Published on 12, July, 2020
Never been actually diagnosed as such . When I was 6 my parents were persuaded to take me to Great Ormond street as my first school in Thailand suspected I might have what is now called cerebral palsy. This turned out to be negative and any further exploration of my difficulties was dropped. My prep school headmaster described me to my public school headmaster in 1969/70 as bad at drawing and writing(dysgraphia?) and badly coordinated (dyspraxia?) and my report card at Felsted(public school) said I was disorganised and messy(executive functioning difficulties). I was quite good at arithmetic, average at algebra, but really struggled with geometry and trigonometry. Nowadays such things would be markers for suggesting an evaluation by an educational psychologist, but back then there was no follow up to those observations.
What first pointed me to NVLD as a possibility, and also lead to the possibility of autistic traits, was searching about discrepancies in performance re verbal vs spatial/non- verbal. As I was curious whether that suggested anything.
Here is a list of things I know about myself
Social interaction problems.
Have difficulty with small talk and initiating conversations.
Only couple of friends in 3D over 60 years
Much better at verbal IQ questions than non-verbal/ visual spatial.
Not good at constructional/manual/practical tasks. Can’t do jigsaws meant for children.
Started doing well academically but gradual decline starting at 9.5
Had to have handwriting lessons.
Bad at sports especially gymnastics.
Have difficulty when it comes to organising and planning.
Messy and untidy
Poor sense of direction and afraid of going too far in case i get lost.
Not good in crowds as difficulty judging distances and get overwhelmed by the toing and froing
Poor balance- was nearly 14 before i managed to ride a bike.
According to my stepdaughter- walk like I’m drunk
Poor drawing skills.
Struggle with change.
Assorted mental health issues(general+social anxiety,depression,delusions, mood swings,paranoid thinking)
Many of those things have also been issues with me. I had a positive assessment a few months ago, but will admit that never a day goes by when I wonder whether it was worth the effort. Like yourself, I suspect, I had basically self-identified months before the appointment. I also doubt that self-identification every single day, but at the end of each day, I always seem to return to being convinced both I and my assessor got it reasonably right.
Now I must admit that when I first met that assessor, I realised quickly I was dealing with someone who seemed to personally know the score. Recently, I discovered that person was diagnosed dyspraxic relatively late in career. I would say that dyspraxia is very significant in my case, and I realised that long before I began to know what the label might be. I guess a great deal of that might be learning difficulties. What has always got in the way of that notion is that I'm a constant learner. But the hands don't always do well that which the brain seems to have understood. I love making and fixing things, and have actually done it for a living. But, I'm a rather haphazard craftsman.
It is all rather debatable whether a diagnosis is really useful with some older adults, and I don't really believe in trying to convince others against their own instincts. But one thing I've noticed myself, and in reports from many others, is that there are a lot of people working in this sector who have very personal experience of these issues. Perhaps that's why my assessor was recommended to me, by another name in the sector who also appears to personally know the score.