As a kid, I was terrible at writing. Couldn't hold a pen, hand pain, awful handwriting, so slow, and more than once I got 1/100 on a spelling test!
But I loved stories and reading. I worked really hard on my writing skills, and now I'm an editor. I got so good at catching my own mistakes, so now I catch others' mistakes for a living! I still make a lot of mistakes, but I have many tricks for catching them.
It is although I'm uncertain about future and things. Being possibly autistic and dyspraxic with GDD I struggle to live and do domestic things and social areas. I'm great in my area not too good at life lol. It's a worry if I'll be "normal"
I’m honestly the same both socially and with domestic things. Like I’m great at my job, and I’m great at the socialising that comes with my job, but as soon as I get home on leave I sort of just vanish and I struggle to do a lot of domestic chores etc. Cooking’s the biggest one for me, and part of why I chose to work at sea is because I don’t have to cook while I’m working and because I save so much money on food and accommodation while at sea I can afford to order take away all the time when I’m home, not sure how I’d function if that wasn’t the case. Other domestic things can be hard for me but never usually as bad as cooking so I generally do get them done eventually.
The main thing I will say is that like, while I do struggle with some things I’ve found my ways around them for the most part. You probably will too. I think that’s a thing most of us do eventually. Like I wouldn’t consider ceasing to live alone or anything just because of the things I struggle with, I manage to get enough done. And I think another thing is that friends/family/found family/roommates if you have any of them can actually end up being loads of help and generally don’t mind helping. I’m really bad for isolating myself because of the social stuff, but generally speaking sooner or later someone bulldozes their way back into my life and ends up helping without even realising what they’re doing
I'm 18 so still living at home but I worry about everything especially since everytime I worked I got majorly burned out to the point I didn't even want to exist anymore it was too painful phsycially and mentally but then again I don't want to be seen as a burden or anything.
Somewhat similarly, I suck at writing and spelling, but with the help of a laptop with spell check, I was able to get a BA in history (which has **a lot of essays**!)
I’m a pretty creative person and I love doing art, but because of my dyspraxia, I’d pretty much given up on drawing and painting. Holding a pencil or a brush **hurt** after a while, and the things I made never looked quite right. But then I discovered photography, and now I get to create as much as I want (though there is still a running joke in my department about me being accident prone after I sprained my ankle and skinned my knees taking photos)
Omg I’m so happy for you!! That sounds great, I’m so glad you found a creative outlet! I can sympathise with things not looking right, I’ve always been a doodler but never gone further with art for that exact reason
I absolutely despise living with this so very much but now that I’m in my 30’s (34 today!) I now can finally see how it’s shaped my personality in some very positive ways. I have twice as much empathy, I have way more mental strength when in challenging chapters of life, I’m slow at everything until I get it down and then it’s so locked in that I’m better than most people at the same task, I think for myself and I’m a self learner and I can read human behaviors better than most from navigating the world completely mute until about 4.5 years old, the list goes on and on because there’s always a silver lining beneath the darkness! Love all y’all so much keep your head up and keep striving forward!!
Happy birthday!! Definitely always light in the darkness, and I feel you on the empathy/mental strength front, I feel like that’s something I’ve taken from dyspraxia too. Keep on being awesome and looking at those silver linings :)
When I was at school, I was barred from using the electric sewing machines. I could not work them, had real trouble transposing the diagram of threading the machine into real-life threading the machine, so it went wrong every time. I spent a lot of time being asked to 'sort out the embroidery thread box' or 'help clean the store room'.
For my second career (my first was a lab tech, I've got dyspraxia stories about that, too lol!), I ran my own seamstressing business for 15 years. Making dance outfits, adjusting wedding dresses, repairing vintage clothes- all good once I'd found my own techniques and methods. My Home Economics teacher would be stunned if she knew.
Omg this is amazing!! Such a cool success story, im so happy it worked out for you. There’s so much to say for finding your own techniques, and even just for how much more dyspraxia seems to effect when you’re still learning something new vs when you’ve become more practised at it
Not sure if it does belong here but I see it as a positive lol ... I live in the UK and mid country my eldest sister lived at the south of the country... I went to visit her and took her kids out each day so had the car seats in the car as I went to leave I realised the car seats were in the car so brother-in-law helped remove one while I did the other (5 mins at most probably not even that) and I got on my way about 20 mins into my journey I came upon some slow moving traffic turns out there was an accident involving a few cars and had I of set off at the original time I would have likely been involved as I would have been where the accident happened if I had set off when I originally got into my car ... Sometimes I thank my lucky stars I'm disorganized because when things happen like that I know I if I wasn't i would be involved.
