Lepa,
There are a lot of overlapping symptoms between dyspraxia and ASD (my ds is dyspraxic and dysgraphic). Our neuropsych has a chart that shows symptoms for ASD, Dyspraxia, and ADHD and outlines which symptoms are unique to each as well as which overlap - and there is a large overlap among all three. FWIW, there are two types of dysgraphia too - one is related to fine motor, one is related to challenges with visual processing. I don't know about visual issues and dyspraxia, but speech issues can occur with dyspraxia.
he is very cautious (but not clumsy), especially when climbing or walking over uneven surfaces. He was a late crawler and walker. He avoids games where lots of kids are running around; it seems to make him nervous. He was ambidextrous until four and didn't develop a proper pencil grasp until we encouraged him to start using one had for writing/eating/playing guitar.
This sounds very much like my dyspraxic ds. Even though he did eventually choose a hand preference, according to his neuropsychologist he's still ambidextrous. I used to think of ambidextrous as something that was really awesome meaning a person could write neatly with both hands - for ds it's the opposite - he is considered ambidextrous because he has a difficult time with motor planning no matter which hand he uses.
polarbear
