The Other Dys-es: What is Dyspraxia? | Succeed With Dyslexia

Dyspraxia: you’ve probably heard of it, if you’ve spent any amount of time in the online neurodiversity community over the past couple of years. But how much do you actually know if you’re one of the people who doesn’t have it, or know someone with it?

For some reason, dyspraxia is one of the co-occuring conditions that can pop up alongside dyslexia that we don’t tend to dedicate the same amount of energy and resources to as others. There’s a lot of literature on dyslexia and ADHD, dyslexia and autism, dyslexia and mental health differences – but we don’t tend to talk so much about dyslexia and some of the other ‘dys-es’. That’s what this deep-dive series is all about: demystifying the other ‘dys-es’, and this time we’re taking a look at dyspraxia, or Developmental Co-Ordination Disorder (DCD).

Current study suggests that dyspraxia develops due to an immaturity of neurone development in the brain, but it’s not as simple as all that – there are conflicting standpoints and different views just like there are when it comes to dyslexia or dyscalculia. It’s thought to affect around 6% of the population, but this number skyrockets to a huge 52% in the dyslexic population according to research done in the late 1990s. it used to be thought that boys were more likely to have dyspraxia than girls, but more recent research actually highlights that girls are simply much more likely to go undiagnosed, or have their symptoms diagnosed much later on in their educational career or even adult lives.

Dyspraxia is a common condition that affects fine and/or gross motor co-ordination in both children and adults. It’s formally recognised by the World Health Organisation, and it occurs across a range of ages, demographics, ethnicities, intelligence levels – a lot of the time we tend to construe it as a childhood issue, but that’s not true. Dyspraxia can affect people throughout their whole lives, and although the ways in which it manifests may change as people age and mature, it can have quite an impact on the way that people approach anything from education and work to socialisation and spending their leisure time.

What does Dyspraxia look like?

Although dyspraxia affects everybody differently, there are some symptoms that appear commonly in children and young people that might indicate that somebody who has dyslexia also has dyspraxia too. There are motor manifestations- ones that are to do with movement and physical co-ordination – and non-motor manifestations too, which can often be to do with an individual’s mental health, concentration or organisation. It’s often difficult to spot, as many children and young people often exhibit some of these symptoms whether they have dyspraxia or not, and there are a number of other neurodiversities that can display similar symptoms, such as autism and ADHD/ADD.

As a child, somebody with dyspraxia might…

• Struggle with running, hopping, jumping, and generally moving at the same level of their peers
• Seem ‘unbalanced’ or off kilter on their feet, manifesting as being nervous or wobbly on climbing frames, stairs or balance beams 
• Have weaker hand-eye co-ordination and struggle to catch or intercept a football or a bean bag
• Have a weaker understanding of directions and designations like up and down, in and on, especially as a young child
• Struggle with buttons, ties, buckles and shoe fastenings
• Dropping or fumbling objects they’re holding, or struggling to hold something steady
• Have poor penmanship and pencil grip, and appear to create artwork that looks like it was done by a much younger child 
• Move a little more slowly or cautiously than their peers, and appear reluctant to join in with gym or games
• Struggle socially with anxiety, attention maintenance and sometimes just ‘feeling awkward’
• Have difficulty with things that require the use of structures or sequences, such as math problems, story writing, or multiple-step creative tasks
• Find concentrating difficult, both in school and at home
• Struggle to adapt to new situations and react negatively to change, such as a house move, changing classrooms, or breaking from established routines

As an adult, dyspraxia may look a little different.  It’s likely that some of the manifestations from childhood are still apparent in an individual, but some symptoms may have waxed or waned as they age. As people grow into adulthood, that can also learn to ‘mask’ symptoms, to fit in more with their peers or even just what they feel is expected of them in a traditional workplace environment – so again, dyspraxia might be a little difficult to pin down without an expert opinion.

Dyspraxia in older children and adults can sometimes look like…

• Lack of manual dexterity – people can struggle with things like using cutlery and chopsticks, or more complex tasks playing an instrument, shaving, applying makeup or using tools
• Difficulties driving a car, especially relating actions on the dashboard (i.e. turning on an indicator, changing gear) to what’s going on externally with the car
• Poor sense of direction and difficulty relating something on a map to a physical location
• Poorly established hand dominance – they might use different hands for writing and using a kitchen utensil, for example
• Talking continuously or talking over people, repeating themselves, or interrupting and being unable to conform to the back-and-forth of a conversation– some people with dyspraxia struggle to sequence things like conversation, and this can manifest in how they speak in pairs and group scenarios
• …but alternatively, the opposite could be true- an individual might withdraw from conversations or appear uncommunicative due to anxiety, or struggling to articulate and converse in the way that they feel they’re expected to
•  Finding it difficult to pick up non-verbal signals or in judging tone and pitch of voice, both in their own communications and their communications with others
• Brain-eye issues, such as difficulty in visually tracking a moving object without moving their head or poor relocating (struggling to look from one object to another without strenuous re-focusing and head movement) – younger children might struggle with this initially, but it’s unusual in non-dyspraxic people for it to persist into adulthood
• Cluttered living spaces – anything from ‘organised chaos’ to hoarding behaviours and general messiness
• Difficulty in planning and organising, especially where multiple stages or locations are involved, such as commuting to work or a start-to-finish project
• Impulsive or erratic behaviours and impatience, often born of anxiety

This isn’t an exhaustive list by far – you can find a much more in-depth one at Dyspraxia Foundation.

How do we diagnose it?

Dyspraxia is one of a number of conditions that can co-occur with dyslexia. This means that a dyslexia diagnosis may make it more likely that you have a co-occurring condition such as dyspraxia, but it’s important to seek a professional opinion if you think that either yourself or somebody in your life could have it. Although it might be suspected in pre-school and kindergarten, it’s usually not possible to make a definite diagnosis until the child is aged 4 or 5, and the majority of children diagnosed with dyspraxia are diagnosed in the 5-10 age bracket.

A doctor/GP, a health visitor, a SENCO or a private specialist or therapist are your first points of contact when it comes to seeking a diagnosis. They might then refer you to another healthcare professional who can complete a dyspraxia assessment, such as a paediatrician, an occupational therapist, a neurodevelopmental specialist or a clinical psychologist, dependent on who’s being assessed and what kind of support they look like they’ll need going forwards. Usually assessment takes the form of gross motor skills assessment (the ability to use the large muscles that move an individual’s body, and tasks such as running, jumping and balancing) and fine motor skills assessments (checking in on smaller muscles and how they can perform accurate tasks in co-ordinated movement like drawing and picking up and putting down).

Getting a diagnosis can also help reduce the stresses associated with dyspraxia, as it eliminates the element of the unknown from the equation, and it’s also the first stepping stone to finding support mechanisms that work for the individual. There are a lot of things that can be done to help assist people with dyspraxia and dyslexia both in their daily lives and throughout their educational careers, so diagnosis is important in terms of making sure that all aspects of somebody’s neurodiversity are being catered for.