often than not I often break them by accident after trying to get them to work (I broke one last week for example), now and again I’ll get a can opener that I can actually use, but once it eventually wears out the fiasco of finding a can opener that works for me starts off all over again – currently ongoing right now.
For me with potato peelers it has to be a potato peeler with a horizontal peeler, the ones that are vertical I am basically incapable of using and much more liable to accidentally cut myself with. People with Dyspraxia for reasons such as this and numerous other reasons may also find cooking a lot more difficult and frustrating and are at risk of injuring themselves, I can say I have cut myself and burned myself uncounted times (I actually burned myself this morning while trying to make poached eggs), although luckily nothing serious so far, all taken care of via home treatment. Those with dyspraxia can also sometimes struggle with the time, timing things, and again organisation, all of these things as such can impact cooking, as well as other tasks.
We can also be unintentionally messy while eating, which can be another source of embarrassment and possible ridicule from others. Learning to use cutlery to eat takes longer for us to learn, but that does not prevent us from being messy once we have learned. The rule for me is basically if we’re going out to eat, don’t wear a white shirt. I also find stabbing pasta on to a fork to be a particular task, and eating noodles and spaghetti is not the easiest.
Another bane for many of us can be making beds, putting on pillow and mattress covers and worse the sheet to the duvet. So, for us this may take longer to complete and learn how to do.
We can also have trouble with our Left and Right, it may take us longer to learn what is left and what is right and even when we have learned it, it may take us a while to remember lefts and rights when they become relevant in a situation, especially when under pressure – so for example let’s say someone with Dyspraxia is driving and someone tells them to turn left up the road they may panic for a time trying to figure out what way is left. Trouble with left and right can also have us put shoes on the wrong feet from time to time among other annoying shenanigans.
Our perception and self-awareness can also be off. We can accidentally speak too loud without realizing and perceiving the distance of things in relation to yourself or if you drive in relation to your vehicle, so again this can make you potentially more liable to cause an accident or accidentally bump into people or things while walking, thinking you’ve cleared enough space but haven’t, crowded areas are not fun! Keeping out of the way of things can also be a task, and cause not only frustration to you, but also to others, which can be upsetting.
I can find myself being very indecisive on things, it’s really can be difficult to make decisions, there can be so many different things to choose to do, especially during free time, that you just become absolutely overwhelmed on what to choose, with nothing feeling quite right, leading to frustration and wastage of time as I try and figure out what I would like to do. I’d say many can be affected by this, including neurotypicals, but I feel people with Dyspraxia can face it more often and take even longer to figure out, especially due to the tendency of people with Dyspraxia becoming more easily overwhelmed.
After all is said and done these things can add up, we’re more liable to feel inadequate or have low self-esteem and can due to this become depressed more easily and feel isolated due to these problems and also due to lack of awareness of the condition itself, and anxiety problems can also be another side effect. Many of us can also report getting tired and exhausted more easily due to all the increased mental anguish and concentration that goes into everything to try and avoid mistakes and accidents, and to try and understand things, reading something over and over again isn’t uncommon for us to try and make it make sense. And trying to remember things all the time can also be exhausting, and even when we have remembered everything for the day, we often still panic that we might have forgot something. Rinse repeat, rinse repeat. I guess you can say it’s like living life on hard mode.
But we still keep moving, we still keep going, and we don’t give up. And in the end with enough trying, we do get there. Just give us patience!
I wanted to write this blog post today as Dyspraxia effects so many of us, yet so many people have never even heard of it and some who suffer with it might not even know they have it, and some people don’t even think it is real, some are even as bold to say that many of us are just making excuses for messing things up or that we’re simply just lazy, but this is narrow-mindedness. Believe me, I wish it didn’t exist because it sure doesn’t help me either, but it does exist and the more who become aware of the condition, the easier it can be made for people like us to feel more comfortable. So, if you have read this, I challenge you to make someone else you know aware of Dyspraxia and then challenge them to do the same. Thank you!
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