Me And Dyspraxia (by sarah)
Those of you who know me know I am as clumsy as a clumsy thing stuck together with inept glue :/
I even got an award named after me :/ The Spym Award for the Most Spectacular Injury in the Field :/ (Mainly due to things like falling into a prickly pear patches and little things like tearing all the ligaments in my ankle and leg and being sent home on crutches). Add in the old getting lost in Ingleton (something I will never live down! It is not exactly a big place but I got confused and walked the wrong way - away from the bus/coach waiting to take us home).
But the issue is that even by this point I was no where near as clumsy as I had been! And I am less clumsy now. I remember the pain of being a child and not being able to run without tripping over, of ending up in detention because I would manage to knock the chairs off the desk at home time :/ We had to put the chairs on the desk to finish the day off and somehow I always took about five of them out on route to the door. (The draconian teacher who shouted at me over this was a primary school teacher - something I would be horrified to find happening to Jean - as it was the woman insisted I needed to go to a 'special' school and it involved the head mistress, my parents and an educational psychologist before she agreed that I was not retarded - just lazy).
PE was more than a horror - oddly not so much in Junior School though I was more inept - because the kids just sort of accepted it. No, the horror of PE came later.
Now I remember getting a pink crystal ball that lit up and tinkled at Easter People (a religious camp held every Easter) and this ball became a sort of obsessive life line for me. I think I was, what, eight years old? I thought the ball was a space ship for fairies and that they would help me.
I decided the first thing that needed sorting was balance and catching a ball. Being hyper flexible and small had meant my aunt had taken me along to try and get me gymnastic classes a few years earlier but I was 'not suited' so that went down the drain but I took away the idea of what I suppose was circuit training.
So I set up an assault course in our garden - not the normal type which involve lots of running and things but ones with fence posts balanced on brieze blocks, and a 'saturn ball' (a ball with a disc round the middle that you stand on and balance). All these sorts of things and I attempted to do this course everyday at least once without falling off of anything.
Then there was my magic ball; not being able to throw or catch was something that the other kids always picked up on and no one wanted me in the team for those catching ball games and I always ended up being piggy in the middle - a game I grew to detest and associate with bullying behaviour.
The ball was made out of little fused plastic beads, slightly transparent and in multiple layers. It was a mish mash of white to dark fuscia pink. I started by dropping in on the floor and attempting to catch it on the up bounce. Initially I never caught it. But I would try and try and my memory of it is chasing this ball around the patio as the light faded but it lit up on bouncing so it was ok.
Then I began to catch it - first one in five bounces and then slowly more and more. The boy next door asked what I was doing and I explained. And so then we began a game of throwing balls to each other over the fence and playing badminton with the fence as the net and things like that. These were fun but they only happened if he didn't have his friends over 😉
He then moved away and I was back to it being just me and my bouncy ball. By this point the light had stopped working but it still tinkled.
At some point I began catching it most of the time - this was initially done with both hands as I didn't really have the concept of left and right and didn't get that until I started playing guitar during my A'levels and then I would have to pretend to play the guitar to work it out!
But I began to catch it a 100 times with one hand then 100 times with the other. I then added in things like throwing it up and catching it and bouncing it off of the wall. Things continued to improve until I was pushing myself to catch it one hundred times in a row without dropping it at all, in all the different combinations - even roping my brother in to play catch with!
Of course there were a few blips with this and I didn't do it every day - just most - depending on how much time I spent playing with the kids in the street. My next door neighbour Micheal showed me how to rid my bike - I was 10 by this point and it took a lot of him holding the bike for me. The issue I had was the same with the balancing on the beams - I got like vertigo :/ Sort of a dizzy spell. But the more I did things the easy it got.
A big blip in it was when I accidentaly miss judged a football, treading on it and twisting my knee by treading on the damn thing instead of kicking it :/ This wouldn't have been too bad but I was on a cinder path at the time - all those little sharp fragments of burnt wood and coal ground into my knee and it was a trip to casualty. Fortunately we were in Wales and I got seen really quickly.
This was my first stint on crutches. (The second occuring not that long afterwards when I fell over the wheel of my own bike gashing open my knee on the wheel nut and chipping the knee cap! Told you I was clumsy).
The improvements I made where staggering especially when I think of the struggle I was having with reading and writing at the time as well which I was working equally as hard on. I had also had the hearing problems which had resulted in my speech needing work.
