Speaking - Incorrect usage of words.

[Pooky]

Does anyone else have this problem?

This morning looking for the welding gloves for the other half. I spotted one underneath an engine.

So I said "The glove is on the engine"

I have no idea why I said that when I can clearly see it is the engine which is sat on top of the glove

He is always picking me up for it.

[Daniel]

I tend to find my brain runs out of sync with what I'm saying and can get distracted by what's going on around me so I can take a word from what I'm seeing and insert it into a sentence about something entirely different. Generally I can get my words mixed up in any manner of ways. Next time I say something daft I'll have to remember it to post here! Perhaps we could all try to do the same and accumulate some good examples of dyspraxic speech in action!

[donnaf]

I'm always sayin stuff like that.
If theres an opposite word in my head to the one I wanna say, I usually say the opposite...on for under, up for down, east for west, left for right.....I can always find the wrong word!
Its like the right one comes into my head but straight after so does the opposite, so thats the one I end up saying!
My fella thinks it's funny. He generally takes the opposite of what I say as being what I meant to say

[nick]

I do the same. reverse the meaning of what i want to say and place a similar sounding word to the word that i meant to say. However, it is not a dyspraxic thing because it is very common amongst the NT's, and is just indicitive of the fact that we don't think in language and need to translate our thoughts into speech, so mistakes happen. A similiar one is spoonerisim when an individual might mispronounce a word.

[robyn]

i do thta, and i trip over my words, miss out words, muddle my letters, say left instead of right etc. my ed pyschologist said it was because of my disgraphia cause thats caused my a sequencing problem. i also do it when wirtting, for example I start writting the next sentance before Iv finished writing the first. Or if people are taling around me I start using their words in my sentance even though Im saying something compleately different to them.

[Greg]

I'm not so bad for transposing words. My tendancy if I get distracted is to say the first half of the word I intended to speak, but finish it off with anything that makes it a word. So if I was about to say "catastophe" I might say "catapult" (which in most contexts would make little if any sense)

[arthmelow]

I've found it a good yardstick for whether someone knows me well. If they do, then they usually know what I was intending. If they know me slightly, they make ask me to repeat it. If they don't know me at all, they ignore it and don't speak to me again :-).

What did drive me nuts is that people often found these slips significant, like Fruedian slips. So much of my teenage life "OH, so you ARE gay" or "OH, do you DO sleep naked" and other odd things.

I still misprounce syllables, but I think this is a combination of the dyspraxia and the hearing problems when I was little. So "f" comes out as "th, "v" comes out as "th" and a few others. But this is less annoying than the entire word or sentence slips. I tend to call the noticeable ones "brain farts".

[Greg]

A freudian slip is where you say one thing and mean your mother.

Sorry, couldn't contain that. Tell 'em a psychologist told you that 9 times out of 10 that's a load of balooney and the other time the evidence is still questionable :P

[robyn]

I think the ed pyschologist is perfectly right. i have a full write up of how disgraphia affects me and this fits in with that info. The pyschiatrist who diagnosed me with add also agreed and Iv read plenty that supports this.

[Ruth]

oh greg - ha ha! my dad did Freud when he didi his Psychology degree a few years back and boy did THAT make for some weird conversations!!!!!!!!eeuuugh

I do the word mix up thing all the time. My lovely hubby delights in being pedantic so loves all the oportunities he gets to correct me. ! Up for down, on for in, under, near, next to and occasionally tuesday. bathroom for garage, chair for cat just thinking of this mornings conversations.

You're right though arthmelow - my friends can understand and strangers look at me strangely.

I used to get so ANGRY with myself but now i'm like ' it's ok I'm special' and it no longer upsets me unless I do a real doosie. I have said some phenominally rude things by accident, much to everyone else's delight, you know where you get the words to an innocent sentence mixed up and say somethign outrageous.

I'm much worse when I'm stressed, of course, so presentations are great fun. My only solution so far is to have s script and stick to it, I know they say not to but the big problem is that often i don't notice I've done it until someone laughs or says 'Pardeon?'

sometimes I can teel I'm doing it and it seems that my tongue and brain just wont work together right and the only thing to do is stop and have a cup of tea!! seems to work.

[Pooky]

Ruth that is so indicative to me, my other half delights in pointing it out to me as well. It doesn't half fustrate me, especially when he always tells me to think before I say things. I sometimes feel like screaming out but I do, it is just my mouth seems to say different things to what my brain is thinking.

With all these similiarities I have with everyone else on here, I reckon I need to get my ass out of gear and down to the doctors to see about getting a proper test.

I had a 40min session with a stroppy educational psychologist (through the university, I didn't get a choice who to see) just before christmas. It didn't help that she started the session of telling me she didn't see the point in testing for dyspraxia She gave me about 30mins of wais (is it wais?) tests, and got really stroppy on the comprehension section with me and told me I really should know the answers seeing as I was doing a PhD The final conclusion on the report that was sent to me suggested there was nothing wrong with me and it was all down to self-confidence.

