I thought I'd create this thread because this condition is still very under-diagnosed, even in Britain, one of the principal countries who diagnose it at all. I am worried that this thread may just be ignored, but I recommend at least reading a bit of it, because many in America probably suffer from it without even being aware.
Dyspraxia is a condition that tends to be most clear in childhood, with the primary symptoms being a general clumsiness, an innate inability to play sports and bad short-term memory. I will go into more detail on the symptoms shortly, but I should explain a little of my story first. I feel that America has essentially ignored this, and it's typically extremely hard to attain diagnosis, despite the issue affecting many individuals around the world.
Dyspraxia is far more common in men/boys, with the ratio of male to female dyspraxics being 4:1. Most genetic issues are weighted against males, as the fact that we share a chromosome with females due to XY means that we're always importing what could be described as 'not optimal DNA'.
When I was about 7-years-old, one of my teachers at primary school (I believe Americans call it elementary) noticed that my handwriting, general coordination, balance, proprioception (situational awareness) and short-term memory were lacking. She suggested that I be assessed for dyspraxia at a clinic. I was thus diagnosed when I was 8 and this really helped me understand why I really struggled to tie shoe-laces and do more complex hand movements.
For years, I thought I was just stupid, and that dyspraxia had nothing to do with it, but I've recently come to understand that dyspraxia, a little like Asperger's/High-functioning autism, tends to produce above-average intelligence individuals, even if it makes many aspects of life far more difficult.
Here's a chart to show how many neurodiverse conditions such as dyslexia, Asperger's and ADHD fit together with dyspraxia:
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/242634/2f9d5025-5bd5-4b9f-a178-7d3bc03b103a/image.png
In my case, many around me believe I also have Asperger's and ADHD. I tend to agree with this. There's a great deal of co-morbidity of conditions in this diagram, meaning that if you have one of them, you're more likely than the average person to have another.
Common symptoms:
Clumsiness - I have this
Poor sports performance - I have this
Short-term memory issues - I have this
Difficulty following instructions - I have this
Terrible handwriting, especially when young - I have this
Anxiety, especially social anxiety - This became better with age, and I'd argue it's mostly due to environmental factors, as bullying is rife
Self-doubt - Still a giant problem for me
Rarer symptoms:
SID (Sensory Integration Dysfunction) - I find my hair being wet, bar soap and dry mud on my hands absolutely unbearable, such that I can't even move sometimes
Auditory processing problems - I can barely hear lyrics in songs, even though I am quite a good musician. Background noise makes determining vocalisation difficult.
Apologies if this is not the right section, but I was not sure where to post it.
I met a fellow dyspraxic when I was 15 who could play piano. I've always loved music, but had assumed I'd be unable to play back then due to my dyspraxia. She showed me that this is incorrect. Here's a video of what can be achieved if one rises to the challenge. This video is from about 10 years ago and I'm something like 15-16 here, but if you think you may have this too, hopefully it can serve as inspiration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp5F2ALEhZk
Thanks for reading, and it'd be great to hear from you if you have been diagnosed of this or suspect you might have it.
<3
I've been diagnosed with ADD and learning's been a bitch. I was only diagnosed it this year even; though noone in my immediate family was surprise when it became official. I've always struggled in school; notably in middle to high.
I am still adjusting to Ritalin, even nine months later, but it has helped in all of the areas I suffered in. I decided to fuck off from pursuing education for a bit because of my diagnosis, but honestly I feel ready already.
I didn't really know anything of substance about dyspraxia until a couple of months when they introduced the new Doctor Who companion who has it. It's really interesting to read another account of what it's like and how it can be beaten in some ways.
I got diagnosed with dyspraxia back in high school and it really explained a lot. Back in primary school we had "pen licenses" that the teachers gave out, I never got mine and could only use a pen when we got into year 6 and got it by default .
I still struggle with most of those symptoms to this day, and never grew out of the handwriting issue really.
yeah I have this
my mum was told by the doctor that my general functioning was like a regular putting a towel around your head and running up a flight of stair ten times.
guess it's my fault for min-maxing and statting INT rather than END and PER, right?
can you expand on these points
I was diagnosed with severe autism when I was 2. I also have aspergers and believe I have dyspraxia from what I remember, it's mainly due to those two being mentioned that I feel it's relevant to make a post.
