Living with a 13 year old Dyspraxic Son
I thought I'd start this lens because I'm a father of three wonderful children. My eldest and only son Daniel, who is now 13 years old, was diagnosed with Dyspraxia when he was 5 years old and subsequently with ADHD. Life with Daniel is a challenge and finding help and advice has been a constant struggle so I decided I would like to share my experiences and hopefully other people might find them helpful.
As much as Daniel is a challenge to me as a parent, Daniel's life is also a challenge to himself; organisation, education, behaviour and co-ordination are all everyday problems for Daniel, which as a family we all have to try and help him overcome and prepare for the future.
Educational Support
Daniel has Special Education Needs (SEN) and requires a lot of additional support at school. He is in a mainstream secondary school and mainstream classes. Everything he does is slower and requires more effort and he still writes like a 5 year old so he has really been struggling. Personally I find it very frustrating at the moment that the school demands that he does 3 lessons of FRENCH per week when in my opinion he should be concentrating on literacy and numeracy and getting those to a similar level for his age-group. His is roughly 2-3 years behind at the moment.
Please feel free to Email Me Now
UPDATED GUIDE - "Parents Guide to Dyspraxia/DCD and ADD/ADHD"
I have written a guide for other parents with useful
information I have learned over the passed 8 years. Its been downloaded over 300 times and helped many parents in a similar position so I hope that it may help
you. See the BIG ARROWS below for the link
You are also welcome to contact me by using this form to send you details.
CLICK HERE and complete your contact details.Here's my favorite link:
My Dyspraxia videos on Youtube
Parents' Coping with Dyspraxia/DCD and ADD/ADHD
Parents Guide http://dyspraxia.parents-guide.info My son (13) has Dyspraxia & ADHD. I've spent years struggling to get help & information and have written a Parents guide I hope may help other parents. It's available from http://dyspraxia.parents-guide.info (NEW Updated & Expanded version 30/01/09) along with my FREE newsletter. There is also more information at http://www.squidoo.com/dyspraxia and you can checkout my new blog at http://www.parents-guide.info. Would love to hear your experiences.





Runtime: 3:50
2360 views
7 Comments:
What is Dyspraxia?
Its funny out everything has a label these days and it makes things seem to just appear - "oh everyone seems to have this ADHD these days" - but often this labelling is actually just re-labelling. In the case of Dyspraxia it is nothing new and was more commonly known as clumsy child syndrome which of course is no longer PC.
Developmental dyspraxia is an impairment or immaturity of the organisation of movement. It is an immaturity in the way that the brain processes information, which results in messages not being properly or fully transmitted. The term dyspraxia comes from the word praxis, which means 'doing, acting'. Dyspraxia affects the planning of what to do and how to do it. It is associated with problems of perception, language and thought.
Dyspraxia is thought to affect up to ten per cent of the population and up to two per cent severely. Males are four times more likely to be affected than females. Dyspraxia sometimes runs in families. There may be an overlap with related conditions.
Other names for dyspraxia include Developmental Co-ordination Disorder (DCD), Perceptuo-Motor Dysfunction, and Motor Learning Difficulties. It used to be known as Minimal Brain Damage and Clumsy Child Syndrome.
Statistically, it is likely that there is one child in every class of 30 children, and we need to make sure that everyone understands and knows how best to help this significant minority.
Its important to know at this point that Dyspraxia and Dyspraxic children are all individual and their challenges and needs can vary greatly. Their conditions are not usually clear cut either as hey can also have other "overlap" conditions such as Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Autism, etc. Just as a Dyspraxic child can have Dyslexic tendencies a child diagnosed with Dyslexia can have Dyspraxic tendencies.
Dyspraxia and Glyconutrition
Our great results using Glyconutritional foods to help
Please feel free to Email Me Now for more information
- Glyconutrition Information
- Use the above link to find out more information on how Glyconutritional Supplementation helps with Dyspraxia and ADHD
How would I recognise a child with Dyspraxia?
THE PRE-SCHOOL CHILD :-- Is late in reaching milestones e.g. rolling over, sitting, standing, walking, and speaking.
- May not be able to run, hop, jump, or catch or kick a ball although their peers can do so.
- Has difficulty in keeping friends; or judging how to behave in company.
- Has little understanding of concepts such as 'in', 'on', 'in front of' etc.
- Has difficulty in walking up and down stairs.
- Poor at dressing.
- Slow and hesitant in most actions.
- Appears not to be able to learn anything instinctively but must be taught skills.
- Falls over frequently.
- Poor pencil grip.
- Cannot do jigsaws or shape sorting games.
- Artwork is very immature.
- Often anxious and easily distracted.
THE SCHOOL AGE CHILD :-
- Probably has all the difficulties experienced by the pre-school child with dyspraxia, with little or no improvement.
- Avoids PE and games.
- Does badly in class but significantly better on a one-to -one basis.
- Reacts to all stimuli without discrimination and attention span is poor.
- May have trouble with maths and writing structured stories.
- Experiences great difficulty in copying from the blackboard.
- Writes laboriously and immaturely.
- Unable to remember and /or follow instructions.
Is generally poorly organised.
Great Dyspraxia Books on Amazon UK
Financial Help for Dyspraxia | Are you Entitled to or Claiming Benefits?
