Could you actually have Dyspraxia (DCD)?

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12 Signs you or your child might have Dyspraxia, sometimes called Developmental Co-ordination Disorder.

00:00 Me embarrassing myself
01:26 Dyspraxia co-occurs with...
03:03 Can't catch a ball?
04:50 Can't ride a bike?
06:09 You've never been a natural...
07:25 Scissors, handwriting, and locks
12:30 Clumsy
13:17 Please don't stair
13:52 Can't stop movin'
14:19 Opening tins, bottles, and pulling crackers
15:20 Leaning toward people...
15:55 Movement is more conscious
17:24 Speech therapy
17:48 Attention, time, and following directions
18:06 Are you also autistic?

💛 WATCH NEXT 💛:

What Does Masking Neurodivergence Feel Like From the Inside?:

ACTUALLY AUTISTIC MEME REACTIONS:

📖 *Books I'd Recommend about Autism:

Aspergirls by Rudy Simone:

Different not Less by Chloe Hayden (read if you want to cry):

Unmasking Autism by Devon Price:

References:

NHS Dyspraxia:

The Dyspraxia Foundation (Dyspraxia at a glance):

NHS Dyscalculia:

What is the Nature of Motor Impairments in Autism, Are They Diagnostically Useful, and What Are the Implications for Intervention?:

Masking at Work for Neurodivergent People:

Autism and Proprioception:

Provision of Laptops for use by School Students with Dyspraxia:

Executive functioning: a personal perspective:

DISCLAIMER: I am a second-year psychology student and a late-diagnosed #actuallyautistic individual. I am not a qualified healthcare professional.

*Links with a star are affiliate links. The channel will receive a small commission if you buy anything on Amazon after clicking through with this link. There's no extra cost to you and any money will go towards putting out more content. I'd love to post twice a week and put more time into research for these videos. Thank you so much - I really appreciate everyone sharing their stories in the comments.

[imautisticnowwhat]

Happy Autistic Pride Day! 💛

Today we’re talking dyspraxia, sometimes called developmental co-ordination disorder. I hope this video makes a few people feel a bit better about the awful PE performances burned into their brains forever.

If you find this video helpful, you might enjoy this one on sensory traits of autism:

What Does Masking Neurodivergence Feel Like From the Inside?:

And if you haven’t chosen your fork yet…


As always, thank you so much for being here & sharing your stories and experiences 💛💛💛

[Scentofrain.]

I spent most of my life walking into door frames and furniture and getting teased for it.

[Born_Banjaxed]

I grew up with a resentment of team sports because kids would berate me and get frustrated with me for essentially handicapping their team- even though I was trying my best. I remember the rotten, embarrassed feeling so well. I wish we were allowed to do individual excersize during PE, I could have avoided all those times, which made me feel extra alienated from my peers.

[fightingfaerie]

Years, over a decade, before I got officially diagnosed autism, ADHD and dyspraxia at 25, I guess dyspraxia was one of the things mentioned when I was going to doctors to look at my feet, knees, ect in middle school.
When I discovered dyspraxia online later in life, before finally getting a diagnosis, I mentioned it to my mom and she casually said “Yeah, that’s what the doctors said when you were a kid.” Like??? How come I didn’t know? Why was it “diagnosed” but never actually written down? Why didn’t you do anything about it?

[elaine_of_shalott]

I don't have a formal diagnosis but I definitely relate to your P.E. experiences. I tried to adapt. When we were playing Soccer (football) I usually ran around playing defence. When 20 people were all running at the ball the ability to aim didn't matter, but that didn't satisfy the teacher. He made me spend multiple weeks standing next to the goal waiting for someone to kick the ball to me so I could kick the ball in. And yes this was counter productive. Instead of enjoying physical activity I was basically standing around and the experience was humiliating and it definitely turned me off the idea of a lot of athletics.

[megb]

My son has dyspraxia with severe ADHD. He learned gross motor skills easily, but fine motor is another beast. Trimming his toenails is torture for him and I still do it, and it’s still tough. He mastered putting on socks at 11years, pulling up blankets on himself at 12 years and I am so proud of him for trying so hard! Thanks for your wonderful channel!

[BrainyGreenOtter]

A few minutes ago, I didn't even know what dyspraxia was...

I cannot describe how RELATABLE this experience has been.

This is the most perfect description of me I've ever heard and you have no idea how much this has helped.

Thank you so much :)

[onyxstewart]

I'm autistic and always suspected I also have dyspraxia. Literally everything in this video applies to me. I have zero special awareness, zero coordination, very clumsy and constantly drop things, walk into things, can't throw or catch a ball, could never learn to ride a bike or swim despite having multiple lessons, terrible handwriting, take ages to learn new things and easily forget new things I've learned etc. P.E was absolute hell at school because I just could not do any of the activities.

[StephenBoothUK]

I have Dyspraxia, diagnosed when I was about 9 in 1979 (I guess I'm about 25-30 years older than you) with Lack of Coordination, the non-coordination aspects weren't really known back then (a lot of people still called it Clumsy Child Syndrome). The treatment I got for it was the traditional treatment of regular beatings (official ones with rulers and canes from the teachers plus unofficial ones with fists and boots from fellow pupils), being made to spend hours 'practicing' handwriting and bouncing balls off walls and catching them and geneerally being told I was lazy and not trying hard enough. My school teachers did try to tell me i was stupid until the educational psychology team at the council gave me an IQ test and I scored 165, then they gave me a different one and I scored 166. I've subsequently read a book called "That's the way I think" by David Grant that digs into the standard tests that go into an IQ score and he talks a lot about how neurodiverse people tend to have 'spiky' profiles, we can perform really well in certain types of reasoning but very poorly in others. I struggle with ceratain aspects of numerical and verbal reasoning. My spacial reasoning is weird in that it's good unless it involves my own body, throw a ball and I can predict it's path but not catch it, show me a load of parts laid out and I can see how they fit together, comes in really handy with flatpack furiniture but not much else, but I frequently walk into people and things, and I don't eat soup in public.

