Understand Your Child

Specific Conditions - Dyspraxia

What is it?

Dyspraxia is a muscle planning disorder, not a muscular deficit. There are three (3) types of Developmental Dyspraxia - Oral, Verbal and Motor (muscle). Dyspraxia is believed to be an immaturity of parts of the motor cortex (muscle related area of the brain) that prevents messages from being properly transmitted to the body.

What are the features of it?
Oral features: Difficulty with planning and executing non-speech sounds, such as blowing, sucking or individual tongue/lip movements.

Verbal features: Difficulty programming, sequencing and initiating of movements required to make speech sounds. Get stuck on a sound or words and say it over and over again when trying to say something different. Have difficulty making sounds or repeating sequences of sounds or words. Make searching movements with their lips and tongue when trying to say a sound.

Motor features: Difficulty in planning, sequencing and then executing the correct movement to perform age appropriate skills in a smooth and coordinated manner at will or on command. Uncoordinated movements, poor body awareness

Common challenges experienced by those with Dyspraxia:
• Difficulty blowing out candles
• Poor articulation of speech
• Difficulty drinking through a straw
• Frustration with inability to communicate
• Impaired social abilities
• Look awkward when performing GM tasks
• Require more practice than typical to master GM skills
• Require explicit instructions
• Poor persistence to GM tasks
• Reduced self esteem
• Slow to complete work
• Fussy eater

Management strategies that support the child with Dyspraxia (at preschool, school or home)
• Consider one-to-one tutoring from a specialist educator.
• Use visual cues rather than long verbal instructions
• Make arrangements with the child’s school - for example, for them to take oral instead of written tests.

Occupational therapy approaches and activities that can support the individual or their carers include:
• Use a multi-sensory approach to learning, which means using as many different senses as possible such as seeing, listening, doing and speaking.
• Provide visual strategies and instructions
• Sequence tasks or components within a task with visual cues
• Modelling
• Problem solving strategies
• Specific gross motor activities to develop planning and promote practice
• Visual cues to support task completion
• Planning and sequencing activities such as block building, construction, 2D sequencing
• Story writing and strategies to assist with getting ideas on the page
• Strategies to foster independence