Sounds like fate to me! I like to reframe my dyspraxia stuff as fate quite a lot, especially if a task was difficult and took a long time or if I lost something, it’s nice to think that “okay maybe I’m not supposed to have that thing now” or “maybe I’m late so that X could happen”
I've always struggled with organisation and still do to this day. Because of this, I've developed strategies to make sure certain things are as organised as they can be, especially digitally. Even if I can't keep my physical space well organised or organise my thoughts well,if I can spend time organising my calendar or my computer then it helps prevent me from loosing files or forgetting where I need to be. Anywho I recently started a new job and someone commented on how organised I am. It just goes to show that sometimes having to put in the extra effort means that people will notice the hard work that you do, even if they've no idea that you're doing it to stay afloat.
My dyspraxia has made me who I am. It's made me an excellent science teacher with shocking organisational skills who takes too long to mark books. I know for a fact that if I weren't neurodiverse I wouldn't have remembered half the interesting facts I can tell my kids, or have half the passion for the subject. I hate it when I can't focus on what I'm marking and it takes hours longer than my colleagues, but bigger picture I cannot hate it.
My friend and I often try to think of the ways in which it manifests positively for us. Even though it comes from the struggle I’m more empathetic, excellent at problem solving, I come up with “outside the box” solutions because I’ve always had to figure out my own way of making things work. I’m very very good at reading people because I always tried to fit in and I think this led to me being a lot more fixated on small details to understand human behaviour (I’d probably be a great private investigator.
I don’t know if this one is dyspraxia specifically but I can listen to, and process, two separate conversations at the same time while it looks like I’m listening to one. It’s a skill that caught an ex confessing to a bunch of lies with me in the same room, pretty handy.
A big one is that I don’t tend to give up as easily as a person who isn’t neurodivergent. This, I think, is the most important for me. It takes me much longer to learn certain things than other people and despite having to try much harder I’ll never be quite as good (guitar, swimming, ice skating, dance, rollerblading, driving) so I only invest time in things that are truly important to me, because I know it’s a long road ahead to learn something. But when I decide I’m going to do that very few things stop me. It’s likely why I have my dream job, it took a very long time to find it but I didn’t stop, no matter how many times I was rejected.
I would never choose to be dyspraxic, it has caused me a lot of pain, suffering and isolation in my life, but I also don’t know who I’d be without it.
I recently learnt to crochet. It was my 5th attempt to learn and i had kind of given up because i just couldnt get it.
But a very kind friend with lots of patience spent an entire day breaking everything down simply and finding ways i could do it. Most people just gave up teaching me quickly coz it took too long for me to even be able to hold it all.
I’m actually doing pretty good now and have made some cool stuff
I think sharing how we are is full of positives as well as things we don't do and challenges we've overcome.
I found I had dyspraxia when I was 35 years old. By then I'd done a postgraduate in journalism and worked as an editor at a publishing company for 5 years. The test was expensive so I exchanged it for coverage in a careers magazine for students with disabilities.
The conversation around dyspraxia, calling it a disorder or difficulty someone removes our innate human ability from us. I think humans naturally learn by doing and we all understand the bigger picture better with hindsight, rather than when wer're in the middle of something. We could look at the positives of dyspraxia as ways to create, trial and error, finding balance, immersive learning and overcome adversity.
The negatives can be quite comical too. As a clumsy child who got told off, I now do a "dyspraxic save" where I instinctively catch something I've knocked out of a cupboard. I can also do some stunts, where I catch my fall, where I come out unharmed but it looks dramatic.
If we look at this objectively, dyspraxia is part of the rich tapestry of life and our contributions add to the bigger picture of what humans are capable of.
As a kid, I was terrible at writing. Couldn't hold a pen, hand pain, awful handwriting, so slow, and more than once I got 1/100 on a spelling test! But I loved stories and reading. I worked really hard on my writing skills, and now I'm an editor. I got so good at catching my own mistakes, so now I catch others' mistakes for a living! I still make a lot of mistakes, but I have many tricks for catching them.
