Dyspraxia
Dyspraxia, also known as developmental coordination disorder, is a neurodevelopmental condition that begins in childhood that makes it difficult to perform motor skills. It also causes issues with coordination. While there’s no cure, occupational therapy can greatly help children with dyspraxia learn ways to overcome these challenges.
Dyspraxia can cause a wide range of issues with movement and coordination. Some of these may be noticeable at an early age, while others may only become obvious as your child gets older. Dyspraxia can affect your child’s coordination skills, which can make riding a bicycle or playing sports difficult. It can also affect their fine motor skills, such as writing or fastening buttons.
Dyspraxia in adults
When it’s not used in the context of childhood developmental coordination disorder, the term “dyspraxia” has a broader meaning.
Healthcare providers may also use the term “dyspraxia” to describe movement difficulties that happen later in life because of damage to your brain, such as from a stroke or brain injury. Providers may refer to this as acquired dyspraxia.
How common is dyspraxia?
Dyspraxia (developmental coordination disorder) is relatively common. It affects approximately 6% of school-aged children.
Symptoms and Causes
Dyspraxia (developmental coordination disorder) can cause a wide range of issues with coordination and motor skills. While most people with dyspraxia show signs of the condition by the time they start school, some people have mild forms of the condition that are more difficult to detect.
Causes of dyspraxia
Performing coordinated movements and motor skills is a complex process that involves many different nerves and parts of your brain. Any issue in this process could potentially lead to difficulties with movement and coordination (dyspraxia).
Researchers aren’t sure of the exact cause of dyspraxia. But being born pre-term (before 37 weeks of pregnancy) and having a low birth weight put children at higher risk for having dyspraxia.
Verbal dyspraxia
Verbal dyspraxia (dis-prax-ee-a) is a speech disorder. A person with verbal dyspraxia has difficulty placing muscles in the correct position to produce speech. The muscles have not been damaged. The messages from the brain that tell the muscles what to do have been affected.
Dyspraxia does not affect a person’s ability to understand.
Symptoms
The person usually knows what they want to say, but has difficulty saying it. The wrong sounds may come out or sometimes nothing at all. This can be frustrating for the speaker as one word may come out correctly one minute and incorrectly the next.
A person with dyspraxia may:
not be able to speak or gesture at all
sometimes be able to produce ‘automatic’ speech, such as counting, common phrases or greetings such as “fine, thanks” or “OK” or swear words make searching movements with their mouth and tongue, trying to find the right position for what they want to say get stuck on a sound or word have speech which sounds ‘jumbled up’ and be difficult to understand have pauses and hesitations in their speech, and it may take a lot of effort for them to try and speak.
Causes verbal dyspraxia
Verbal dyspraxia is often caused by a stroke or another injury to the brain. It occasionally occurs alone, but is often associated with other speech and language disorders.
Does anything make it worse?
A person with verbal dyspraxia may find it more difficult to speak when they are tired or feel pressured to speak. It is important to give the person time to speak and don’t force them into trying to speak if they don’t want to.
Speech therapy.
A Speech and Language Therapist can assess your speech and provide practical suggestions for managing your speech. Your therapist may also recommend exercises.