Not surprising really when all the wais tests are about logic and sequencing, and nothing to do with testing me on anything motor orientated. I know sequencing, puzzles, etc are one of the traits of dyspraxia but I don't really have any issues with that part, I mean I have a degree in Maths. If she tells me to repeat 1 4 46 7 9 10 backwards to her then it isn't an issue and I do that sort of thing all the time. I really love Suduko. The only part I struggled on was the comprehension.

I have since found out testing for Dyspraxia is supposed to be 2-3hrs long and considers so much more than those tests.

I will be really interested to hear about anyone elses experience on having been tested and the process which it involved.

Sorry for taking it slightly off-topic here, I just really felt the need to make a post on it as it does frustrate me all the time seeing so many similiarities with people yet having some stuck up psychologist telling me it was all in mind. If it was all in my mind I wouldn't have had several independant friends/boyfried tell me in the nicest way possible that they supected I was dyspraxic. I mean I know there is nothing I can do about it, but having an explanation for why somethings happen to you and doesn't to anyone else is just relieving to say the least.

[robyn]

I had a fab 3hrs with an ed psychologist when I was in uni. did all the tests you said and spoke loads, he asked tons of questions, not just me rambeling on. he diagnosed me with moderate dyspraxia and moderate to severe disgraphia, Iv since also been diagnosed with severe inatentive add with hyperactive elements by an equally nice psychiatrist who had me and my boyf fill in a questionare bout me and then he asked tons of questions too. If you feel you havent been correctly diangosed you should def go back and ask to see someone else. You could also try redaing up bout the related conditions too cause then if you think you have any degree of comorbidity then that would be a really good way of explaining why you need to see some one who will do a proper evaluation. Good luck!

[Pooky]

Sounds like such a better experience than mine.

I have explored more, and on self-assesment I tick the majority of the boxes. (Thinking of which has given me the idea to place the self-assessment on the site for people who are unsure whether to further in diagnosis). I have a couple of books on the subject, and when myself and the other half read them there were so many examples that were just like me.

I can't go back to the University as I am nearly finished and to be honest they were pretty useless and ineffectual. They didn't know how to deal with dyspraxia at first so they took a while and they sent me an appointment for dyslexia to which I corrected it, and finally sorted me out an appointment with this psychologist who incidentally told me she had somewhere more important to be at 7pm and wasn't waiting around.. They wanted to charge me some sily amount for it too, but I managed to get some funding for it in the end.

[robyn]

my uni support services were fab at dealing with all this, but my deparment were so bad. There refused to provide me with the lecture notes I was supposed to get, I was supposed to geta proof reader, and he was an ideot, it cost me so much extra time and effort just to fix his mistakes, one lecture told me there was he didnt think I should be entiled to any help and another was unbelievable over personal. It was so horrid! I took a year out, but Im maybe sorta thinking of going back to do my honours this year. I would like to, but I feel so scared by the idea of sitting through lectures, speaking in tutorials and having to do presentations. My heads in such a spin, Iv been saying all year that I dont want to go back and now...........arg!!!!!!!!

but def go chase up your doc and even if you think unis no use you could atleast complain that the person they sent you too was useless. the dore centre dose free assesments online, obviously there ideas are a rip off, but the questionares are free and were acurate for me. It would maybe me amunition to take to your doc.

Good luckx

[Ruth]

Pooky I'm sorry that your uni were so rubbish! definate grounds for a moan to their disability office of you felt like it. also all of my help has been free - can you do a course at Readingf only joking!!

It does seem that getting assesment outside of education is expensive - Daniel said about £300. Given the level of self exceptance my diagnosis has allowed me I would say for me it would be worth every penny. Mary Colley would be the woman to contact for advise with that I guess. We could certainlly do with finding an assesmnet route outside of ed.

I don't think you were given a full assesment. Mine took about 2.30 -3 hours and was full on for every minuet. It took me a long time to get through it all so my lovely kind patient psychologist made another appointment for me to receive the news - as I've said before I'd never even heard of dyspraxia before that day.

we started by talking about my life and she very gently unearthed some dyspraxic traits which she detailed in my report - which is 5 pages long, did you get a written report? then we did Loads of test some of which were easy and some were impossible for me but she was kind about the stuff I couldn't do.

When I went back she explained that it's the spread of ability in the tests which indicates dyspraxia. Most people score about 60 or 70 something in everything, I scored 94 in some and 4 in others. She said it was very unusual to see such a wide spread of ability and that it indicates underlying Dyspraxia. I was confused by this - if it's underlying then is it really there? At a follow up appointment she explained that I have severe Dyspraxia which I have almost fully compensated for hence the 'underlying'.

so that's how it was for me - possibly in more detail than necessary but it's nice to air it every now and then so I don't forget

hope it's vaguely interesting!! xx