Extra money is always useful but not everyone know what they are entitled to!
Even after claiming this benefit for about 5 or 6 years now, I only just recently found out that we weren't getting everything he was entitled to!
Check out This lens for some more information.
Help available from Charity Organisations
There is extra help available for families with disabled children
Checkout this lens for more information on charitable organisations that offer financial help to parents.
New Featured Lenses
-
What is Carers Allowance | How to Claim Carers Allowance
-
Money is tight at the best of times, but when you or a family member have a disability it can be even harder. In my case I have a son with Dyspraxia & ADHD and receiving DLA enables me to do things for him that I would otherwise not be able to afford...
-
Disability Living Allowance | DLA | Disability Benefits
-
Money is tight at the best of times, but when you or a family member have a disability it can be even harder. In my case I have a son with Dyspraxia & ADHDand receiving Disability Living Allowance (DLA) enables me to do things for him that I would ot...
-
What is ADHD? | Symptoms of ADHD | How to Diagnose ADHD
-
Hello and welcome to my lens. I am the parent of a 13 year boy with Dyspraxia and ADHD overlap. Information isn't always easy to find in just one place for I thought I would develop a series of lenses with information about these conditions and my pe...
-
What are SUPERFOODS? | List of Superfoods
-
All foods, even battered Mars bars, have some nutritional value. But there are some that are so beneficial to your health they are known as 'super foods'. Check them out here:
What do you know about Sickle Cell Disease?
A good friend of mine is trying to educate people about this awful disease
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byUseful Links to Other Appropriate Websites
- The Family Fund Home Page
- The Family Fund provides timely grants to families with severely disabled children, based on families' views and needs.
- DORE - A Quick Test for Dyspraxia
- Use their Symptom Test to find out if it could help you. Receive a free personalised report.
- Dyspraxia Foundation
- The Dyspraxia Foundation is a country Wide charity, founded in 1987 as the Dyspraxia Trust by two mothers who met at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. After being told that their children had Dyspraxia they were astonished and dismayed to discover that no facilities existed to help or inform parents and children with the condition. They decided to form their own group to help others to help themselves.
- Carers Allowance Unit
- If you are caring for a child who is receipt of middle or higher rate DLA you you probably be entitled to receive carers allowance. Check out this website for details.
You can also call them on 01253 856123. They are very friendly and helpful.
You can email their customer service on cau.customer-services@dwp.gsi.gov.uk - Cerebra
- Parents of disabled children can feel very alone and bewildered by all the services and information out there. Cerebra's Parent Support Department aim to help by offering information, support and various services that parents have told us would help them.
Dyspraxia related video(s) on Youtube
Dyspraxia and Me
A video for globalstirfry. Globalstirfry sent me a message saying: "I am doing a 30 min. presentation for my foundation degree course in Learning Support.Please could you make me a 3 min video about what it's been like for you to have dyspraxia. Also things to do with coordination, speech, spatial awareness, organisation, bullying etc. What support would you have liked to be in place when you were at school, what would have helped?" And I figured I should do something to help raise a bit of awareness. Ironically I found it very hard to concentrate enough to do this, and I'm not particularly happy with the result, but with 3 minutes (I still over ran) this was what I came up with. Comments disabled.
Runtime: 3:42
6386 views
0 Comments:
Dyspraxia Guide Reader Feedback
andyajsb wrote...
in reply to Evelyn_Saenz Thanks for your comments. Dan has difficulty with visualisation, and I guess with audio because his literacy is delayed and so he doesn't understand verbal instructions an descriptions well. He is definitely a more tactile boy, he likes do hands-on things which therefore don't require writing or maths. He loves tinkering and taking things to bits and putting them back together again and recently has expressed an interest in working towards being a motor mechanic. Not sure if that really answers your question, as I'm not an expert and no-one that is has come back to me as said "oh Daniel learns best this way or that way" but its any interesting point to discuss with his school.
Evelyn_Saenz wrote...
As a teacher, I find your lens on Dyspraxia very interesting. I would love to know if there are certain techniques that you have found that help Daniel. Does he learn best through audio, visual, tactile etc. methods?
5 Stars and Favored.
spirituality wrote...
Great way to introduce the topic. I used to teach in a school for special education - there were probably kids there with dyspraxia, but we did not use that label.
You might like these lenses:
Books about Autism
Sensory Processing (aka Sensory Integration) explained: with tips on how to help your child.
Great Dyspraxia / Dyspraxic Stuff on Amazon
News from the Dyspraxia Foundation
Supporting Children, Families and Adults with Dyspraxia
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byFollow me on Twitter!

- parents_guide
- aka DyspraxiaMan
- 143 followers
- 135 following
-
- just been updating my squdoo lenses; http://www.squidoo.com/dyspraxia and others
-
- yes! My daughter Katie won Chungdokwan National Championships in her division at w'end :) A brilliant confidence boost she needed!
-
- Currently Browsing: http://tinyurl.com/cqujf4
-
- Currently Browsing: http://tinyurl.com/c3k5tv
-
- Working on updates to http://www.parents-guide.info today, get some more interesting articles up there for parents
by andyajsb
Hello! My Name is Andy. I'm a single father of three great kids and apart from my love of family life and spending time with my kids, I lo...
(more)


