Dyspraxia In Children
What is Dyspraxia?
Dyspraxia is the difficulty with movement and coordination in a non-habitual motor task with the correct sequence.
Clients have difficulty learning new task but once they learn and it’s habitual they can perform it as part of daily life with adequate skill.
‘Praxis is the ability to perform and interact with the Physical Environment to Plan, organize and carry out the sequence of new actions.’
Praxis can be
- Ideation: It’s the ability to have an idea of how and what to do with an object.
- Planning: It’s the ability to how to plan to perform a task involving both motor and sensory
- Execution: Putting the plan into action and carrying out the task
How To Tell If My Child Has Dyspraxia/Coordination Difficulty?
Common Signs of Difficulty can be:
- Clumsy child may drop things frequently
- Slow development of skills like dressing, grooming or hygiene
- Slow with fine motor skills (picking up, holding or manipulating objects)
- Difficulty coordinating two sides of body for throwing and catching
- Lack of coordination of gross motor skills for hopping, jumping, climbing and riding a bicycle
- Slow skills of eating with mixed textures
- Poor skills with pencils and scissors
- Late/difficulty with school tasks
- Avoids new situation
- Poorly organized
- Easily frustrated
- May prefer talking rather doing
How Can Occupational Therapy (OT) Help the Child?
After an interview with parents and teacher and having a sensory history a standardized assessment is done.
The OT will observe the way in which the child performs motor tasks, including quality of movement as well as the end skill.
An Occupational Therapist may use Different Approaches to Encounter this Difficulty:
Sensory Integrative Treatment
This would involve the use of different equipment which provides the child to increase the opportunity to take sensory input from the environment. This sensory information provides feedback and improves body awareness as well as awareness of where the child is in space and body.
Perceptual-Motor Training
Exercises which can help the child integrate what they are hearing and seeing for quick responses to a situation.
Classroom Accommodations and Assisted Technology & Compensatory Skill Development
Giving a child with coping strategies to overcome difficulty and perform the task.
Cognitive Approach
Teaching problem-solving strategies for the daily living task.
If you would like to talk to our expert therapists and how treatment may help for your child please get in touch
- +971529997075, +97143460066
