While I was teaching special needs kids a couple years ago (without any training or direction I might add, god help the poor girls) I came across something called dyspraxia which sounded incredibly familiar to me, and explained a lot of the behaviours that I've been berating myself for since I was a kid.
One trained SN assistant scoffed at me for diagnosing myself on the Internet, a fair point, and said if I was dyspraxic I'd know all about it. But to a certain extent I have known all about it, and also I presume there are different degrees of severity, as with dyslexia.
I read through this list of symptoms and recognised myself in most of them, as did my husband. I was sure I didn't suffer from some, but he asserted that I did! Then at the end it says this: Many of these characteristics are not unique to people with dyspraxia and not even the most severe case will have all the above characteristics.
Eep! I'd be interested to see if anyone else feels they have or had a significant amount of these symptoms, as a friend suggested, which would mean that I'm not necessarily dyspraxic, or perhaps that we all are :)
I have looked into proper testing and treatment but in Ireland it's private and started at €500 and went up from there - so that's the end of that for now.
Still, it makes me feel that not all my flaws and fuck ups are purely my fault and makes it easier to get through the day. And when my mother in law says 'But WHY didn't you bring it?' I don't let it make me feel bad ( yeah right :) ).
7 comments:
a lot of those sound like typical female stereotypes - flappy awkward running style, bad at throwing and catching. ;)
I remember nearly crying with laughter seeing a woman in cork running past me one morning.
Everyone has some sort of syndrome nowadays, if i had one it would definitely be ADHD, I rarely concentrate on one thing for long and fidget, tapping my feet and playing with whatever is near me.
I've about 8 or 9 of the symptoms when I'm sober, and all of them except trouble putting on make-up (coz I've never tried)when I'm drunk.
I think many of them are purely part of being a human being. The ones I do have (especially the more mind & emotion linked ones) I'd say are common to an awful lot more people than let on.
BTW, putting a smiley face inside a bracket (yeah right:)) makes you look like you've a double chin, and I think you're being hard enough on yourself already:).
Erm, thanks for that, Tinman.
I did hesitate about it, but not because of the double chin. Now I'll have to walk round with my hand on my neck all day.
hehe, I tend to overuse brackets in my writing to try and make my writing clearer (like this).
Unfortunately brackets do ruin emoticons (hmm yes(or do they ;)))
Hey, can I be dyspraxic too, please? I've got almost all of those.
Well, you never know, CC. I wouldn't rule it out.
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