Dore Talk

My 8 year old son has dyspraxia and has been on the program since March.  We had a really good spell for awhile where he was willingly doing the exercises, making progression with each one.  Focus during our homework times was also good, his tutor even noticed him getting more work done during their sessions.  I noticed last week a change in his attitute about doing the exercises and he's very whiny and resistent during our sessions.  I've been reading other posts about people experieincing a "regression" phase, but they are specifically talking about changes in moods, behaviors etc.  The only changes I'm seeing are when it is time to do the exercises and homework.  Both are a chore and a struggle and it is wearing my patience very thin.

Is this a sign of a regression phase?  I'm just looking for some hope from this rough patch we're in right now because we haven't seen much change in the 4 months we've been on the program.  We only had one assessment past our initial one, and our last one was due on 6/18.  Now would be an ideal time to have access to an assessment to get better idea if he's making any progress.  If anyone could offer any words of wisdom I'd greatly appreciate it.

Also, I had read on an older thread about a dyspraxia child complaining of stomach aches.  My son does this A LOT!  Is that a typical symptom of dyspraxia?  I just always chalk it up to he's worried about something (he's a worrier) and try to take his mind off things.  Just wondering if others with dyspraxia experience this.

Hi Texasmom,

My son is also dyspraxic and interestingly started the program pretty much the same time as yours.  We're continually switching between periods of co-operation and obstruction where the exercises take 3x as long as they should because he refuses to follow intructions or wants to do things his own way.

Having said that, we have seen progress.  I can see he moves better and picks things up quicker - more co-ordination.  While the results on his end of year report were a bit disappointing his class teacher said she saw a real difference in his work the last term, so his grades next year will be the reveal.  But it's a long time to go without concrete feed back isn't it?  I can see he's able to read for longer period of times without tiring which I put down to the eye exercises.

Re the stomach aches, my son also sometimes complains.  Says it's "tingly" or "pins and needles" in his stomach.  I usually just ignore it though on the basis it never puts him off his food.  I'd be interested if anyone else experiences this though and whether it's symptomatic of dyspraxia.  In all my reading on dyspraxia I've never seen it mentioned.     

Hi MACC this is strange I know and you may think I am mad or something but could this be psychological because of his changes emotionally and his ripening maturity. Not so much a regression but progression phase.

Remember that our children have been in their own fog or world all their lives to one degree or another and suddenly they begin to see the world around them from a totally diffrent angle they become more aware of what is going on around them and how they fit into the scheme of things. They develop new emotions and feelings they did not know they had and in children anything which affects them emotionally always shows up as stomach aches.

The amount of times I have had Leila at the GP surgery with stomach problems are too many to remember, during and after Dore. In the end they stopped on there own once she had developed a mind of her own and was happy with the person she had become.

The tingling I always look at as though you are waiting for something, but you do not know what it is, which is totally confusing for a child. Best thing to do is to ask him how he is feeling or what he is thinking when he gets them and just see if there is a pattern to them. If they are part of the progression phase then they will abate once he has passed through it as did Leila's. Ellie XXX

Hi texasmom - we too are in the dyspraxia bracket (although not diagnosed) we are also about the same way through the programme as your son. My son, Josh, has been through the phase you describe and I think we have moved on - he sometimes complains of stomach 'cramps' - not sure how he has decided this is the feeling he gets ?. He is very precise about exercises and he is very sure when it comes to deciding what the instruction/video mean for specific exercises. This often leads to arguments. We have seen improvement in movement and lots of mood/attitude issues. Doing homework used to be a major problem for us - I think this was mainly to do with writing and the effort required to do it. Any essay style work or descriptive writing would be met with major tantrums - I think to divert me from the homework and a bid to give up before we even started. It worked for a while and then gradually I learned how to divert issues back without losing my tack. Josh  is currently, very much into doing little writing activities eg he has a comic maker pack (ideal for doing 10/15mins of doodling or colouring etc) or little lists of recording collectable things.

I think its a psychological leap to overcome the fear of the writing issues and when the physical act of writing is not so tiring or painful he has changed his attitude (over time). I think I have learned to help by breaking down issues into semi enjoyable activites like the comic thing. Its a constant challenge for me but I think we have moved on a bit. Perhaps you could try some diversion style activities with homework to get to the core of the problem ? On the regression angle - about 6 weeks into the programme, we had a very nasty flu virus - it hit the whole family and especially Josh - he still did the exercises but following recovery he seemed to be back to the begining/prior to the programme in terms of behaviour and attitude. Gradually, he picked up and after several major arguments about exercises and anything else he could think of we have not looked back. Perhaps, your issues are just a phase which will pass ? I hope so.Hope this adds to the discussion.

Things are starting to improve a bit, I'm wondering if he was just tired last week or something.  He participated in a flag football camp last week and I think it took a lot out of him every day.  Over the weekend his attitude and performance improved, then lucky us, he came down with a stomach virus this morning and we are taking the day off from exercises.  I don't relate this virus to his stomach complaints, because that has been going on with him for years.  We are meeting with a pediatric neurologist who specializes in learning disabilities next month and the stomach pain issue will be one of my first questions.  My son suffers from weak muscle tone in his upper body and hands due to the dyspraxia and I'm wondering if some of the pain he complains about isn't muscular because his core isn't very strong.

