Sometimes they finally do make progress when you least expect it.
This is so true
We watched all the other kids in our family and our neighborhood learn to ride bikes "early" while our dyspraxic ds seemed like he would never be able to get it. We didn't really try to either encourage or discourage practice at things like this (as in, non-essential life skills), but instead let him approach it when he was ready. Our ds is a quiet kid, so he tends to observe (and sometimes worry quietly) - but he's also a kid who, when he's ready, isn't afraid to try, so when he was ready, he got out there and tried and tried (and I was convinced it would never work lol), then I went inside the house one day for 10 seconds and he got it. Since that time, biking has been his favorite sport
We gave up on swimming lessons for him though when he was young. We had an ok set-up - our swimming program didn't graduate kids from each level until they were ready so it was normal to repeat, plus the levels "graduation" just happened whenever any individual child was ready - all the leveled lessons were at the same time / same pool - so for a kid like ds who struggled with swimming, it wasn't overly obvious to anyone except for ds that he wasn't making progress. The thing is, he was bothered by not moving up (he didn't make it past the first level at that point in time). So instead of lessons, we took him swimming with our family and worked on having fun in the water and gradually helping him with skills. Later on we found a different swimming lesson place that he liked better, and he got a little farther along. He's still not a great swimmer but he's gaining competence over time.
Best wishes,
polarbear
