Hi Jen.
You've got it.
The idea of the spectrum is really interesting because it means there is no 'normal'.
Taking short-term memory as an example:
Everyone is on the spectrum somewhere, and everyone forgets things from time to time: they are not dyspraxic.
Amnesiacs forget things all the time: they are not dyspraxic.
Dyspraxics can have weak short term memories. These means on the spectrum different people can all say "I do that too!" but only in a few are there other areas where they say "I find that hard." and only in people where it is disabling is where "it" becomes an impediment to what you do, study, drive, etc.
Our dyspraxia gives us a variety of cognitive* problems, weak short-term memory being one, poor co-ordiation being the the typical and most well-known, but the example of Lucy and her mother is a good one. both have dyspraxia, but each experiences it differently as impairment of concentration or co-ordination skills. So dyspraxia affects different people differently. That makes it harder to diagnose. But what you can say is that on the spectrum each of our difficulties indicates dyspraxia but not all of us will share the same areas of difficulty.
The developmental history and questionnaires help demonstrate to the assessor why your problems may be dyspraxia because the problems will show through in all areas where you have difficulty and that it's not
just poor balance or poor memory or poor co-ordination which might indicatesomethign else but it is the total sum: confusing left and right, missing developmental stages, struggling to learn to write or ride a bike or retain information: all these things point to a learning disorder but if you don't have problems reading it's probably not dyslexia**.
And on the day, you're dyspraxia if that's what it is will show through because we can't help but be dyspraxic, it's how our brains are wired and process information. What we do is find ways to cope with that but it's not like we're faking it and the combination of the background history and tests performed during assessment give a picture of how you process information and control your body and that is what diagnoses dyspraxia rather than some other condition that may overlap with similar symptoms.
LJ.
Cognitive * - I starred cognitive because I was advised by my O.T that it is preferably when describing how learning disorders affect the mind and ways of thinking than using terms which might carry pejorative implications like 'mental'
It's good advice because as I've grown older, my physical symptoms have lessened but it's the cognitive co-ordination than remains a problem hence why structuring my writing is hard, it's no longer about holding a pen, which I can now do, it's about how my brain processes information. And it's still dyspraxia.
"probably not dyslexia" ** - remember this is a spectrum of difficulty, so someone with dyspraxia may have problems writing as dyslexics do, but the problem is not an inability to process the letters, it's an inability to correctly handle the writing down of what's in mind. Which is why dyspraxics can receive dyslexia support to help them, because in essence the two conditions over-lap.