I was 28 going on 29 before I heard the word Dyspraxia and that was just due to a coincidence. I'd recently changed GP and my new GP was married to an educational psychologist who had told him about a course she'd been on about different neurodiversities, when he was looking over my notes before my first appointment with him he realised that what he was reading was what his wife had been talking about. He asked me if I'd meet with her so we could kinda compare notes, at the time there was very little about adults with Dyspraxia. We met, we talked, she gave me the tests and confirmed that what I'd been calling lack of coordination all those years was actually Dyspraxia.

I'd say that the non-coordination aspects have probably affected me more as an adult, I can type or use something like Visio rather than write or draw (my handwriting is abysmal and I can't draw at all) but my working memory is still very poor, my executive function is barely hanging on and I'm generally weird. If I'm with other people I'm masking (I call it my 'human act') but that just gets so tiring so it can slip and that scares people. When I feel it starting the slip my automatic reaction is to try to remove myself from the situation so I can process and recentre.

[TheWilliamHoganExperience]

I'm autistic, and one of the things I find endearing is dyspraxia. When I met my girlfreind there was something about her that immediately drew me in. Watching you trying to jump rope and wack that ball as child brought a tear to my eye. I can't tell you what exactly I'm feeling (I'm alexithymic) but it reminds me of her - the love of my life for over a decade - and counting...

=)

[CableGirl]

Being the last picked kid for PE teams did major damage to my confidence…

Now I know why.

But when I tried gymnastics when I was a teenager, I excelled beyond everyone else sooo 🤷🏻‍♀️

I need to be solo 🙃

[sewlilah]

I haven’t even watched the video yet but THANK YOU for making this! Dyspraxia is hardly talked about in the neurodiverse conversation and as a autistic dyspraxic I wish it was talked about more!

Now I’ll go watch the video 😂 your videos are always super helpful and I am so pleased I found your channel ❤

[angienuelle]

Relay races in school were sooo embarrassing for me! I just could not do them. I have very vivid memories of one during high school PE where we had to jump rope across the field, and I cannot jump rope, so I just swung the rope over my head, stepped over it, tripped, and did it again, until I finally came in last for my team. Also, stairs are the bane of my existence! I always have scrapes and bruises because I step really far back on the stair when going down because I feel like I'm going to fall. And I have to go up on my toes or else I feel like I'm falling backwards. But I've always been a toe-walker anyway. I didn't know about dyspraxia until now, and it definitely makes sense.

[UncaHyla]

Your handwriting is (A) perfectly legible -- the most important qualifier for whether handwriting is "good" or "terrible", really -- and (B) super expressive! All of your words look like they're having fun, bouncing around in a little college-ruled notebook meadow! I want to hug your handwriting! (Also loving the back-sass on the school paper that the teacher won't ever actually lay eyes on. Feeling seen . . .)

[thisismevox]

This is so relatable! The torture of PE, group sports in summer camps, etc. I also never learned how to ride a bike or swim even with attempting multiple times. And I suspect this could have something to do with how much I hate driving and stopped doing it in my early 20s. I've always been made to feel bad about that by various people in my life, but I found it too difficult and such a big risk (my life, other people's lives!) to make it worth it even after passing my driving test (which took me two tries!).

[kalieris]

I’m 53 and still don’t know how to ride a bike. And I definitely relate to what you described with PE and figure skating. And drawing and geometry. And braiding or curling my own hair. And doing things requiring fine motor coordination in front of other people. And dropping things and tripping over things and using stairs or step stools. And bumping into people and objects. And executive functioning issues. I wish I had videos from when I was a kid. I have no idea what my movements were like, just that I was bad at absolutely everything physical and was always being told to “loosen up” or “ just let your movements be natural” in exercise or dance. I mean, WTAF does that even mean? 😂🤦🏻‍♀️

[wiglafthegrnlander]

Very interesting! I was diagnosed with autism recently, I mentioned my poor handwriting at the evaluation and the lady told me about dispraxia. Last fall I had a professor humiliate me in class because of my handwriting. He looked at my quiz first, voiced his displeasure and then proceeded to go around the room and collect everyone else’s quiz before mine. I was dealing with severe burnout at the time, and I stopped going to his class after that.

[pusheenfever]

I always relate to so many motor issues, autism, learning disabilities videos and i used to beat myself up over it because i gave myself high expectations and barely be able to do the bare minimum and videos like these make me realize that its ok to struggle at things and its also ok to do things or ask for things that makes it easier instead of me obsessing over it and getting upset

[UnicornzAndLolipopz]

I was diagnosed at the age of 3 yet with my family and the proximal knowledge of autism at the time along with my ability to mask and my families attempts to mask my autism I had major imposter syndrome. This video, along with many of yours, have helped unveil who I am and all the problems I have in life. This video was a huge crack in my imposter syndrome, I had always been athletic and had practiced to be exceptional in sports yet the crack getting bigger during every section of this video. I'm glad to see I have dyspraxia as well!

[victoriacordeiro]

"Please, I urge you to create more videos about dyspraxia! It’s a condition that affects nearly 10% of the population but isn’t widely recognized. Your video was how I discovered that I’m dyspraxic, and it has truly changed my life. You have the power to raise awareness and help others like me—thank you!