Helping Your Child with Dyspraxia
Dyspraxia is a neurologically based disorder where the child or adult finds it hard to coordinate physical movements with their body’s muscles. This is a three-part process involving thinking about the idea, planning out how to do the idea and then making the movements to do it. What is seen by others is a person who is likely clumsy, have fine and gross motor skill difficulties, poor handwriting, challenges copying text from a book or board, trouble dressing themselves and language difficulties. Having a tantrum or meltdown is common in children, as frustration and overloading occurs.
As a learning disability, the cause of dyspraxia is not known. What is known though is that there seems to be a genetic link and it is more commonly found in boys. The World Health Organisation says it affects around 6% of all children, but others believe it is closer to 10%.
Dyspraxia is not routinely screened for in New Zealand, and not widely known about. Often parents will pay for an assessment with a psychologist, paediatrician, or occupational therapist. Assessment via the public health system is very challenging to get unless your child has severe difficulties. The same goes for treatment, with most parents paying for private treatment or deciding to help their child at home themselves.
Ways to Help a Child with Dyspraxia
We’re not experts in dyspraxia, so recommend that you contact a health professional for independent support and help tailored to your child’s needs. We have though, made a list of activities and tips you could try to help support your child with their difficulties:
- Choose clothing which is easy to put on and take off. Elastic waist clothing, Velcro on shoes and avoiding buttons and ties will help.
- Focus on one thing at a time – when giving instructions, keep it to just one thing to do at a time. Using a lacing activity such as our Wooden Shoe Lacing Jigsaw or Wooden Lacing Cheese provide the opportunity for one task at a time to be focused upon. You can also break instructions down too – “push it through this hole.”
- Break tasks into small chunks – small chunks of tasks are easier to accomplish and less likely to create overwhelm.
- Repeat tasks – encourage your child to go back and keep repeating the same task over to develop their mastery of it. Stacking puzzles work well with this, providing an activity they’ll enjoy doing, with plenty of repetitive movements required.
- Provide a range of art materials – large chunky crayons, pens, stamps and tools are easier to use than small miniature versions.
The Dyspraxia Support Group of New Zealand’s website contains great information about what is dyspraxia, and an awesome list of learning resources that parents can access for ideas on supporting their children. While we don’t have specific toys for this learning difficulty, many of our educational toys will encourage your child to develop and practise skills they may have trouble with. If there is a specific skill you’d like your child to work on, please get in touch and we can suggest toys that you may find useful.