So, about a year after being diagnosed I was put on homeopathy for my autism to reduce the severity. I probably got put on a bit less than 100 different remedies to treat it during the time I was put on homeopathy but I was put off it not long after I turned 17 (nearly 3 years ago considering I'll be 20 in January). The main reason was because my homeopathist, parents and myself agreed that the remedies in the end did the best they could so there's that. I was also put on medication in my childhood with one medicine where it was a syringe but I had to have it fed to me in my mouth, a lot of the time it tasted horrible which was why I didn't like taking it. I think I got put off it when I was 7 or 8 but I don't remember why I was put on it in the first place or when I was. Around that time me and my family were suffering from pneumonia I remember. Haven't taken any medication since then either.
For asperger's, I grew very obsessed with gaming to begin with and later computers and art. Still very obsessed with them but not so much the art side, it's mainly games, modding and technology for me now. From a very young age I had trouble speaking I remember but generally I am shy and do still have trouble speaking out things. I am a lot better writing than speaking as you probably know. I do also often find I don't really think the same way as most other people do so I likely have a difference in imagination which I didn't think could've been to do with asperger's.
For dyspraxia, I do remember my mum bringing it up and I tend to have bad balance though I often have that when I'm at home or work, not so much when I'm outside. I do also feel I have shit spacial awareness as I'm not always aware of if I'm too close or too far away from some things, often knocking into stands at work or tripping into stepstools but I'm not also the most careful at times. I feel coordinating myself is often a problem as well and not always sure of what to do all the time.
As a mix for asperger's and dyspraxia, I definitely have speech and language problems and pursued speech therapy back when I was little. I also had speech therapy in place at my secondary school, which had a resource base. They would often give me lessons off from my timetable to do social skills, homework catchup, speech therapy and sometimes independent study (homework/coursework catchup with no support) which I used to play games during because I finished all my homework, that allowed me to recharge my batteries and I do miss that I don't get that opportunity nearly as much now. I feel I'm oversensitive to light, noise, touch and temperature, generally my eyes go all weird when a light goes off or on suddenly and I'm not used to loud noises at all. I rarely get touched but it does give me a weird feeling sometimes and I do feel like I'm either really cold or really hot depending on the time of year, I used to complain a lot about the cold and still do at times but no so much with heat. A lot of the time I'm very oversensitive to noise as I don't like loud shouting or kids screaming and crying, that gets real annoying and it has gotten to me before, sometimes it is funny but not always in the most serious circumstances. Sirens I haven't had a problem with, used to hate them but I grew obsessed with emergency vehicle spotting, I really like the videos people make on vehicles responding and I want to get into it myself. You do at work (I work in retail) hear a lot of kids screaming and crying so it isn't any surprise hearing them most of the time.
And lastly, I feel I have a few of the symptoms of ADHD though I haven't officially been diagnosed with it. I do get easily hyper but sometimes I have anger issues, they're rare though and often at home. I do have a lot of times however where I'm just not at all focused on something or overly focused on other things. It's often difficult to prioritize things in some ways and I often land into this situation when working. I think I had more severe ADHD when I was younger so it isn't as bad nowadays.
I just didn't realize that a lot of those symptoms to come from the autism spectrum so it's quite a surprise and in a way I'm quite glad this thread was made, a lot of the time I feel alone but at it shows I'm not alone. Hopefully someone can relate with me on anything mentioned in this post.
For me most common symptoms I suffered from it either improves over time or not (2(1/2)/7 (Difficulty following instructions and [majorly] Poor sport performance for latter is with body hygiene) of them it mostly improves as aged and self-awareness help me to control them, but for rest them including Self-Doubt (which it technically improves but depends how my personal reality cheats the timing, so no other choice to give up instead), Anxiety specially being forced isolated by either from my parents or my disorder didn't help however until last two-three years with getting part-time job and my grandmother moving in around west side of my county where my family living, Short-term memory loss, oblivious Terrible writing and Bad speaking are tired to self-control but failed 40-80% of all time).
But one of two rare symptoms I used to have as around before in my pre-teens (SID) it was completely gone, which one ways is sorta helpful for me.
