dyspraxia?

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I only have a dyspraxia Dx. I know another person with dyspraxia who has autistic traits. I've been clumsy all my life and got used to it/found ways of adapting. What I find more difficult to deal with is my aspie traits. The worst part of dyspraxia stops when you leave school and no longer have to do textiles, craft or sports. I couldn't tie my shoelaces until I was eight and I can't sew on a button. I can write legibly if I really concentrate. It's the fact that I'm quite intelligent but can't do basic tasks sometimes, that's a bit annoying.

I think I only got Dxed with dyspraxia because my teachers cared more about how much my handwriting sucked and the fact that I couldn't run. They didn't care so much that I had almost no friends and was constantly teased into meltdown. They were very practically minded Even now, they tend to focus on the clumsiness of dyspraxic kids more than the social problems, which are the ones that stay with you into adulthood.

As far as I know, dyspraxia affects fine and gross motor function differently, depending on the person. It can also affect speech and planning in some people, but not with me.

I know some people who have an AS diagnosis (not a dyspraxia one) who wear velcro shoes. I guess there is often a crossover, but not all dyspraxics have AS and vice versa.

What do you think about specialists you claim that autistic characteristics are common in dyspraxia without it being a sign of autism ?

Characteristics such as :
-difficulties to understand body language and use of facial expressions
-lack of social skills
-obsessive behaviours
-meltdowns (acutally common in most disorders)


And do you have any sensory issue ? I do but I do not know if I should think that it is because of my dyspraxia or an autistic trait.

I know four people in real life with dyspraxia. All of the have trouble with social skills. Only one of them are diagnosed with an ASD but I will not use her as an example. None have held down a job yet. One hides in his room most days, does not shower, does not brush his teeth, has sensory problems that going out side is difficult for him. He finds crowds impossible but he makes normal eye contact and can understand sarcasm. One says he could do the social rules thing if he wanted but he does not understand the point of it all. All are very clumsy, all have sensory difficulties. All were late at meeting some of there mile stones, especially in motor skills and talking. All have herd of the term NT, none believe it applies to them. All have big differences in there sub scores on IQ tests. I think that is interesting because I thought that was a more ASD thing. All 3 (not including that other one with ASD) are into computers and 2 are obsessive about programming. One in particular spends all his time in front of a computer screen or reading books about computers. He becomes annoyed if any one enters the room because they are a distraction from his programming. He will tell them to go away. It is he out of the three with the best social skills but he just prefers to be alone.

a paediatrician suggested i might have dyspraxia at around age 5. but nobody followed it up, so i'm unsure.
i can definitely be clumsy.. :/

I have dyspraxia , I do not drive, typing is hard and I have wooden and plastic dishes (broke most the ceramic ones). My son also has it and tries his best at PE and riding things with wheels , he ends up tripping alot though and has poor concept of his body in space. We are both also dx mild aspergers. The behavioral optometrist did a eye tracking and walking test to dx the dyspraxia.

Hi !

Sensory overload and speech delay are pretty common among people who have dyspraxia apparently (I only have the sensory overload though it was not so bad when I was younger, perhaps because I was always ranting and inattentive, therefore I avoided the "crisis").

However, I do agree with you, I think that many autistic characteristics are getting ignored with specialists once one is diagnosed with a specific learning disorder.

My dyspraxic uncle was strange when he was a child. It was not called dyspraxia at the time but he went to a centre and saw a psychologist for years because of his motor skills and because he had some sort of social phobia (he wouldn't go outside, only made friends with younger children and had almost no friends, seemed to live in his own world).
He now seems perfectly NT (well, at least for my family, and he has a job which requires spatial skills, and even worked as a waiter so I guess he really improved during these years) but my grandmother said I was a lot like him, except that I had to work on my own with this problem while he had help as a child.
He still have sensory issue, only auditory though he did not like to be touched as a child.

He even had a "special interest" but almost every males in my family has this one : technology and computers; and he does not have obsessive behaviours about it I think (compared with my brother).

I guess everyone is different. But I can definetly see some people in my family who have some autistic traits (perhaps they are on the broader autism spectrum or have some genes) like my parents, my brother, my dyspraxic uncle, my grandfather and his father.

