He says before puberty he couldn't tie his shoes, and didn't know his left from right consistently. I think he is exaggerating a bit
He might not be exaggerating! My ds was very close to puberty before he learned how to tie his shoes and is now well into puberty and is just now starting to have an easier grip on knowing left vs right
This summer we did an "out of the box" therapy for my DS. It involved a "listening therapy" (specifically tomatis and I will say I have no idea still if tomatis is "snake oil" or not LOL. We did it anyway.) combined with "balametrics" and some other type of therapy (name which escapes me at the moment) designed specifically to help with proprioception and coordination. I have to admit DS is much more coordinated now
This is *really* interesting to me - thanks so much for mentioning it. My older dd went through a listening therapy (tomatis-like) when she was 5 as well as a Bal-a-Vis-X program and it helped her tremendously, but she has a very different set of challenges than ds - so I hadn't thought about any of this in relation to the challenges ds has.
[quote[he suddenly is "getting" the hang of true swimming (coordinating strokes, for example), etc.[/quote[
This is another reason I love this board and love having others share their experiences. For all the awareness that I have about DCD and my ds' challenges, I never until reading this put together his dislike of swimming lessons as being related to coordination challenges, don't ask me why! Now that you mention it, it totally fits with what he's told me about his struggles with swimming lessons.
even though knowing how to do jumping jacks or tying a piece of string, on the surface, doesn't seem like that big of deal - the general increase in coordination (and ability to do seemingly simple tasks that had always somehow eluded him) has given him confidence and he doesn't feel like a "fool" or an 'oaf' as much anymore.
I so totally understand that - being able to do a jumping jack *is* a big deal.. when you're a kid who hasn't been able to. My ds still can't do one - he'd love love love to be able to. Not that he cares about jumping jacks at all, but because he wouldn't feel so different from other kids.
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pbear
