I finally found a PT about 40 miles away who is not certified in sensory integration but she has some of the same issues my son has with the pain after walking, so she understands the pain. She told me she has flat feet and she will check to see if my son does also. She has a 9 year old son who has very mild dyspraxia and is borderline low tone so she has experience with these issues. She says she can help my son and it is definitely not too late. She also said something about working on core strength and that the things she will do with him will help with handwriting and fatigue issues.

I am also trying to get my son into a homeschool drama class for middle and high school age students so he can be around other kids and have fun. There is no dancing required. The class description says they start out each class doing improv exercises and this is what I think my son is good at but he didn't have the chance to do much of this in the musical theater class he was in since age 4. His ability with improv and being able to copy people's mannerisms and typical things they might say in a comical way, leaving no doubt the character he is imitating, is one of the things I found so confusing. It made me wonder how it could be motor dyspraxia because I think this would require motor planning and he is able to do it without thinking. He was also able to do something on the test that seemed like it should have been hard for a kid with motor dyspraxia to do but he did it and it just doesn't make sense to me. I asked the neuropsychologist about this and she said sometimes people with dyspraxia can have "splinter skills."

I think those splinter skills made it harder for some people to believe he had this disability. I am so glad I finally got confirmation of this disability so he can finally get some help. I think he feels better now that he has proof that he is not lazy. He just has some problems that he has to work around that other people don't have to deal with.

Piano is one of those areas that he will probably always have difficulty with. I don't know that he will ever be able to memorize a difficult song to the point where he won't have to look at the music. While I am still able to play songs that I memorized in piano lessons many years ago, he has difficulty playing a song from memory that he did at his last recital several months ago. It doesn't seem to be just a matter of practice. He practiced that song (a relatively easy one) a lot until he could do it, but when he stopped practicing that song after the recital, he started to lose the motor memory. Motor related things just don't stick in his mind the way everything else does, but I know he can work around it as he did in dance, when he found he could convert the sequence of dance steps to verbal memory by naming each of the dance steps and using his good verbal sequencing ability to compensate for the lack of motor sequencing ability. It just made me angry when other people assumed he was lazy and not trying when I had already explained his issues to them. Sometimes other people, like the acting teacher, were even verbally abusive when he tried but was a little slower to learn the sequence of dance steps, causing everyone else to have to rehearse the dances more than they normally would have. I worried about how it would affect my son's self esteem as he is going into those middle school years that are difficult for most people. Dealing with people like the acting teacher has caused some anxiety because I am torn between the feeling of needing to protect my son and feeling like he will just need to get practice in dealing with people like this while he is young and has our support. I would have liked to find a support group in my area to help us deal with things like this, but there are none.

My son won't admit to having anxiety. He told the neuropsychologist during testing that he was not feeling any anxiety, but she could tell that he was anxious. I think he refuses to admit his anxiety because his dad never seems to have anxiety about anything and he doesn't want his dad to think he is weak. He told me once that he thought his dad thought he was weak and I could tell that this really bothered him. I think if he could just talk to other kids who were dealing with similar issues he might feel better about it.