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I'm on a Rollercoaster ride

struggling mum

Hi everyone, 

Something else has come up now and wondered if I might ask once again for your insights...

My son goes 4 days to a more specialised school and 1 day to mainstream. Went to first one for proper catch up meeting and pleased to say reported to be doing very well :-) Anyways, the teacher mentioned the possibility of dyspraxia. She mentioned the way he walks, lack of balance, gross and fine motor skills which I must say is observed at home. His always had difficulties in these areas and previously had some OT but was then discharged. 

I've looked at the page on here re dypraxia and I don't know if I'm suffering information overload but, I see there's similarities with Aspergers/High functioning but what are the differences? Understanding an individual can have both conditions, I'm now wondering if he has both conditions or is it possible the diagnosis of Aspergers/High functioning is wrong? 

I intend to go to the GP and ask for a referal to a paediatrician as the teacher suggested but feel I'm on a rollercoaster ride at the moment. He was diagnosed ASD a month ago. Obviously I will seek the professionals opinions but was hoping anyone can point me in the direction of being able to distinguish between these conditions so that I might have a fair idea first.

Many thanks for reading and in advance for your insights

  • My understanding (and I cannot find a reference to back this up readily) is that dyspraxia is often comorbid with autism (found together). However one of the diagnostics of autism is poor fine and coarse motor control (meaning for example shaky handwriting and awkward clumsy walking).

    Most people with AS on here and parents whose children have AS will be pretty familiar with this.

    It is apparently hard to distinguish the motor control behaviours in autism and dyspraxia, and people witrh dyspraxia exhibit poor social interaction for different reasons. Also people with dyspraxia tend to have poor short term memory, with AS memory is better.

    There is a book on Dyspraxia by Geoff Brookes, my copy is a second edition 2007 (originally 2005) and it is published by Continuum International Publishing Group (the ISBN is 0 8264 9235 5 ).

    Page 6 gives a definition that it affects ideation (forming the idea of a known movement to achieve a planned purpose), motor planning (planning the action needed to achieve this idea) and execution (carrying out the planned movement).

    I guess that's a thought delay causing hesitant or inadequate movement. There can be oral dyspraxia, slowing or preventing mouth movements, verbal dyspraxia, causing the wrong word sounds to come out, and motor dyspraxia which prevents or delays body movements.

    It doesn't help that the two conditions don't cross refer much. So I believe it is quite common for there to be difficulty distinguishing them. There is a web site for dyspraxia www.dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/

    Funny you get advice it might be dyspraxia. If only teachers could demonstrate a competent understanding of autism......sigh.......

  • I just wish to add I attributed my son's difficulties with co-ordination and motorskills to HFA but have I got this wrong? 

    Many thanks in advance