Dyspraxia Treatment – How Dyspraxia Is Treated
Dyspraxia is a treatable condition.
If you suspect that your child or an adult you are close to has dyspraxia, then you need to seek a local Speech Pathologist to fully assess and manage the dyspraxia treatment. Try to find a Speech Pathologist who is experienced in working with dyspraxia. Some Speech Pathologists will work only with adults or with children and others will be comfortable working with people of all ages.
A speech pathologist can help with dyspraxia treatment
Often an Occupational Therapist is invaluable for working with people with dyspraxia also. Sometimes Physiotherapists will work with people who have dyspraxic motor movement.
As for most conditions, dyspraxia is not a simple disorder. Individuals may have slightly different symptoms to other people and to varying degrees. Dyspraxia is often labelled as mild, moderate or severe and the specific dyspraxia treatment needed will depend on how severe it is.
Occasionally dyspraxia is so severe that people need to use alternative methods of communicating, such as signing or picture exchange or Alternative Auxiliary Communication (AAC) using high tech electronic devices. A Speech Pathologist who is experienced in working with people with dyspraxia can help you to determine what will work best for you and train you in the use of the chosen method.
Usually, however, an experienced Speech Pathologist can use a dyspraxia treatmnet that will get their talking going! In small children this might involve encouraging communication in general and teaching your child how to make the sounds of speech and then combine them into words and sentences. In older children they can also help with sound awareness and establishing literacy.
Most children who have Speech Pathology for dyspraxia will learn to communicate, using speech, fully and effectively. They will be able to be understood by other people, express their needs, achieve their full potential at school and enjoy their social interactions with others.
In adults a Speech Pathologist can help to make speech easier and more fluent and build up the amount of speech that can be used. A motivated adult, who is able to use his or her thinking skills, will be able to regain many of the communication functions that they previously used. Often this means that they can resume a full and enjoyable working and social life.
If, for any reason, such as financial or lack of available therapists, you are unable to access Speech Pathology, then this site is a resource that you can use to work with people who have dyspraxia to improve their communication. If you are able to work with a Speech Pathologist, then this site will help you to find extra information you need to understand the disorder and to inform other people such as teachers and carers.
Why Children Need Dyspraxia Treatment as Early As Possible.
Children develop their communication skills over many years, starting when they are just a baby. They are communicating when they make eye contact and vocalise baby sounds. They are communicating when they drop toys deliberately from their high chair for you to pick up.
When children begin to talk, there are windows of opportunity for learning each step in the talking process. When talking follows this pattern, they make the most of the brain’s readiness to develop. So, the closer a child can follow the normal course of language development the better.
From the time they are babies, children need to be storing up in their head a clear idea of what sounds are like. This is laying the foundation for good auditory (listening) processing skills. One way of helping this along is when they start making the sounds themselves as babies and toddlers. Children with dyspraxia need help to do this.
Where a child is having difficulty talking, she is missing out on untold practise opportunities to develop her skills. It is really important that your child does not miss out on these opportunities for too long.
They need practise at making sounds, saying what things are called, and putting words and sentences together. They need to be able to try out all the different reasons why we communicate, like asking questions, using greetings, making comments about what they see or hear. Children need to be able to answer questions – they will be asked lots of those!
They want to be able to draw your attention to things and will probably attempt to take you or drag you to what they want. They also need to share experiences with you and this is best done by talking.
If dyspraxia treatment is not started early then the whole communication process becomes frustrating and often children will resort to unacceptable behaviour, particularly with other children. This is hard on parents (as well as the children) as you see your child unable to say what they want or stand up for themselves using words. Parents often feel that other people are judging their parenting skills.
Quite often children with dyspraxia also have difficulty with comprehension in some aspects, such as complex sentence structure. They can be bright, intelligent children, but because they have not had the practise at using sentence structure it can be more difficult than would be expected. Children understand more sentences as they practise saying sentences and phrases. Children also miss out on a lot of useful information if they can’t ask the right questions.
For the same reasons children with dyspraxia can have lower than expected vocabularies (words they know). And because they have difficulty putting sentences together, they will also find it more difficult to tell stories at an age-appropriate level.
If treating dyspraxia is left until a child is aware of their difficulties then they can become very sensitive about their speech and sometimes lose confidence in their ability to be able to communicate. This can make them more resistant to attempting speech. They can also be practising saying words the wrong way for a long time.
It is really important that a child gets going with talking as early as possible – and they learn best by using interactive communication. So if you think that your child may be having difficulty talking, see a Speech Pathologist about dyspraxia treatment as early as possible to avoid these consequences as far as possible.
Thanks for explaining more about dyspraxia treatment optuions, it explained quite a lot of things I had been wondering about.
I have a 21 year old daoughter whom I suspect may have dyspraxia. She did not walk until she was two years old and had some speech therapy asl well. My daughter also had therapy to assist her withe the way she would stand as her knees would always bend and still does till this day! I suspect this beacuase she has many of the other characteristics. She graduated from high school but did not receive her diploma until she passed the EOG on her fifth try. My daughter is obsessed with wrestling which is the only contact she has with other people that she tweets ofte, she has problems grooming like combing her hair, brushing her teeth and cleaning her room. I alway that she was just lazy! To add t that, she doesn’t tie her shoes tighly but manages to keep them secure and she has poor comminication skills. My daughter is 21 but looks like she is 10. I must say that she has told me at time that she feels jealous of her older sister who is graduation from college in a monthe and that she feels like a failure. I hurt for her because I have felt powerless for quite some time. I was advised that she has certain disabilities but that she was not disabled and could work certain jobs. I tried teaching her to drive but she wrecked the front end of my car. Now that I think about it she was devastaed as I had to assure her that it was okay and that she was more important that the car. We live in a city where there is no public transportation so my child has no out let during the week when I work, so lacks social skills and the desire to mingle with her peer group out side of the internet. I don’t know how to help her!! Can anyone offer some much needed advise?
Hi, Elizabeth, Yes, dyspraxia is a highly likely explanation for the issues you have mentioned. With the visuo-spatial difficulties, the best person to seek help from first would be an Occupational Therapist who works with adults and who has a good appreciation of ideation dyspraxia. Life can be very frustrating for people with dyspraxia, which tends to make them keep to themselves sometimes. A Speech Pathologist should also be able to help, but too much all of a sudden might be too much altogether and overwhelm her, so my choice would be for Occupational Therapy first.