I feel like I get asked this at least once a week. The answer is long and complicated, because like other neurological conditions it functions on a spectrum and not everyone who is diagnosed with DCD/Dyspraxia presents in the same way, though there are some common attributes. But, of course, as soon as you launch into this long-winded explanation people begin tuning out; my husband is always imploring me to find simpler ways to explain things.
The most basic way I’ve found to describe DCD is: in people with developmental coordination disorder, the brain sends faulty signals to the body. It affects gross and fine motor control, and has a host of other potential co-morbidities (including ADHD, Dyslexia, etc.). DCD figures into learning and how one learns, but not intelligence.
I will go into some of these areas in greater detail in future posts, but really, the only story I am able to tell you here is my daughter’s – and she’s going to help me do that. (She loves video cameras more than anyone I know, and is a consummate ham.)
Wednesday is four years and two months old, and just this week she hit a new milestone: walking down stairs without holding onto a railing. To celebrate this milestone and to help illustrate what DCD is and how it affects our lives, we’ve made a short video of Wednesday tackling the front steps of our house.
Someone said that to me not too long ago as I was expounding about our journey and our struggles. We’ve only been on this trip for four years, but it feels longer than that. Not in a bad way, just in the way of parents, in that when a son or daughter comes along all too soon you forget what it was like before they completed your family and you can no longer imagine your life without them.
It’s only been three months since a neurologist wrote Developmental Coordination Disorder on a small square piece of paper and slid it across the desk to me, and I started on a journey of becoming intimately familiar with a neurological condition I’d never heard of. But before that there were other words “gross motor delays,” “motor planning issues,” “poor core control,” etc., and other doctors, and specialists, and therapists. It’s a road we’ve been on a long time, but one you never plan for when you decide to start a family. And it’s a road that’s changed my life so fundamentally that sometimes I just sit back and wonder at it.
I’ve had to become an educator, an advocate, a laytherapist, and so many other things I never pictured myself being, because almost everyone I encounter in the world is just like I once was, utterly unaware of DCD. Googling only brings that into sharper focus – as does my daughter’s broadening interactions in the community – and I’d like to maybe help change that, even just a little.
I’ve begun talking about our life with DCD on Facebook, but that’s not really the best place to share a journey, so I’m moving it here.
Lastly, just to the right of this post under Resources are links to all the DCD/Dyspraxia sites and groups on the web that have helped me most. If you’re new to this, like I once was, check them out, and I’ll continue to add to them as I find others of value.
In July 2018, our daughter was diagnosed with Developmental Coordination Disorder (a.k.a. Dyspraxia). As I scoured the internet looking for as much information as I could find, I discovered that not many people even know what DCD is. In the last three months I’ve had to become both an expert and an advocate. I’ve started this blog to tell the story of our journey and hopefully raise awareness about this condition that affects some 5% of the populace.