My ds7.5 told me today that he doesn't want try things because he feels failing.
I think you meant "fears" failing? Not wanting to try something that he knows he will have a tough time with has been an ongoing challenge for my dyspraxic ds13. It took me quite a few years to realize he actually had a good intuition about the kinds of tasks which would be extroadinarily challenging for him compared to my expectations of neurotypical kids. Over time we've worked out a combination that helps us through the fear of failure preventing a start - I listen and ask ds questions to talk him through all the possible things that might happen if he tries and it doesn't work, as well as talking him through the basics of how to do whatever it is - and I'm talking really basic here. So that's ds' role in the system - he talks his fears over with me and that sometimes lessens them, and I help him mentally prepare by talking through how I, as a nt person, would approach and accomplish a task. A lot of the time he will give me feedback about some little tiny something that just doesn't work for him. One example is that he can't spit - that came up as a reason for not wanting to try something else that was so far-flung from spitting at first glance I never would have guessed he was thinking about it. The second part of this combo is my end of the deal - I need to remember that some very simple things involving coordination of body movements are not only not second nature for kids with dyspraxia, they can be very very difficult and take much more repetition than for a nt child to learn, and some movements might never become "automatic".
OTOH, some things that are difficult "now" may become easier to learn later on as he matures - we've seen this over and over again from crawling to walking to thing shoes to bike riding - he's learned how to do all of those things, they just took longer than for a nt child and they happened later in years than for a nt child. When we've run into things that were difficult like learning to ride a bike etc, the thing that worked for our ds was to back off completely and focus on other things - that gave him a chance to learn later when he was more ready to learn the skill, so when he tried again, mastering the skill came quicker. DS didn't learn how to ride a bike until later than the neighbor kids, so we did other things with him. Eventually there came a day when he asked to try and after quite a few failed attempts he got it, and today mountain biking is one of his favorite sports - so although he started later than the neighborhood kids it proved to be the sport that he held onto into his teens and he's now actually better at it than many kids.
So that's my 2 cents - don't push, find something else to work on if it's a struggle. I'm also guessing that it's going to be much easier to learn to ride after vision therapy!
Best wishes,
polarbear
