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Dyspraxia: A Common and Underdiagnosed Disorder

There are increasingly frequent consultations from children related to poor handwriting, spelling or calculation errors (forgetting their carryovers, etc.), not knowing how to perform a math operation they used to do well, difficulty remembering everyday habits, etc.

After the interview with the parents and the neurosensory-psychomotor examination, a diagnosis of dyspraxia is reached in most cases. This condition is little known among child development specialists and, understandably, even less so among parents. Dyspraxia is characterized by poor movement organization. According to the latest statistics, the most severe form affects 6% of children aged 5 to 11. There are no figures for milder forms.

It is observed during the execution of gross movements (climbing stairs, cycling, playing ball...), in manual movements (writing, drawing...), visual movements (skipping lines when reading, copying poorly from the blackboard...), verbal movements (certain dysarthrias...), and what is called ideational movements (not executing multi-step tasks in order, putting on clothes in the wrong sequence...). Children affected by this disorder have to make a great effort to do tasks related to movement, other children do them automatically, without paying attention and with full efficiency. While they have to make a great effort, and also, seeing their low executive level, they become demotivated and avoid these tasks, they get by, they show no interest...

Too often, they are labeled as lazy, distracted, unwilling to make an effort, or having low attention spans...

Children with this disorder have a very difficult time in school; they are required to perform at the same level as everyone else, in the same amount of time. They have good perceptual and intellectual abilities, but they have great difficulty expressing their knowledge, they take longer to write correctly, their handwriting is difficult to understand if they do it quickly, they change the sign or meaning of mathematical operations, they forget their carryovers, they don't master the systematics of calculations, they make many spelling mistakes... Dyspraxia can be solved in most cases. Treatment is more effective the sooner it begins. It is based on neurofunctional reorganization.

There is no medical treatment to resolve this disorder.