I found the Dyspraxia Foundation's list on these points fits me pretty well:
Learning, thought and memory:
Difficulty in planning and organising thought
Poor memory, especially short-term memory. May forget and lose things
Unfocused and erratic. Can be messy and cluttered
Poor sequencing causes problems with maths, reading and spelling and writing reports at work
Accuracy problems. Difficulty with copying sounds, writing, movements, proofreading
Difficulty in following instructions, especially more than one at a time
Difficulty with concentration. May be easily distracted
May do only one thing at a time properly, though may try to do many things at once
Slow to finish a task. May daydream and wander about aimlessly
Looking back at my time in school, I can apply nearly all of that basic stuff to myself. Always been a bit clumsy, awful at sports, pretty lame memory, bad handwriting and bit of social anxiety.
But there's lots of environmental aspects that could cause these things, a minor physical handicap I have could cause clumsiness or sport-ineptness.
Scratchy short term memory seems to run in the family, difficulty following instructions stopped being a problem when I entered my teens. Handwriting is still gack though.
Bullying was a problem back then too, which like the OP said, caused a lack of social interaction, ever since I started college I was finally able to get some friends and engage in general chit-chat, since then social awkwardness has been a thing of the past.
I've never actually been screened for anything like this before, and I probably should be just to see.
Shit dude, I'm sorry if we were insensitive at the meetup about this, I didn't realise
I don't have full on dyspraxia but I have dysgraphia, mild short term memory problems, and word finding problems. Nothing at a diagnosable level (aside from maybe the dysgraphia).
So, if somebody tells me a list of things I should be doing, I can really only recall one item from said list if I repeat it in a ceremonial fashion in my head. It's extremely easy to forget relevant information. I often get lost in places I've navigated to already. There's a distinct lack of "back-tracking" ability afforded to dyspraxic people.
Nah the meetup was fine, I had fun.
Ooft, this is a doozy. I know i have Dyslexia and Dyspraxia all too well, i have been worried that i might have developed ADHD at some point or its gone way under the radar.
Its like another thing on the list of things i need to sort out with a GP, it's redicious. And i would be embarrassed to even ask that to a GP. And the idea of being in some sort of medication terrifies me like it would change who i am as a person? The idea of having to take antidepressants fucking scares me shitless.
Learning disabilities cannot be 'cured', especially with bullshit 'homeopathy'. I understand that you were influenced to think this way, but I hope you also realise that things are not as simple as this. Dyspraxia, dyslexia, Asperger's and ADHD are conditions caused by how our brains naturally develop. There's nothing wrong with a brain in our state - we're often more intelligent - especially people with autism, but it is also something one must learn to cope with in a structured way.
Huh, that entire list describes the problems I'm having.
hey i have this, its cool to see more people talking about it
The lad gets introduced eating shit repeatedly trying to ride a bike, and I felt strange watching that episode because when I was in middle school being basically incapable of riding a bike was the part of my dyspraxia I got made fun of the most for (though the kids who did were the sort who tried to fix onto whatever they could as an insult).
I mostly suck at sports. Depth-perception is heavily affected by dyspraxia, and as such, I sucked at rounders. The thing is though, dyspraxics, on average, have far higher average IQs than 'average' people, so we're not totally fucked over.
the only sport i am good at is golf and i dont know why, it requires a lot of wrist and body movements
Wasn't diagnosed with ASD till I ended up breaking down from self-medicating myself through copious amount of narcotics. Prozac and Lorazepam have helped, but honestly just make me numb to almost everything going on around me. This is also on-top of Schizotypal Personality Disorder, so you folks be the judge of how fucked in the head I am.
I was diagnosed with Dyslexia and Dysgraphia when I was in kindergarten. I was having the most difficult time learning how to write and my learning was generally poor. The school district I was in had no plan to be able to help me so I suffered through elementary school till my parents decided to enroll me in an online school that was better suited to help me. Through that and my own determination I have found ways around my disabilities but some of them are just stuck with me forever. When it comes to reading I don't have the issue of reading letters backwards. I have a hard time retaining what I read to the point I have to read it several times to grasp it. Reading in general is super stressful on my mind. I prefer to listen to books when I can because its overall a better experience for me. I sometimes read words and mistake them for other words creating for some hilarious results from time to time. I have a basic concept of the grammar of the English language and spelling is not my strongest point. Thank god for spell check. I can't do any kind of math in my head very well. I have to use my fingers when attempting to do addition or subtraction in my head otherwise I forget the numbers I am working with. One thing I find particularly interesting is when I count in my head occasionally my thought process will come to a halt when I reach the last number in a sequence of 10 and I have to think hard about whats next. Example if I was counting up by one and I reached 49 my mind would come to a halt because for what ever reason it just forgot what comes next. I have gone through several different math help programs and I just can't grasp it and have come to terms that I won't ever be able to math in my head reliably. My short term memory is also trash. Over the years I have found that my thought process has a very logic based step process to it. Its really hard for me to explain but logical systems just make sense to me right out of the gate and I can figure out the gist of how they work with in a few seconds. I am pretty sure its why I love programming as much as I do. Because it just makes sense. It also makes me feel like I have some form of a Aspergers.
