September 4, 2006
Dyspraxia Awareness Week
This week in Australia marks Dyspraxia Awareness Week. Why should you care? Well imagine being only four or five years old, and unable to communicate like most children your own age.
Dyspraxia is a movement disorder than can affect children’s motor development. It can affect only speech development, or it can also involve other areas of motor skills eg jumping, running, using scissors and pencils
Verbal Dyspraxia
Speech requires an enormous amount of rapid movement of tongue, lips and soft palate and breath control. To form a word requires planning a series of movements and executing them smoothly and rapidly – for most people, this becomes automatic.
Children with dyspraxic speech find complex movements difficult and constantly simplify their productions eg one common feature is to leave the sound from the ends of words, so that words with three sounds (b-a-th) are made with the two (b-a).
Typically, a child with dyspraxia of speech is very late talking with good comprehension of language. As a baby, they may have been quiet, not babbling very much.
When they do talk, they have a limited number of sounds, and they usually omit sounds from the ends of words. They are very hard to understand. As you watch them, you may see them ’grope’ for a sound – the tongue and lips move around as if trying to find the right spot.
Dyspraxic children often find some sound combinations more difficult than others, and there is sometimes variation in the sounds selected eg they may say ‘car’ but ‘tat’ for ‘cat’. Some children find it hard to control loudness, or top have a flat monotonous sounding speech. As well as speaking too quickly.
Sometimes, children with dyspraxia can become frustrated with the problems of communication. They may be more difficult to manage than other children, have a very short fuse, or may be withdrawn and self-conscious about their speech
Children who are unintelligible are at risk of having comprehension and language delay, partly because they do not have the same social opportunities as other children.
People outside the family may give up trying to engage them in conversation. The same information flow does not come their way, they do not learn to interact with a wide variety of adults and peers, and their self-esteem suffers.
Given appropriate help early, all but the most severely affected dyspraxic children learn to speak clearly. However, some continue to sound ‘different’ through into their primary school years.
They have periods on the day when they go back to being hard to understand, particularly if they are tired or excited. Some dyspraxic children require extra help in learning to read and write.
Sometimes, the secondary problems (being withdrawn, acting out, not socialising, low self-esteem) last beyond the original speech problems.
Fine & Gross Motor Dyspraxia
Any activity involving movement requires planning and execution. For example, sitting down at the table requires several actions to be performed – pulling out the chair, getting your body at the right place, sitting down and pulling the chair into the table. Each action has to be done in the right order, and carried out quickly and smoothly.
As adults, all this is second nature to us, but very young children initially have to think about how they are going to achieve their goal. Dyspraxic children continue to make mistakes in planning and executing movements far beyond this early stage.
These issues are further compounded by the fact that many dyspraxic children have an above average or high intelligence.
My 5 year old son, Davis, has moderate Verbal Dyspraxia and mild Fine and Gross Motor Dyspraxia.
Davis was diagnosed with Dyspraxia before he turned two, and was taught to use sign language between the ages of 2 and 3 ½. If tired, he sometimes reverts to this but most of the signs are very obvious to understand (he no longer signs daily). He has been in speech therapy for the last three and a half years.
He does therapy at home every day with my wonderful wife, and sees his Speech Therapist once a fortnight, and his Occupational Therapist every other week.
His speech has improved a hundred fold over the last twelve months, to the stage that most people can understand much of what he says, and he doesn’t need to sign any more. Davis’ speech should be mostly normal in the next couple of years. However it is always extremely difficult to know exactly how dyspraxic children will turn out.
Dyspraxia affects up to 10% of the population. Please take a moment to think about what life must be like for dyspraxic children, and if possible, donate towards any fundraising activities.
Australian National Dyspraxia Awareness Week runs from September 1st to September 8th 2006. You can read Meredith’s post about Davis and his journey with Dyspraxia, visit the Australian Dyspraxia Association website or these links for more information.
Photo: Mundaring Weir Wall, Mundaring, WA.
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:50 am
My daughter is almost 4 years old and has dyspraxia. We start with the speech pathologist next week. Ella does not seem to have many friends at preschool and i tink her speech is the cause of this. It breaks my heart to see her by herself when i pick her up in the afternoons. It is comforting to know there is hope, I just hope I haven’t left it too late.
February 5th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Hi Peta, You haven’t left it too late, there’s no such thing. Ella will pick speech up quickly with the right help. i know it’s heartbreaking, but it gets better, believe me. Good luck!
February 6th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Hi Peta. Don’t despair. My little girl started S.T. at 3 (she has Dyspraxia) (she just turned 9) - she still attends S.T. and will need to for a long time, but she has come a long way. We have always concentrated on her social skills, and confidence the rest will eventually come. At times my heart still breaks for Zoe. It sounds like Ella has a wonderful Mum, there is a lot of support out there! May the angels watch over you and your precious little girl!
