What Is Dyspraxia?

Dyspraxia – also known as Clumsy Child Syndrome, Developmental Co-ordination Disorder (DCD), Motor Learning Difficulty and Perceptuo-motor Dysfunction – is generally recognized to be an impairment of the organization of movement. Associated with this may be problems of language, perception and thought.

The Dyspraxia Foundation believe one in 30 children have some degree of dypraxic difficulty and 2% of the adult population. Males are four times more likely to be dyspraxic that females.

Dyspraxia symptoms include:

• Clumsiness, uncoordinated movements;
• Prone to accidents, may fall a lot, bump into furniture;
• Poor hand-eye, foot-eye coordination;
• Slow and poor at dressing, unable to tie shoelaces, do up buttons etc.;
• Messy eating and drinking;
• Speech and language difficulties;
• Poor sense of direction;
• Poor spatial awareness;
• Poor sequencing ability;
• Poor short-term memory;
• Difficulty in planning and organizing thought;
• Difficulty in holding a pen properly;
• Difficulty copying from the board;
• Poor writing and drawing abilities;
• Reading and spelling difficulties.