Dyspraxia & Apraxia Support Group

The Dyspraxia Foundation describes developmental dyspraxia as "an impairment or immaturity of the organisation of movement. It is an immaturity of the way the brain processes information, resulting in messages not being fully transmitted to the body." Dyspraxia is a life-long developmental coordination disorder (DCD) that is more common in males than in females, and has been believed to affect 8% to 10% of all children. Ripley, Daines, and Barrett state that 'Developmental dyspraxia is difficulty getting our bodies to do what we want when we want them to do it', and that this difficulty can be considered significant when it interferes with the normal range of activities expected for a child of their age. Madeline Portwood makes the distinction that dyspraxia is not due to a general medical condition, but that it may be due to immature neuron development. The word "dyspraxia" comes from the Greek word "dys" meaning difficulty with and the word "praxis", meaning acting or doing. Part of a continuum of related disorders, dyspraxia is also known as developmental co-ordination disorder, and may also be present in people with autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia and dyscalculia, among others. Dyspraxia is described as having two main elements: Ideational dyspraxia (difficulty with planning a sequence of coordinated movements), ideo-motor dyspraxia (difficulty with executing a plan, even though it is known).

Due to poor muscle control, many people with dyspraxia have trouble picking up and holding onto simple objects-- quite often, objects literally slip through a dyspraxic's fingers. This disorder causes an individual to be clumsy to the point of knocking things over and bumping into people accidentally. Tripping over one's own feet is also not uncommon, as is a poor sense of balance in general.

Dyspraxics often have difficulty in determining left from right, and this may cause problems that persist through life. Cross-laterality, ambidextrousness, and a shift in the preferred hand are also common in people with dyspraxia.

Some people with this condition have poor spatial awareness in that it may be difficult to determine the speed and position of a particular object, such as potentially a baseball. The opposite is often true as well-- dyspraxics may have trouble determining the distance between them and other objects.

Dyspraxic people may have Sensory Integration Dysfunction, a condition that creates abnormal oversensitivity or undersensitivity to physical stimuli, such as touch, light, and sound. This may manifest itself as an inability to tolerate certain textures such as sandpaper or certain fabrics, or even being touched by another individual (in the case of touch oversensitivity) or may require the consistent use of sunglasses outdoors since sunlight may be intense enough to cause discomfort to a a dyspraxic (in the case of light oversensitivity. An aversion to loud music and naturaly loud environments (such as clubs and bars) is typical behavior of a dyspraxic individual who suffers from auditory oversensitivity, while only being comfortable in unusually warm or cold environemnts is typical of a dyspraxic with temperature oversensitivity. This typically occurs if the dyspraxia relates to an autistic or asperger's (high-functioning autism) or PDD (autistic-spectrum disorder). Otherwise, these symptoms tend not to be present in the individual who has dyspraxia.

Dyspraxic people sometimes have difficulty moderating the amount of sensory information that their body is constantly sending them, so as a result these people are prone to panic attacks. Having other autistic traits (which is common with dyspraxia and related conditions) may also contribute to sensory-induced panic attacks.

Dypsraxics (along with people who have similar conditions on the Autistic spectrum) may have difficulty sleeping since there is an inability to force the brain to stop thinking and "shut down". A dyspraxic is nearly always thinking about several unrelated things at once, so this may cause easy distractability and daydreaming. It is quite easy for someone with dyspraxia to concentrate entirely on a particular thought instead of on the situation at hand. For this reason, dyspraxia may be misdiagnosed as ADHD since on the surface both conditions have similar symptoms in some areas. Many people with dyspraxia have short-term memory issues and may forget instructions they received only seconds before, tend to forget important deadlines, and are constantly misplacing items. In spite of this, Dyspraxics are usually of average or above-average intelligence.

Also, people with dyspraxia can have trouble determining if people or situations are friendly or hostile due to related autistic conditions that may be present, and have generally poor social skills in general as a result. Conversation with sarcastic intent is often interpreted by a dyspraxic in a strictly literal sense. People with dyspraxia are not purely autistic in the sense that they normally desire to interact with others but merely lack the ability to do so to some extent. Due to this inability to understand other people, most dyspraxics find themselves alone because it may be more comfortable for them. This inability to be around and relate to other people may cause severe fustration in a dyspraxic that may manifest as unusual emotional immaturity in childhood.

People with dyspraxia have moderate to extreme difficulty doing physical tasks, and fatigue is common because so much extra energy is expended while trying to execute physical movements correctly. Some (but not all) dyspraxics suffer from hypotonia, which in this case is chronically low muscle tone caused by dyspraxia. People with this condition have very low muscle strength and endurance (even in comparison with other dyspraxics) and even the simplest physical activities may quickly cause soreness and fatigue, depending on the severity of the hypotonia. Hypotonia may worsen a dyspraxic's already poor balance to the point where it is necessary to constantly lean on sturdy objects for support.

Apraxia is a neurological disorder characterized by loss of the ability to execute or carry out learned (familiar) movements, despite having the desire and the physical ability to perform the movements. It is a disorder of motor planning which may be acquired or developmental.

Generally, treatment for individuals with apraxia includes physical therapy, occupational therapy or speech therapy. If apraxia is a symptom of another disorder, the underlying disorder should be treated.