Sorry, I wish I could help you, but I do exactly the same thing, and this is at the age of 22, if you find a way to stop it though, let us know please.

Riddles

When do you do it? when you dont' have anthing to do? Is it for comfort? Our OT said "give her chewing gum" - hmmmm, kind of helps but it doesn't really stop her. Is there any pattern to when you do/don't do it?

Or son uses blu-tak. The educational psychologist told us this helps him concentrate better and it's his way of coping with it.

Hi Grace, that's really interesting. Do you mean he just holds a piece of blue, fiddles with it to take off the kind of nervous energy? did the educational pyschologist explain what is going on?

T ed psych told us that he had found that blu-tak helped alleviate his fidgetting and repetetive behaviour. He must use it as a coping mechanism.

Gonna say a scarry word but my son with Autism who is also being looked at for Apraxia, (my oldest son has a dx already) does the same things. We just think of it like us clicking a pen or twirling our hair. If its not causing problems I wouldnt worry, but if it is you might try to replace the behavior with something more appropriate, like writing the abc's or lacing bead necklaces. I dont think your dealing with Autism, thats not for me to say, but there are alot of remidies that work across dx's.

I do do this and always have, honestly the best you can do is to help her accept the way her brain makes her act.
As i've got older i've managed to hone my fiddlings to twirling of hair and rings but i still play and fiddle with any loose thing lying around if i'm given half a chance.
If it is a problem at schoolmaybe twirling a pen in her fingers would help but i've never met a dyspraxic who got rid of this symptom.

i agree with lv2bmom, sounds alot like autism, i would urge you to get an eval for autism, if it is then there are alot of services available for her that will help alot!

Its not a habit I am 53 and have learnt to control a natural thing. A habit is learnt and is changeable. This is not the same thing. Control comes with age, its not gone its controlled.

I do this at the age of 21. I always have. I was never teased for it myself, when I was a child - hope that reassures you somewhat. I think it possibly has to do with one's attention-span (one moves from task to task like a bee from flower to flower, that's the way my mum used to describe it) and with the fact that dyspraxics tend to have rather active minds (so far as I have seen) and need something to focus them on, no matter what that thing may be. Non-dyspraxics sift through incoming sense-data nd say 'this is useful, this is not useful', whereas dyspraxics (or me, anyway) get overwhelmed by a whole lot of unsifted data nd have to focus on something - no matter how relevent that thing is to anything.

I do this at the age of 21. I always have. I was never teased for it myself, when I was a child - hope that reassures you somewhat. I think it possibly has to do with one's attention-span (one moves from task to task like a bee from flower to flower, that's the way my mum used to describe it) and with the fact that dyspraxics tend to have rather active minds (so far as I have seen) and need something to focus them on, no matter what that thing may be. Non-dyspraxics sift through incoming sense-data nd say 'this is useful, this is not useful', whereas dyspraxics (or me, anyway) get overwhelmed by a whole lot of unsifted data nd have to focus on something - no matter how relevent that thing is to anything.

Sounds like OCD - I had it when I was younger, though not sure I know how I rid myself of it.

I personally suspect it was merely a symptom of my ADD. For that I HIGHLY recommend reading the book The LCP Solution as soon as possible.

I have worked with many children with dyspraxia, Autism, Aspergers Learning/behavior and many more problems. All these children have a degree of processing information difficulty.When a child is born messages go around what are called nueral pathways. When a baby first moves its arm to grasp an object the messages go around 5 pathways, over months these become a rapid response and messages go immediately from 1-2.Dyspraxic children unfortunately keep the 5 and instead of having strong pathways,have millions of weakened ones.Their body does the same, if you ask a child to run they flap and all the body moves and they become "Clumsy children" When processing information as a teacher reaches the 5th sentance in class they are on their 1st. If a child with processing difficulties gets to much information at once they over load. Children may concentrate on one thing (blue tack twiddleing, lights switching on and off, going under tables ect, YES! I have had this) means time to focus on that task alone to block out to much information. Many children are labelled Autistic because of this. I hope you read other comments I have written to other members aswell as it may help especially the one on obssessive behavior.

I forgot to give the answer to your question. Our school is now trained and aware of dyspraxia and the reason children do this. Children are dealt with in reception and put on the exercise programme. We take special needs children out into small groups so that they are not put in a posotion to overload. I forgot to mention that I realized that all the children who were part of the programme had visual (tracking problems) because as their body moved when they were babies the never got the chance to train their eyes to fixate and track objects. As school nurses only check focus this had been ignored. We had a boy of eight who was still having trouble after the programme. He was seen by an Optmetrist and after light therapy he is no longer struggling.