User talk:Hazelcarr

I have looked at information for Dyspraxia many times and know that as a parent you are desperate for help. Reading many books over the years explanations may be very intellectual but never helped me because I am an "ordinary" parent. I started working in a mainstream school many years ago as a volunteer to support my son who had been diagnosed with severe Dyslexia. He was very clever verbally who could read and spell, but his handwriting was slow and he had difficulty forming letters. I went along with the diagnosis, by experts, as I was young, ignorant and taught by my parents to respect authority. It wasn't until over 5 years ago when I attended a course as a learning support assistant for the same school that I realized my mistakes. As a Learning Support Assistant I supported many children over the years with Autism/Aspergers, ADHD, Cerebral-Palsy, Dyslexia and other difficulties. Many years ago when I started as an LSA your main purpose in school was to photo-copy and laminate but now schools recognise the importance of LSA's. Working with special needs children over the years I realized that they all had similar degrees of difficulties as high motor activity, slow at processing (not following instructions) gross/fine motor skills and learning/behaviour difficulties. Failure in school inevitably resulted in the lowest self esteem children should never have to experience. I had been on many courses over the years and this week the course was about Dyspraxia and how to screen children. I listened as the tutor spoke about children’s symptoms and difficulties and realized that he was describing most of the children I supported every day. The most alarming realization was that I could see my son amongst them all. After the course I went home and hugged my son and apologized for my mistakes. My big grown up son patted me on the head, but looking back, probably doing this in the middle of a pub in front of your mates is a bit embarrassing.

Luckily the school I work in fully supported me to start a programme of exercises as recommended on the course. The first 6 children were screened, chosen, parents informed and permission given to take part. Children’s difficulties varied in severity but I chose some really nice exercises that looked good in the books, but had very little effect and this is where the problem started. No one tells you in books how to inform Parents, where to do the exercises, what resources you need, how long, what to look for and how long it takes to achieve a miracle parents are expecting.

The screening process we were shown was taken from the Maddeline Portwood book "Developmental Dyspraxia" and this is what I use today. Through experience and observation over the years younger children are highlighted without the formal screening who are having weaknesses and invariably go on to access the programme. The exercises I use are all based on dealing with all the difficulties at the same time. Children start jumping feet together, hopping on the left and right foot. We walk along lines and in and out of hoops for balance, left and right laterality, direction and listening. We use skate boards and skipping ropes and for tracking difficulties we use bean bags. The parts of the body that are weak are strengthened from the upper/lower body to the arms, wrists and hands (for handwriting). When the children did the exercises you noticed how one side was much more weaker than expected in most children. Once their body was balanced and stronger there brain was kick started. As neural pathways strengthened processing increased. Children need both sides of the brain to work together. The left side of the brain will deal with individual letters and the right side of the brain will put those letters into a whole (word) this was when I saw children writing in a continuous snake and they never progressed past the CVC stage. The programme continues for as long as children need it and as every childs difficulties vary in severity some children have been on for as long as 2 years.I found that if they did all the same exercises everyday the children strengthened there neural pathways and motors skills and any weaknesses that were left were then highlighted and corrected with specific exercises. Our programme has been fully supported by our occupational therapist as we are giving children support that they unfortunately haven't the funding or the time to support. They recommend staff from other schools to see what we are doing and have achieved.

The experts recommend that children should be screened no younger than 7 years old allowing for immaturities in motor skills. The truth is at this age it is too late and associated behaviours/learning difficulties are escalating and becoming embedded. Children will have already lost the chance to maximise their potential. Because of this they move steadily up the special needs register. I see children in Nursery and reception struggling at this age. You could leave these children for the recommended years, but through experience as a support assistant these children if observed at an early age to have obvious motor skills/learning difficulties very rarely progress. I know because my job was to support these children later in class. Children will be taken to the doctors by emotional parents as Dyspraxia is a medical condition and passed on to an Occupational therapist. The OC will diagnose Dyspraxia after every strategy and support in school has been exhausted. Parents will be advised and given a booklet with exercises in and told” Good luck" and yes! I have evidence to support this from professionals and parents. I was very lucky in that following the programme in the morning I was also supporting children in class and I was then able to see the difficulties in all areas, especially literacy. As children’s bodies became balanced with the exercises so did their brains and they started to write whole words and leave spaces. They also overcame their high motor activity (or were they able to sit and do their work without using avoidance strategies). Their neural pathways strengthened so did their processing and they begin to listen, follow instructions, keep up with work and behaviour wasn't a problem. Balance, perceptual, spatial awareness and tracking were all seen to improve. New friendships were made and most importantly they smiled as self – confidence grew. In our school through early intervention we have children in reception / year1 on a programme. We are now working at the same time on their phonemic awareness so that the gap between themselves and peers won’t widen too dramatically. I wish that every school could screen and produce an exercise programme because how many more children will have to wait be diagnosed with Dyspraxia / Dyslexia by experts and allowed to struggle. Children without MSD ask to join the programme because they can see how much fun we have and we are now a special club. But for many children they have to go home everyday and do exercises from a booklet (as recommended by experts) on their own, and this may be fine. I have got to say the most important difficulty of all was that over 80 children’s self esteem increased to superhuman strengths because they witnessed every day their own success and these children no longer struggled. The programme I deliver everyday is part of our school and it is fully supported. The importance of difficulties with MSD and our children make better progress. Staff have the ability to recognise symptoms themselves in class and together as a whole school we support these children with SEN. They are now a statistic for achievement not failure.

3 years ago I wrote a booklet about “Jack” to give out at workshops I held in school. I was constantly visited by staff from other schools and asked questions I never had time to answer. This resulted in me extending the booklet into a book of which I am still trying to publish. It is not medically based with long words, statistics, graphs and percentages it is about ordinary people. I am not claiming to cure children with Dyspraxia but I do understand it. You could take a group of children and give half the exercises to one and the other half none. The only way this would work would be in a clinical environment. There personality inherited from parents determines how they will deal with life. We know that every child is an individual with different experiences and they have different inputs from school and home. I could not sit back and do nothing for the ones with out the exercises just to prove a point. I only have my gut feeling and what have I been able to witness over the years in our school to know that we have made a difference too over 80 children. If anyone out there needs help e-mail me at

E-mail
Hi Hazelcarr. For your securiity I have removed the e-mail address above. If you would like Wikipedia editors to email you simple enable email in your "preferences" (using the button at the top of the screen). Putting your email address on display on such a public website as wikipedia is not a good idea. Let me know on my talk page if you need any help. Welcome to Wikipedia! Pedro : Chat  13:15, 22 November 2007 (UTC)