Dyspraxia is a lifelong learning difficulty characterized by problems with motor skills and coordination. It can affect gross motor skills like balance, fine motor skills like doing up buttons, and sometimes speech. Dyspraxia overlaps with other conditions and can cause social difficulties as well as anxiety and depression. While dyspraxic individuals may struggle with everyday tasks, they are often kind, creative, and hard working. Strategies like formal organization training, reminders, adaptive technology, and positive reinforcement can help dyspraxics succeed.

1. Dyspraxia A definitive guide
Information from:
www.dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/
And an article written by a Dyspraxic

2. What Exactly Is Dyspraxia
• Dyspraxia is a lifelong learning difficultly. It was first
defined in the 1980s. Before then, people with this
condition were just known as ‘clumsy’.
• It is often called ’the hidden handicap’, because if you
look at a dyspraxic you wouldn't know that they have
anything wrong with them.
• The things that dyspraxics struggle with, generally, are
gross motor control, fine motor control and sometimes
problems with their speech. Dyspraxia can overlap
with other learning difficulties too, such as dyslexia,
autism, ADHD, OCD, Asperger’s syndrome, Dysgraphia
and can lead to Anxiety and depression.

3. Gross Motor Problems
• As children grow, major developmental targets,
including walking, running, climbing and jumping are
affected as well as hand- eye coordination (HEC)
problems. One example of this would be kicking out
before the ball reaches you in football.
• In addition to HEC problems, most dyspraxics have
poor balance and fall over frequently in mid-step: one
thing that almost all dyspraxics seem to struggle with is
spatial awareness. Because of this, some dyspraxics
suffer in that they can accidentally bump into things
such as lamp posts and even other people.
Determining left from right can present difficulties too.

4. Fine Motor Problems
• Fine-motor problems cause problems in day-to-day
activities such as using a knife and fork, fastening
buttons, tying shoelaces, cooking, brushing one's
teeth, styling one's hair, shaving, applying cosmetics,
opening jars, packets, locking, unlocking doors and
doing housework and all this can make life incredibly
difficult, Even getting dressed is a struggle.
• Dyspraxics often wear clothes that are easy to slip on
and off as they have trouble with buttons and getting
clothes the wrong way round. Another thing is tying
shoelaces.

5. Other Problems that Dyspraxics have
• It isn’t just handwriting and hand eye
coordination that dyspraxics struggle with;
they also struggle socially. They are often
socially awkward by not joining in with normal
conversations. Although they try to get on
with everyone not everyone is very nice to
them back.

6. Advantages
• But there are advantages too: dyspraxics are often a lot
kinder and more caring than normal people, which can
mean that they often make excellent doctors and care
workers. In addition, some are very creative, so they
excel in art, photography and music. More generally, if
dyspraxics can believe they can reach a target they
often meet it, as they are often harder working than
normal people.
• Their short term memory, however, is often below
standard: some teachers mistake this for laziness; on
the other hand, dyspraxics’ long term memory can be
excellent.

7. Strategies That you Can Use
• There are many different strategies you can use these include:
• Formal tuition in the planning and organisation of work, both practical and academic.
Give examples of essays, reports and projects. Break down processes to steps with an
opportunity for feedback to check understanding
• Show different ways of increasing organisational skills such as using reminders on their
phone, linking the phone with a calendar on their computer.
• Computer hardware is very important e.g. laptops for note-taking and ergonomic
keyboards and mice and large computer screens can make a great difference.
• Say well done to them once they have completed a piece of work as dyspraxics don’t
often believe in their own abilities.
• Always say “you can do this I believe in you” this often helps due to Dyspraxics having
low self confidence about themselves so hearing someone else say it often helps them
believe in themselves.

8. Useful Links
• https://www.dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk
• www.dyspraxiauk.com/
• www.dyspraxia.org.uk/
• My Email: samueljlawrence@btinternet.com