AS and dyspraxia

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I have both aspergers syndrome and dyspraxia and apparently it's not uncommon for these conditions to co-exist in an individual. Indeed a lot of people with aspergers have physical coordination difficulties anyway.

What seems curious though is how dyspraxia and autism seem to contradict each other. People with dyspraxia struggle with organisation and routine, things you might associate with AS. There's a book on dyspraxia called Caged In Chaos which I think is a good description. I think a valid observation about AS would be to say individuals face an inability to handle chaos, hence the clockwork order and rigidity of the lives of some AS people.

Though I have an aspergers diagnosis, I'm not organised or rountine driven in any conventional sense, in fact I really struggle with these areas. I think because of my AS the chaos that often ensues is especially hard to manage.

I'd say on a whole my dyspraxia causes me more practical problems than my aspergers. Whilst I agree with most people here that aspergers is a difference not a disabilty and don't wish to be cured, I'd just lap up a cure for my dyspraxia if such a thing were to exist!

Anyone else have this combination or any thoughts about how these two seemingly contradictionary "disorders" can co-exist?

I don't think there's anything contradictory or inconsistent about dyspraxia and AS. Read about executive dysfunction, which is very, very common in AS. Many of us will be extremely disorganised on the large scale of life, whilst being hyper-organised and routine-bound in specific areas. I think it's quite consistent with having your brain intensely focussed on some things at the expense of other things.

LemonBloodyCola wrote (in part): Anyone else have this combination or any thoughts about how these two seemingly contradictionary "disorders" can co-exist? --- Lemon - Am ADHD Inattentive, central auditory processing disorder, and mild dyspraxia. That's just me. A lot of this comes down to how one conceptualizes everything, for example, in the area of Cerebral Palsy there is the idea of Cerebral Palsy and an associated condition such as ADHD or Epilepsy. http://www.associatedconditionsofcerebralpalsy.com/ - http://www.associatedconditionsofcerebr ... /adhd.html - http://www.associatedconditionsofcerebr ... izure.html - Other ideas: Venn diagram - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_diagram - , Deficits of Attention, Motor Control, and Perception - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficits_i ... Perception - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_skill - Part of the above may be a result of a kind of business turf war/economic walls between neurology (Motor Control) and Psychiatry (Asperger's) where the business guilds do not share information with one another and often one business guild will try to lock in the paying customer to its guild only. X-ref: The Not Invented Here syndrome which often comes down to it's all about money, not the customer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here - Minor gross and fine motor control difficulties often are ignored by many doctors who will not even use a term like dyspraxia but often misimply that clumsiness is normal for all human beings. It's my understanding that gross and motor control complaints by customers along the lines of why do they find playing guitar strings difficult or playing a game like Pick-Up-Sticks are often dismissed by many doctors as being inconsequential. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick-up_sticks - It's that kind of business ignorance which hurts customers who want good answers to gross and fine motor control difficulties. In contrast to medical doctors, dentistry puts a very high value on gross and fine motor control skills and the dental profession knows what dyspraxia is and what good motor skills are. Also, in the area of psychiatry, a lot of medicines used by psychiatry can cause motor control changes (cause clumsiness) and psychiatry may not wish to address the topic directly because looking carefully at gross and fine motor control difficulties caused by prescription drugs can be embarrassing to the guild (so the guild tends to ignore it all). - http://www.infinitywalk.org - http://www.balametrics.com/ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_therapy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_Fit - pgd