New to the forum!

[gwenix]

Hi everyone!

I'm gwen, aka "gwenix". I am a middle aged tech worker (DevOps Engineer) who loves to game (board/RPG mostly) and sing (opera), among many other hobbies. I even knit/crochet, which I'm discovering is kinda marvelous given things. I live in the USA, in Pennsylvania (originally from Pittsburgh, but now in the Philly area.)

I'm here because when I was a kid, I was diagnosed with "Eye to Hand Coordination Disability", and had to go through quite a number of exercises to train my brain to be able to do fine motor skill. Like, even holding a pencil was hard! I distinctly remember a teacher trying to "helpfully" coach me on how to best hold a pencil, as though knowing the proper way was the solution to my problem. I still don't write pen and paper much, but my father wisely decided I should learn how to type and how to use a computer, and basically that's why I'm in computers now and type very happily.

Anyway, last night I was suffering from insomnia (happens from time to time) and thought back on that -- I'd never been able to find that disability online as an adult, and thought "maybe it's another name now" and found ... DYSPRAXIA! Maybe y'all have some idea of just how excited I am to have found this. Then I found this forum and it'd be nice to connect with others.

The exercises I went through seem to have largely helped, and I can do a lot of things I wasn't able to do earlier (like, as noted, knitting!) But I do still have some things like I'm very clumsy and occasionally just lose my footing. My eyes will occasionally flip out and wiggle on their own for a second, then go back to normal. Handwriting is PURE HELL, and letters just never come out right -- my scrawl still looks like a child trying to figure out how the letters are made. I generally avoid sports as a rule, that was just never something I could be good at.

Anyway, that's the quick 101 on me. How's you?

[Tom fod]

Hi Gwen

Welcome and glad you've found us, while there is less activity on here, it's not as fractious as some of the groups on social media and there's a lot of info and experiences detailed herein.

I found this forum back in 2011 when I discovered Dyspraxia in my mid 30s. It was 5 years old then

They tried to get me to hold a pencil correctly but I could never really get on with their way.

[Jim]

Hi Gwen,

Welcome to the forum. They made me use those ridiculous rubber grips designed to correct your grip on a pen / pencil when I was very little to. I found them very painful to use and reverted to my ‘wrong’ grip as soon as I was out of nursery/lower school. Sure, my handwriting is pretty crap today… largely dependent on the speed I have to write or the cognitive ability to keep up with taking notes or minutes etc. but who cares? Plenty of people with or without disabilities have frankly appalling handwriting too

I can touch type too, which is useful for my job but again my speed can be limited cognitively when I struggle to take in verbal information and type at the same time. Multitasking eh?

I’m probably the person at work who ought to do the least multitasking but in reality probably does the most… otherwise I’d be so slow and get nothing done

I’m not particularly sporty either but I do enjoy go-kart racing and to my delight I am relatively good at it. Although it does require co-ordination it seems to have fewer dimensions than something like tennis. Therefore the disadvantages of poor coordination aren’t as far reaching and I’m able to compete at a higher level and satisfaction.

But me in a ball court, football field.. swimming pool etc them I will suck, fall flat on my face … or sink.