How Dyspraxia might show up

Dyspraxia Traits Dyspraxia Struggles Dyspraxia Strengths
Gross motor (big movement) problems with movement/coordination
  • Trouble doing sports
  • Difficulty moving from place to place
  • Falling over a lot
  • Bumping into things
  • Problems with knowing where things are in space
  • Difficulty with complex physical tasks like driving
  • Good long-term/episodic memory (anecdotal, but anecdotally widespread!) - allows strong learning from successes and failures
  • Resilience - tend to persevere with challenging tasks (Walker 2017)
  • May be particularly hard-working or competitive (Walker 2017)
  • Creative approaches to solving problems
  • Some will excel at verbal tasks
  • Some are highly creative or artistic, and may have had to develop original ways to engage creatively
  • Big picture thinking - looking past the details of a problem to get to the overview
  • Good at strategising - ability to see the big picture helps with this
Fine motor (small movement) problems with movement/coordination
  • Finding complex fine motor tasks like tying shoelaces difficult
  • In some cases, difficulty speaking
  • Trouble writing and drawing
  • Dropping objects
Executive functioning problems
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Trouble following instructions
  • Low frustration tolerance
  • Difficulty staying emotionally regulated
  • Arguably everything on the ADHD slide (although probably to a lesser degree... unless they also meet criteria for ADHD, which 50% of dyspraxic people do!)
  • Poor short-term memory