Dyspraxia.

What is it? Is it contagious? What are we going to do about it? Momentarily that is what I thought. What even is it? The word didn’t even make sense and then I realized, I can figure it out.

Back in my homeschool days, my mom would help me break down the words to find the definition, so I went to the dictionary. The root word, the first word is dys. It’s word-forming element meaning "bad, ill, abnormal," from Greek dys-, inseparable prefix "destroying the good sense of a word or increasing its bad sense.” And praxia is suffix meaning "to achieve or to do (perform).”So, putting it all together now, it’s a bad performance, ill performance, abnormal performance, whatever you prefer. Wow, that sounds dreadful. Words hurt, huh? I will tell you that most of the time it’s degenerative, as you get older. It makes sense. I have found that some of these degenerate quicker than others, or get worse, I should say. Let me tell you. It’s not that scary. Here is an excerpt from the official U.S. website (founded originally in the UK):

Dyspraxia is a neurological disorder throughout the brain that results in life-long impaired motor, memory, judgment, processing and other cognitive skills. Dyspraxia also impacts the immune and central nervous systems. Each dyspraxic person has different abilities and weaknesses as dyspraxia often comes with a variety of comorbidities. The most common of these is Developmental Coordination Disorder (also known as DCD), a motor-planning-based disorder that impacts fine and gross motor development.

There are many early indications that a child is dyspraxic, and a summary below:

See! Not so bad. It’s nothing you can control, the fact that you have this anyway. This is not your fault. Dyspraxia is nothing you did. It’s something that just is. I will give you some tips and tricks on how I deal with my dyspraxia in a later article. Back to the significant symptoms. I will say, dyspraxia is caught earlier in children than adults. By the time we’re adults, we may have, like myself, already found coping mechanisms:

• Irritable and difficult to comfort – from birth
• Feeding difficulties: milk allergies, colic, restricted diet
• Sleeping difficulties: problems establishing routine, requires constant adult reassurance
• Delayed early motor development: sitting unaided, rolling from side to side: do not usually go through the crawling stage. (I went from not walking to walking in like a month. I never crawled. Ever…)
• High levels of motor activity: always moving arms and legs
• Repetitive behaviors: head banging or rolling (They would have called the preacher on that one, the head banging. On a wall, if it was just music, probably not.)
• Sensitive to elevated levels of noise (DING, DING, DING. If I hear someone chew, my head goes nuts. Also, when I hear Green Day’s cover of Bryan Adam’s Summer of 69. I was full on exorcist twist! I honestly thought my head would just stop working.)
• Continued problems with development of feeding skills
• Toilet training delayed?
• Avoids constructional toys such as jigsaws and Lego. (Those were the death of me…and possibly my family had I been a psycho)

Some people with dyspraxia have difficulty with organizing the content and sequence of their language. I had that problem all the time as a kid. And just so you know, this disorder is best diagnosed early. Again, I repeat. Know the symptoms and get your child, your nephew, or just know a kid who has these symptoms, get them some help. Direct them to the website. Get the word out there. Know the signs and don't ignore it. It may not be ADHD though they are in the same spectrum. Talk to a doctor. This was initially diagnosed in the UK, and it’s pretty rare to have (Congrats to those who have it). Most American doctors most likely do not know, so tell them about Dyspraxia. Tell them your story and share your symptoms.

Ever since I was a child, I had trouble with basic functions. The biggest one being oral issues. Symptoms of oral problems from dyspraxia include,

• May talk continuously and repeat themselves.
• May have unclear speech and be unable to pronounce some words
• Speech may have wild pitch, volume and rate.
• You can go to the website HERE !
• I have sometimes become so annoyed with the speech impediments that I vow to stop talking. (don't stop talking). That is dangerous advice right there. However, my pessimism came before I knew what it was and what I had already overcome. I had overcome a lot of these symptoms without even realizing it. I had trouble talking, moving my hands and particularly spatial orientation. God help me! I could not for the life of me move those little Lego looking toys to fit into the spaces. It was the most frustrating thing.

I've noticed, over time, it has gotten better. Because I can now fit the moon into the crescent shaped hole, but it's difficult for me to see where things lie in space.

I have trouble focusing, (I’ve been medically diagnosed with ADHD) trouble writing....So you know what I did? I wrote on Graph paper. For years now, I've been writing on graph paper so that I could write. So basically, the right and left hemisphere to have some communication issues. It’s nothing more than that. It has a name. It has no cure, though. However, adaptation has been used throughout centuries. Before cutting edge medicine was introduced, people had to adapt and overcome.

And now, to help you feel better if you’re still scared of how it’s going to affect you (it affects every one different) here are some people thought to have had dyspraxia. And some of them have been diagnosed. One of them you’ll recognize.

Daniel Radcliffe wishes velcro on shoes in place of strings would have taken off. "Why oh, why has velcro not taken off?"

Alex Molden

Cara Delevingne was the cover of Vogue magazine at 17 with dyspraxia! Don't ever let it stop you.

And last but not least, this dude.

Albert Einstein failed finals at 16 and couldn't tie his shoe laces.