Diagnosed with pretty severe ADHD at a young age, here. The H part has toned down a lot, but still rears its head occasionally. Kinda weird to my friends who haven't witnessed it yet, though I imagine the sudden outburst of childlike hyperactivity for no reason is pretty unsettling.
Though I had no idea Dyspraxia even existed until now and it's really making me wonder about a lot of things.
I have a lot of the same symptoms as you do OP, even the rarer ones- Sans the sports thing because I never tried.
Uhh, sorry for the wall of text. I tried to be as concise as possible.
Auditory processing problems is the worst God damn thing because it makes my crippling social anxiety even worse, which also amplifies my inability to understand anyone who isn't speaking loudly and clearly enough. Vicious cycle. If someone tries to speak to me facing away from me, or there's even the slightest bit of background noise, I have a hard time deciphering what they say. It's either complete gibberish or "adjacent words" that... Okay it'd be better if I just explained it. "Look, we don't have time. Get dressed." gets turned into "Book, we won't gave vine. Get best." My family just keeps trying to say I just have bad hearing, that I "destroyed my ears with loud music", but in reality, my hearing is fine. Overly sensitive, even. I can hear shit nobody else in the fucking house can hear even if it's totally silent otherwise. It's just speech.
My handwriting is chickenscratch. It's only legible if I focus, but quickly writing, it's like a toddler got ahold of a writing utensil and fucking went to town. Always been like that, my grandmother tried to blame it on "using a computer too much" and despite forcing me to do writing practices for hours on end, nothing ever improved. If anything it fucked up my right hand and it hurts now if I write for too long. Even in drawing, which, while I'm pretty good at, I still have to work around this shit by either drawing extremely sketchily and getting super frustrated at having to undo one single tiny line repeatedly because my hand won't go where I want it to, or with the help of a program's line stabilization tools. I'm totally incapable of drawing a straight line or curve. Looks like someone with Parkinson's did it.
I trip over my own feet on flat, empty walking surfaces all the damn time. Or I randomly start to tip over and I have to do some weird ballerina pose to prevent myself from completely going down. Clumsier than all fuck, too. Though, amusingly my hand-eye coordination isn't that bad. I can usually type pretty fine, maybe slightly more typos than most, but it's not horrible. Playing video games is also alright, though my aim in FPS games is a tad below average. My spatial awareness is average.
I cannot do math. At all. I struggle with basic addition and subtraction and have to do it on my fingers if I don't have a calculator handy. It just makes my head lock up and all cognitive function ceases to be. Really makes me feel like I must be stupid. Doesn't help with my already piss poor self-esteem.
Sentence structure, while either typing or speaking, is an issue if I don't pay full attention. I'll say things that make sense to me, but makes other people think I'm having a stroke or something. Nonsense, word salad type structures. Somewhat scrambled and with odd word choices. Has caused plenty of near-friendship destroying misunderstandings in the past. Hate it.
Sensory input. While bright lights don't really bother me, sudden loud sounds, and repetitive, rhythmic sounds trigger some sort of intense anger response in my head. Ticking clocks can fucking die oh my god. Though that's more attributable to misophonia, I think. With touch, certain surfaces and the like will give me goosebumps and make me shudder. Like, nails on a chalkboard type of bodily reaction. I can't touch nail files, or other objects with similar surfaces. I also hate touching wet hair, but that's just an "ewwwww" thing more than anything else.
My memory is garbage. Short and long term. I can't remember a fucking thing and I make very heavy use of reminders either through sticky notes, notes written on my computer, and reminders set on my phone via the calendar or alarms. Without any of that I'd be lost. I almost forgot to write about this until I scrolled back up to see if I had missed anything.
I'm only organized in ways that make sense and feel comfortable to me, which, to someone on the outside, looks like total chaos.
