The Sensory Show 006: Dyspraxia, Praxis & Motor Planning
Praxis, motor planning and dyspraxia…whose making any sense here?!
I know these terms can be confusing and sound so technical, but these are the terms that describe why so many sensory kids are often misunderstood! I am going to break these terms down for you in this episode, so you can understand them and how they relate to sensory processing.
Let’s start with the term praxis.Praxis is the fancy medical term used to describe motor planning. It is defined as the ability to quickly and efficiently take in sensory information, process it and respond.
Dyspraxia is defined as “difficulty with motor planning”. Just to throw you off, there is also the term called apraxia which means that motor planning is almost absent. This is a term that was adopted most often by speech and language pathologists many years ago, relating to a child’s oral skills.
Praxis involves taking in directions or coming up with an idea, and then initiating and completing a new motor task. Integrated information from the sense of touch, balance and movement, vision and hearing are necessary for good motor planning. Individuals with motor planning problems have to think harder to complete new motor tasks because of poor information from the sensory systems. As a result of their need to work harder they might appear stubborn, lazy, defiant, defensive, clumsy, or inconsistent in their behaviors or actions. Some children may get very tired, give up, appear perseverative, and show a strong need to control their environment or act out due to frustration from having these difficulties.
Here are different types of praxis that may or may not be seen in your sensory child:
- Praxis on Verbal Command: the ability to easily process and follow verbal instructions.
- Postural Praxis: the ability to imitate positioning your body easily for gross motor movements, sports or games. This is seen often in the pre-k and kindergarten population, when the younger kids have a hard time keeping up with their peers when singing songs and learning the body movements for these songs.
- Sequencing Praxis: the ability to know how to get things done in order and complete them in an efficient manner, like being able to complete the steps of getting dressed or making a sandwich.
- Oral Praxis: the ability to organize sequenced movements of the mouth, affecting speech, drooling, feeding blowing (bubbles or whistles) and sometimes reading (to sequence sounds in order to sound out words properly). Information from the sense of touch is especially important for good oral praxis, as we need to feel our mouth, lips and tongue in order to use them properly.
- Constructional Praxis: this is a task which requires three dimensional manipulation. Difficulty with this type of praxis results in kids showing frustration when playing with blocks, frequent breaking of toys (as the toys just don’t move the way they expect) and difficulty dressing dolls, completing art projects and assembling toys that come with instructions.
Listen to this episode for more clarification and examples, as I can imagine you may have lingering questions.
Feel free to ask questions on this site at any time, I am here to help
Filed under: Episodes
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
I am trying to get some accommodations for my son at school.
My son is 10 he is in 4th grade and has a diagnosis of Dyspraxia, and sensory integration disorder. he has taken the WISC IQ test an he scored 129. We have worked with him and he has achieved great success and continues to try really hard.
His grades this year are all A’s in Math, Science and reading which is something to say considering he was almost below grade level in 2nd grade due to undiagnosed ADHD and undiagnosed learning disabilities.
He currently takes medication for ADHD and receives OT once a week privately. He has an IEP and received their services till last year when he met his goals. He still has an IEP on a consultative basis only. The problem is that even though he practices writing every night he has not been able to keep up with the writing required in 4th grade due to his dyspraxia and dysgraphia.
My son was given a C in writing this quarter, and he is really disappointed because even though he has an A in everything else this C will keep him from qualifying for Gifted services and pull out programs,which he really wants.
I was told by his therapist that she figured that at some point he would reach a plateau with his writing abilities and then he would not be able to get much better, and as the work got more complicated he would really struggle with written expression, no matter how much he practiced writing at home.
I was told he would need to ask for accommodations in the field of writing and written expression.
I don’t know what to ask for and what would make things more even for him . He is quite bright and has a great imagination, but now he is afraid to write his long and involved fantastic stories because he will make too many mistakes that he will not be aware of, so now he just writes a very short story because he can not take a chance on making too many mistakes and getting a bad grade. Please help us determine what accommodations would help my son the most.
maria
Hi Maria,
These are great questions. I would start by having an updated meeting with his school IEP team, as their job is to come up with solutions to help him be successful in school- including providing accommodations when needed. If he is not performing up to his expectation, then they may allow him to type on a computer, respond to some assignments by talking or telling a teacher versus having to write his answers out, allowing him to work at a different pace, or cutting back the strict grading criteria that seems to be causing him excessive stress.
Your local therapist may be able to give you some insight on how things work at his particular school, or you may want to contact someone who works with him and knows him already in his school that you trust, to ask them to guide you through the in’s and out’s of your school system, in his best interest.
Best of luck and never give up when one professional can not get him to progress any further in any given area. There are plenty of professionals that are always learning new ways to break kids out of the mold others place them in. The brain is very powerful and adaptable!