Mother : memory issue, extraverted but apparently lack of social skills (tend to be rude), some OCD behaviours, always had a strong interest in medical facts, physical disabilities and elderly health, nothing else.
Father : gifted, obsessed with computers and technology, see patterns in numbers, do not seem to feel the need to have a real "social life" or friends, paradoxically he tends to be naive when he reads something (he's the kind of person who would read "10% of students are failing" and would not see the reasons behind for example, I'm not saying that this is an autistic trait but it sounds like "taking things litteraly").
Brother : Did not have any friends until he turned 9 (when we moved, that's also when I stopped having friends), strongly interested in computers and technology (he is building a robot and already tried to figure out how his game boy worked as child), "cold and distant", lack of social skills (tend to be rude, misunderstood, etc). It got better when he started working (I understand why now, it's because you have to learn how to act "normal").
Grandfather and his father : Only interested in one thing, new technology (for their time, never liked computers but did love telly), built radios, my grandfather was obsessed with trains, could not stand change (his father could) but did not lack of social skills yet. Just a "special interest" and a tendency to have obsessive behaviours.


However, there are dyspraxics and dyslexics (and ADHD) among my family (apart from my uncle) who do not display these characteristic at all. They are highly social, never had problem with making friends, no strong interests, no obsessive behaviour, even no sensory issues, they just have difficulties with reading/writing or spacial skills (my dyslexic/ADHD cousin is a great example of that and none of her parents display any autistic traits, her father is mildly dyspraxic and her sister and mother are NTs).


Therefore, I tend to think that those of us who display autistic characteristic are either on the BAP or have HFA (or Aspeger). I am not qualified to make a diagnosis but I would definitely considered myself has being on the BAP, not everything is the consequence of my dyspraxia but it would be great to know if people with severe dyspraxia can have no other autistic traits than sensory issues and speech delay for example.
Some specialists (or so-called specialists) seem to create a continuum which goes from dyspraxia to autism with NVLD in the middle (since they claim that dyspraxic people can be "nvld"-like or asperger-like).

dyspraxia makes things hard. more hard than autism I think.

Do you think that it is common to be stimming when you have dyspraxia ? My uncle used to stim (don't know if he still does something close to stimming now) a lot when he was a kid and I still do it but my other uncle who has the mild version of the condition (though the severity of one condition usually depend on the way the doctor sees it) does not do it at all.

Technically I don't have dyspraxia. I have NLD, which has resulted in a lot of the same symptoms. I have difficulty telling where things are in relation to other things, as well as general difficulty with motor skills. Also, my gait is weird, like I'm wearing a heavy invisible parka.

I was diagnosed with it as a kid. I could still tie my shoes, ride a bike but yet I was diagnosed with it. One of the therapists said it was mild to moderate but I think it was mild. I even did PE too and soccer and softball.

According to my mother, I outgrew it.

Yup, I'm Dyspraxic.....got diagnosed when I was about four....

It was really odd though as I knew I had this condition that affected my co-ordination..but I had absoloutly no idea that there were these social difficulties often associated with it.....so when I found out about aspergers (I hadn't heard of the term until I read about it in my psychology textbooks for my degree) I was absoloutly convinced that I had aspergers....

Hence why I joined this site a couple of years ago actualy!

Now though I'm really just very confused! I certinaly have dyspraixa and all the associated co-ordination problems, and on top of that I have certain sensory issues (mostly with touch) difficulties understanding people in social situations and reading body language.....and well, you can probably figure out what I'm saying, various symptoms that sound more like aspergers that dyspraxia...

As to weather this makes me a dyspraxic with certain overlapping symptoms with AS, or someone with both dyspraxia and AS I have no idea....

either way I think I feel fairly at home on this site though!

And having not been here for a good while it's nice to see there is no a section for other neurological conditions as well....good work wrong planet!!

My mum thinks that I have 'mild' case of dyspraxia (and has recently considered getting me dxed), and I have quite a few of the 'adult symptoms' listed on the Dyspraxia Foundation's site (I'm a teen, but the other symptom list only goes up to 8 or 9 years old) but the list of difficulties on the link that ladyrain posted had 'numbers and arithmetic' as a definite difficulty. I have most of the difficulties described there though (especially the brain moving faster than I can talk thing, although if I think out what I say I'll usually forget what it is), although writing essays isn't usually a problem for me (aside from procrastination) and I can sort of multi-task (I'm not 100% on what can be considered multi-tasking). This said I do have problems organising what I'm going to say in a non-essay context, and pretty much everything in the dyspraxia collumn can apply to me to varying extents.
The symptoms of dyspraxia do seem to have a lot in common with those of ASD from what I can gather (my only experience of both that I know of is me (and I might not be dyspraxic or on the autistic spectrum), people on the internet and descriptions of what people who are dyspraxic and autistic are like (and symptoms)), so the decision that some specialists are making concerning co-morbidity is somewhat confusing due to the potential for people to have both.