In terms of emotions and feelings, they tend to be erratic. Manic bipolar-like, if I had to summarize. Not diagnosed though, trying to find a doctor that can help with that. I also have very intense self-loathing issues, have no confidence in myself, have long streaks of crippling depression, don't sleep well, and as mentioned, my emotions and desires flip flop like crazy at times, even to the point to where I'll feel two extremes of something at the same time. Worse than just an internal conflict, but legit consciously wanting two entirely different things at once, e.g. not wanting to play a game because I'm doing something else and wanting to play it because it's something different from what I'm doing, at the same time.
I've got a multitude of smaller issues on top of all this, but these are the major ones worth mentioning. I'm really trying to find a doctor to help me sort all of this out, so I can be sure if I have something(s) that I didn't know about before. I'm not wanting to self-diagnose. But I'm having little luck. Doctors not taking new patients at the time, doctors not being in my medical network/being covered by my insurance.... Auuughhh. Why does the American healthcare system have to be like this?
oof some of these apply to me as well.
esp this one.
Auditory processing problems is the worst God damn thing because it makes my crippling social anxiety even worse, which also amplifies my inability to understand anyone who isn't speaking loudly and clearly enough. Vicious cycle. If someone tries to speak to me facing away from me, or there's even the slightest bit of background noise, I have a hard time deciphering what they say. It's either complete gibberish or "adjacent words" that... Okay it'd be better if I just explained it. "Look, we don't have time. Get dressed." gets turned into "Book, we won't gave vine. Get best." My family just keeps trying to say I just have bad hearing, that I "destroyed my ears with loud music", but in reality, my hearing is fine. Overly sensitive, even. I can hear shit nobody else in the fucking house can hear even if it's totally silent otherwise. It's just speech.
my handwriting is bad, my memory is extremely bad, and wow I know what you mean with the sensory input sensitivity. I'm going to a psychologist in a few weeks so hopefully she can help somewhat. Not sure what to expect, I'm really really really bad at expressing my thoughts.
Ayy I have dyspraxia too waddup.
My mother is a doctor so I was fortunate enough to be caught early on. Learning to drive manual with dyspraxia is complete hell on earth; if any of you guys are learning to drive and finding it difficult I'd recommend not even bothering with manual and just go for automatic.
Also in terms of music, I would absolutely recommend learning an instrument if you have dyspraxia, ideally something like guitar that requires you to use both hands at once. That will seriously help with your co-ordination, although it may be a good few years before you start seeing good results. I used to work as a junior music therapist for a very brief period of time and I actually worked with clients with dyspraxia and they found massive improvements with their hand co-ordination over time.
Dyspraxia squad represent. I was diagnosed at an incredibly young age due to fears I had autism or something. I had a major speech impediment, which, while not generally directly indiciative of dyspraxia itself, nudged the doctors toward that conclusion. No autism, though. No, I developed that by my own habits
Thank you so much for writing all this up because this is the most informed I've been about my own condition since, ever. Online sources aren't as helpful when it comes to defining dyspraxia and I feel really validated at the moment. My poor handwriting, my terrible memory, how prone I've always been to anxiety - I mean, I always knew I had dyspraxia. But seeing other people talk about it feels really nice.
Just as a fun tidbit dyspraxia did a real number on my speech patterns in general. I had to go to speech therapy for a good long while and now I have this weird mix of accents that literally no one can identify. I've been identified as german, american, italian, russian, basically everything. It also severely delayed a revelation that I love creative writing. As a child, it was far too frustrating to try and write anything when even you couldn't read it afterwards.
ADHD is my biggest vice. I've been diagnosed since 1st grade and for a long time I was taking medication till around college where it became more difficult to keep track of it because of the schedules I had.
Never liked the medication, on Stratera and Vivance completely fucked my metabolism so bad that even when I spent 2 years eating my recommended diet, I gained weight. I was incredibly active as a kid but the medication killed my appetite to a point where I needed to have something unhealthy or I'd starve myself till dinner.
I also used to have a wild imagination, something I'm working on getting back, but while on my meds I had zero interest in expanding my horizons. Maybe I do need them, or maybe I need help getting into a rhythm to work but either way I have several projects that I could spend literal days talking about but the moment I need to write I just stop. Its frustrating because during my time in school I was able to write a 75,000 terrible fanfiction on HL2 with shit self insert and crap but now its difficult to write 1,000 in a week. Its probably work too draining my enthusiasm, I love the job but hate the lack of pay.
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