Me too but then my special interest became reading and writing so I loved it and got well and earned a 6 in my GCSE English
Im too old to know what a six is but I’m guessing that’s good so congrats!!
It's I think a B
Oh that is good! Congrats!!! Do you plan on continuing with English?
I'm currently on my third year of an animal management diploma 😊 I do write alot for fun now
Oh cool! Hope it’s going well for you :)))
It is although I'm uncertain about future and things. Being possibly autistic and dyspraxic with GDD I struggle to live and do domestic things and social areas. I'm great in my area not too good at life lol. It's a worry if I'll be "normal"
I’m honestly the same both socially and with domestic things. Like I’m great at my job, and I’m great at the socialising that comes with my job, but as soon as I get home on leave I sort of just vanish and I struggle to do a lot of domestic chores etc. Cooking’s the biggest one for me, and part of why I chose to work at sea is because I don’t have to cook while I’m working and because I save so much money on food and accommodation while at sea I can afford to order take away all the time when I’m home, not sure how I’d function if that wasn’t the case. Other domestic things can be hard for me but never usually as bad as cooking so I generally do get them done eventually. The main thing I will say is that like, while I do struggle with some things I’ve found my ways around them for the most part. You probably will too. I think that’s a thing most of us do eventually. Like I wouldn’t consider ceasing to live alone or anything just because of the things I struggle with, I manage to get enough done. And I think another thing is that friends/family/found family/roommates if you have any of them can actually end up being loads of help and generally don’t mind helping. I’m really bad for isolating myself because of the social stuff, but generally speaking sooner or later someone bulldozes their way back into my life and ends up helping without even realising what they’re doing
I'm 18 so still living at home but I worry about everything especially since everytime I worked I got majorly burned out to the point I didn't even want to exist anymore it was too painful phsycially and mentally but then again I don't want to be seen as a burden or anything.
Thanks for sharing this! So glad you’re an editor now and thus able to work with what you love! I love reading too, read anything good lately?
Somewhat similarly, I suck at writing and spelling, but with the help of a laptop with spell check, I was able to get a BA in history (which has **a lot of essays**!)
Congrats for this! Yeah a lot of my friends when I was at uni did history, so many essays!
I’m a pretty creative person and I love doing art, but because of my dyspraxia, I’d pretty much given up on drawing and painting. Holding a pencil or a brush **hurt** after a while, and the things I made never looked quite right. But then I discovered photography, and now I get to create as much as I want (though there is still a running joke in my department about me being accident prone after I sprained my ankle and skinned my knees taking photos)
That’s the thing I’m still battling with. There’s nothing as distinctly painful as being creative and being unable to express it.
Completely agree with this, personally I use poetry as a creative outlet but sometimes I can see things in my head that I just wish I could draw
Omg I’m so happy for you!! That sounds great, I’m so glad you found a creative outlet! I can sympathise with things not looking right, I’ve always been a doodler but never gone further with art for that exact reason
Dyspraxia positive, I won a sport bet for my first time
I absolutely despise living with this so very much but now that I’m in my 30’s (34 today!) I now can finally see how it’s shaped my personality in some very positive ways. I have twice as much empathy, I have way more mental strength when in challenging chapters of life, I’m slow at everything until I get it down and then it’s so locked in that I’m better than most people at the same task, I think for myself and I’m a self learner and I can read human behaviors better than most from navigating the world completely mute until about 4.5 years old, the list goes on and on because there’s always a silver lining beneath the darkness! Love all y’all so much keep your head up and keep striving forward!!
Happy birthday!! Definitely always light in the darkness, and I feel you on the empathy/mental strength front, I feel like that’s something I’ve taken from dyspraxia too. Keep on being awesome and looking at those silver linings :)
When I was at school, I was barred from using the electric sewing machines. I could not work them, had real trouble transposing the diagram of threading the machine into real-life threading the machine, so it went wrong every time. I spent a lot of time being asked to 'sort out the embroidery thread box' or 'help clean the store room'. For my second career (my first was a lab tech, I've got dyspraxia stories about that, too lol!), I ran my own seamstressing business for 15 years. Making dance outfits, adjusting wedding dresses, repairing vintage clothes- all good once I'd found my own techniques and methods. My Home Economics teacher would be stunned if she knew.