But even though I could now catch a ball I was still a little erratic at it and then the hardest thing - Secondary / senior school - no glasses allowed during PE. Now it didn't matter how much work I had done - I couldn't see the balls :/
PE was still a nightmare and then they gave the bullies large wooden sticks to chase you with - this was known as Hockey. PE became a moot point as I ended up on crutches and then on a walking aid for a year (yes again I know!). This was another football related injury 😉 I was given a pair of little patent leather shoes with little heels on them - the sort of thing people buy just-pre-teens as they are becoming all feminine and growing up :/ I'd never worn heels so it didn't occur to me that playing football on a parque floor that had just been polished was a bad idea. (this incidentally was the same ankle I killed later on during school and then again at University - this time however - I had seriously mullered the achillies tendon 🙁 )
The injury wouldn't have been so bad if the PE teacher hadn't decided to make me run cross country on my first day back with out crutches :/ That's right five minutes in me and a tree root had an altercation and the ankle that was still under going treatment was wrenched and racked all over again :/
Anyway the injuries are only semi-relevent due to hypermobility possible being related to Dyspraxia.
The things that really helped with my co-ordination during secondary education was the fact that in year nine (so aged 13-14) the school gave us a list of activities to choose from at Stubbers Outdoors center. Horse Riding did not appeal and as my swimming still was... erm.... "lets panic if we're out of our depth and not wearing a life jacket", sailing and rafting where out. This left archery and climbing.
Initially climbing - I spent most of the time clinging to the wall- vertigo, feeling like I was falling, getting dizzy was there again. But climbing I found I could do, it was that much different from scrambling across welsh mountains and as long as I didn't look down it was fine. So after the first week I started to find I could get to the top of the wall - then however vertigo set in when absailing was to happen.
But then I was asked if I liked roller coasters - the answer to which was yes! 'Pretend that's what this is, your safe on the line.' So that's what I did - the vertigo thing also affects me in cars but I used to just think of that as a roller coaster!
And then... the I found falling off was mostly fun (as long as you didn't crash into the wall at right angles to you with all the jabby hand holds on it.) And then I loved abseiling and then I found that the floppy twistiness of me made climbing easier! I had found a sport that I could not only do but that I was good at!
And then archery - it turned out I was allowed to wear my glasses! I started to actually win things which was a shock - it was around this time me and my friends started going on lots of camps and things. We did lots of climbing and archery and it even got me into canoes and kayaks and making rafts. Of course then due to guiding stuff I ended up working at Thriftwood Campsite where I ended up instructing the climbing! and archery!
I believe the climbing and really helped with my co-ordination and balance but that wasn't the end of it. When I got to University I found something else that helped - took me another leap forward and that was Wu-Shu Kungfu (I don't have a clue how you spell it but it basically a Chinese mish-mash martial art). I didn't actually do it for very long - just over a year what with crutches, back problems coming to the fore and stomach problems. But it did help drastically. It was a combination of Wu-Shu, physio, yoga, pilates and Chi-Gong (which I took up when Wu-Shu was obviously a no go anymore) that got me walking again after I had Jean.
I just feel that mostly the dyspraxia doesn't affect me that much - other than being a scatterbrain and getting lost still 😉 But it was a long road - I have included here the things I think helped me the most - in the hope that they may help others.
Wed 13th Oct 2010 2:51 pm 
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By Annikka Woods, Wed 13th Oct 2010 @ 3:04 pm
Now you've got me wondering if I've been suffering from Dypraxia. A lot of what you've described up here fits me too well. I also looked it up and I'm seeing things in there for all ages that fit. I think I'll have a word with my doctor next time I see her to see if it's a possibility....or if I'm just hopelessly inept at way too many things.
Thanks for sharing your story.
By sarah, Thu 14th Oct 2010 @ 11:00 am
The advice is - if your going to the Dr take information with as if they've been out of med school too long they may not now what it is 😉
By DCD, Tue 29th Jan 2013 @ 12:03 pm
Very nice post, sarah. These type of posts are really motivate parents like me to put more efforts in helping our children with Dyspraxia.
By sarah, Thu 31st Jan 2013 @ 9:33 am
Thankyou - that is one of the reasons I feel it is so important to share experiences on the blog.