March 16th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
My 4yr has been doing ST for almost 12mnths although not formally diagnosed (Pediatrition has informally diagnosed this) He was ‘expelled’ from both daycare & our local preschool (ended up having to drive him 80km to attend a school) due to social behaviour problems that stem from his speech difficulties. He’s now back at daycare (tis remote centre that comes to our town once a week) and the new girls running it are going great with him, and we’ve found that keeping him really busy and being outstandingly POSITIVE (what his preschool teacher was lacking) has bought about a new kid! charles was really hard to breast feed and i gave up after 3months of heartbreak, and just today I’ve learned that this is an early symptom of dyspraxia which explains why i can easily feed my 5mth old daughter. if only it was found earlier could have prevented the mild Post Natal Depression and 4 yrs of blaming myself! I’m new to this condition and would love to know of any online forums or chat support groups with outher parents that are available.
March 26th, 2007 at 10:49 am
My son is almost 2 and has been seeing a Speech Pathologist for 6 months. Whilst there has been no diagnosis as of yet - we have discussed Dyspraxia in great deepths. She has mentioned that we need to monitor him for longer until she can be sure. What assistance is there besides his family and wonderful speech pathologist? Can any one point me in the right direction?
May 25th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
I have been doing research on dyspraxia as I thought my son may have it, I have not had him dianosed yet but I truly think that from the information I have found that he has it. I also think that I may have it, if so it would explain a lot of things for me like speach problems, not being able to make friends, clumsy and not being able to consentrate or being good at school, hopefully we will get my son who is 10 treatment and understanding so he won’t go through the same problems as me
June 4th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
My son (13) has been diagnosed with Dyspraxia since the age of 2 and a half. We then had another diagnosed that he was on the autistic spectrum even though my husband and I had trouble fitting him into this catagory. He is now 13 and suffering low self-esteem as learning difficulties continue also impacting on his social skills. Even though his speech and language have slowly improved over the years he still has poor articulation and poor grammar. Now we are hearing from professionals that he may not be autistic but only dyspraxic. This has opened up hope that his condition is treatable. I feel we may have overlooked therapies because of his diagnosis. Now I am researching schools that work with dyspraxic and dyslexic children but they all seem to be overseas- See www.fairleyhouse.org.uk and www.gow.org. We are starting speech therapy again after a year and a half break. The new therapist uses a program called PROMPT which is specifically for dyspraxia. We start tomorrow. If anyone knows any specific schools for dyspraxics, I would like to know. My advice is find a good developmental paediatrician early on and trust your own judgements.
August 12th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Hi. My son is almost 7 and has been seeing a speech therapist since he was 3. He is diagnosed with dyspraxia and has very limited speech. He is in kindergarten, learns sign language but doesn’t always use this. He does understand very well but his verbal language is terrible. We are worried he is just never going to talk. Any other families have this problem with their dyspraxic children not talking.
September 4th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
My son was diagnosed as dyspraxic a month before he turned 4, his vocab consisted of 20 words and 90% of those words had multiple meanings such as sheishei meant finished, starwars, spiderman and buzz lightyear. He is now 5, has been seeing the speechie for over 12 months now, and even started Kindergarten which has improved his vocab amazingly as he also had a severe expressive lang delay. still a long way to go, as he still has problems with drooling and the LOUDNESS factor drives me NUTS! but its wonderfull to see how far he has come after years of silence!
December 12th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
My daughter is 7 and has been seeing a speech therapist since she was two. She still can’t read, write or talk well. We use makaton which has helped with the frustration. I wish we could get more help at school and even though the teachers are lovely they just don’t have the time and means to do as much as she needs. I just wonder if she will ever talk and live independantly. Why isn’t there more help!
January 16th, 2008 at 10:33 am
along with alot of joy, there is pain bringing up a child with severe verbal and developmental Dyspraxia. My boy is 6 years of age and has being attending speech and OT since he was 2. He has little speech and we use makaton.
He attends year 1 this year and for the last 2 years, along with his teacher being fighting for Aid time, so he gets the best help whilst at school, Not only have we being fighting for my son to get it but for other children also. We would like Schools plus and education department to acknowledge Dyspraxia as a problem in our schools and allow one on one Aid time in school.
I have being working with Brendan Grylls, who has being willing to represent children with Dyspraxia and help me with my fight.
He would like to hear from more parents regarding their child/children, and issues with schooling and Dyspraxia, so our children get the help needed at school.
Brendan Grylls (MLA) phone:90411702
Parents please contact Brendan and voice your concern about your child attending school, he is a willing voice to support us!
Chin up to you all!
Take care.