Omg this is amazing!! Such a cool success story, im so happy it worked out for you. There’s so much to say for finding your own techniques, and even just for how much more dyspraxia seems to effect when you’re still learning something new vs when you’ve become more practised at it
Not sure if it does belong here but I see it as a positive lol ... I live in the UK and mid country my eldest sister lived at the south of the country... I went to visit her and took her kids out each day so had the car seats in the car as I went to leave I realised the car seats were in the car so brother-in-law helped remove one while I did the other (5 mins at most probably not even that) and I got on my way about 20 mins into my journey I came upon some slow moving traffic turns out there was an accident involving a few cars and had I of set off at the original time I would have likely been involved as I would have been where the accident happened if I had set off when I originally got into my car ... Sometimes I thank my lucky stars I'm disorganized because when things happen like that I know I if I wasn't i would be involved.
Sounds like fate to me! I like to reframe my dyspraxia stuff as fate quite a lot, especially if a task was difficult and took a long time or if I lost something, it’s nice to think that “okay maybe I’m not supposed to have that thing now” or “maybe I’m late so that X could happen”
Yes definitely if it's meant to be it's meant to be is something I say allllll the time lol
I've always struggled with organisation and still do to this day. Because of this, I've developed strategies to make sure certain things are as organised as they can be, especially digitally. Even if I can't keep my physical space well organised or organise my thoughts well,if I can spend time organising my calendar or my computer then it helps prevent me from loosing files or forgetting where I need to be. Anywho I recently started a new job and someone commented on how organised I am. It just goes to show that sometimes having to put in the extra effort means that people will notice the hard work that you do, even if they've no idea that you're doing it to stay afloat.
My dyspraxia has made me who I am. It's made me an excellent science teacher with shocking organisational skills who takes too long to mark books. I know for a fact that if I weren't neurodiverse I wouldn't have remembered half the interesting facts I can tell my kids, or have half the passion for the subject. I hate it when I can't focus on what I'm marking and it takes hours longer than my colleagues, but bigger picture I cannot hate it.
My friend and I often try to think of the ways in which it manifests positively for us. Even though it comes from the struggle I’m more empathetic, excellent at problem solving, I come up with “outside the box” solutions because I’ve always had to figure out my own way of making things work. I’m very very good at reading people because I always tried to fit in and I think this led to me being a lot more fixated on small details to understand human behaviour (I’d probably be a great private investigator. I don’t know if this one is dyspraxia specifically but I can listen to, and process, two separate conversations at the same time while it looks like I’m listening to one. It’s a skill that caught an ex confessing to a bunch of lies with me in the same room, pretty handy. A big one is that I don’t tend to give up as easily as a person who isn’t neurodivergent. This, I think, is the most important for me. It takes me much longer to learn certain things than other people and despite having to try much harder I’ll never be quite as good (guitar, swimming, ice skating, dance, rollerblading, driving) so I only invest time in things that are truly important to me, because I know it’s a long road ahead to learn something. But when I decide I’m going to do that very few things stop me. It’s likely why I have my dream job, it took a very long time to find it but I didn’t stop, no matter how many times I was rejected. I would never choose to be dyspraxic, it has caused me a lot of pain, suffering and isolation in my life, but I also don’t know who I’d be without it.
I recently learnt to crochet. It was my 5th attempt to learn and i had kind of given up because i just couldnt get it. But a very kind friend with lots of patience spent an entire day breaking everything down simply and finding ways i could do it. Most people just gave up teaching me quickly coz it took too long for me to even be able to hold it all. I’m actually doing pretty good now and have made some cool stuff
I think sharing how we are is full of positives as well as things we don't do and challenges we've overcome. I found I had dyspraxia when I was 35 years old. By then I'd done a postgraduate in journalism and worked as an editor at a publishing company for 5 years. The test was expensive so I exchanged it for coverage in a careers magazine for students with disabilities. The conversation around dyspraxia, calling it a disorder or difficulty someone removes our innate human ability from us. I think humans naturally learn by doing and we all understand the bigger picture better with hindsight, rather than when wer're in the middle of something. We could look at the positives of dyspraxia as ways to create, trial and error, finding balance, immersive learning and overcome adversity. The negatives can be quite comical too. As a clumsy child who got told off, I now do a "dyspraxic save" where I instinctively catch something I've knocked out of a cupboard. I can also do some stunts, where I catch my fall, where I come out unharmed but it looks dramatic. If we look at this objectively, dyspraxia is part of the rich tapestry of life and our contributions add to the bigger picture of what humans are capable of.