We aren't struggling so much with the act of writing anymore, he has come a long way with Occupational Therapy and handwriting clinics.  But, Cameron does suffer from an expressive language delay, which makes it very difficult for him to make his points or even organize his thoughts into words.  It also makes reading comprehension extremely difficult.  We get short activities from his speech therapist and his tutor to work on those issues.  They aren't time consuming (unless he makes them so) and I feel like he should be prepared to do them.  I commend you for finding fun things for him to do to work on these skills, but I also want him to be accustomed to doing things he doesn't necessarily want to do because that is what they will expect of him at school.  I have reason for this way of thinking...

Here in the US, at least in our school district and in Texas, they have a specific model for learning because (and this is just my opinion but it is an opinion shared by many parents) they are teaching to the annual academic assessment given by the State beginning in 3rd grade.  So starting in Kindergarten, they begin teaching the kids by a certain learning model that prepares them to think as they need to in order to do well on this standardized test.  That is all well and good until you have a kid like mine (and all of yours as well) who doesn't fit their model and doesn't think or learn the way they want him to.  The "No Child Left Behind Act" is leaving lots of kids behind when it comes to kids with learning disabilities.  These kids don't fit the model but the schools are so focused on the results of this test that they can't adjust to help kids that don't fit the mold.  It is very frustrating.

I am hoping that by the end of the summer and the beginning of school that we will be able to see some improvement in attention/focus and in his language issues.  We are working with a private speech therapist and tutor to keep forward progress, but I'm hoping the program will enhance the therapy as well.

Thanks for the words of support!

texasmom - just to jump in here. Harry was diagnosed with Expressive Language "Disorder" and although we still have "off" days, these are usually followed by periods of wonderful speech. His speech and language have noticeably improved since being on the programme.

Hi Texasmom - Its such a difficult issue - fitting into learning boxes. We have just done optional Sats at school and Josh has done very well as he is very bright boy but the system measures all children as age expected levels - he is above average for all the tested elements - however from our earlier discussion you will remember I mentioned his writing is not brilliant (and his spelling is weak too).  The whole school assessment picture is an artificial one. Josh has a reading age of 16yrs ? not convinced myself, he is a very good reader but 16 seems a bit advanced.

I would be interested in hearing your news about the pain thing - Josh often exhibits 'over the top' feelings generally from pain to excitement etc. Most things which maybe a little uncomfortable seem to be hugely painful to him. He is a bit of a drama queen.

Does your son have a diagnosed issue ?/label - and how would he measure academically with his peers ? I do feel we have progressed well with attention/focus even for things which he does'nt want to do. Maybe your son will make a leap with this area. Are you doing the exercises as prescribed ?

Sorry loads of questions but I am constantly looking for patterns and signs in the dore journey.

Hi gillmi,

You are fortunate that your son tests well.  Mine does not, all his assessments are given with support from his teacher (questions read to him, given on one-to-one basis as possible), a writing sample of 3-5 sentences takes him 3 hours to complete.  Even with that type of support, he will miss things on assessments that his teacher knows he can do, because it just wasn't clicking with him that moment or he lost focus during the assessment.  School is just overall very difficult and overwhelming for him.  Fortunately, I'm a stay-at-home mom and am able to devote a lot of time and energy to keeping on top of his difficulties, fighting with the school for services he needs and working with his teacher to help him stay on track.  Otherwise, I cringe at the thought of what my son would be going through.

Yes, we were officially diagnosed with Dyspraxia in 2006 after we had been treating symptoms (low muscle tone in his hands, fine motor delays, speech delays) since he was 19 months old.  We were so excited about getting a formal diagnosis because it made all his difficulties make sense.  I thought it was such a break through for us because we could go to the school with a clear cut reason for his need for special services at school and they could help us with what we'd been doing privately for years.  But that was wishful thinking on my part.  Because dyspraxia isn't one of the 7 disabilities recognized by the US government and he wasn't failing by 2 grade levels (yes 2), the school originally turned him down for special education services.  Again, he didn't fit in their "box" and it broke my heart.  But I refused to take no for an answer because despite them telling me no, my son needed help and they were going to give it to him.  I had to privately have him assessed for his expressive language delay at the clinic where he does OT services before the school would even test him.  At no surprise to me, he did have a delay and I informed the school.  Amazingly, the school finally tested him and he qualified.  Once we got him into speech then he fell under the special ed umbrella, which qualified him for other services he needed, like daily content mastery where he works with a teacher one-to-one in a private classroom for a short period of time to work on things he's struggling with.  I could go on for days about how flawed our school systems here in the US are when dealing with kids with these types of disabilities.  It is just criminal.

Cameron finished on grade level this year to complete 1st grade, but at the lowest level of grade level in reading and math.  He has to work 3 times harder than his peers just to keep up.  I haven't seen any remarkable changes yet from doing the program and yes we are religious in doing our exercises.  In 4 months, we have missed 1 1/2 days due to illnesses.  We have stopped his OT visits since starting Dore because we felt it could conflict with the program.  However, I am having an OT assessment done next month to give us an idea of where he is compared to this time last year, when his last assessment was done.  I'm hoping that will give me a little hope that he's making progress with his coordination, balance and motor planning skills.

I'm keeping the faith because there is nothing more I can possibly do.  I'm tired though and I know he is too.

I'll keep you posted on what I find out about the stomach pain.  Hopefully we'll have a breakthrough to report soon!

Hi texasmom - thank you for giving me your background experiences - it seems against all the odds you are getting there - I'm sure you will see some improvements, you sound a determined person. Your experiences at school seem unbelievalble, I wonder why/how the school systems can't see lots of these issues earlier. I know my own experience has equipped me with signals which would highlight potential problems in a classroom situation. I am a teacher (not working as one at the moment) so understand the pressures etc but it still seems amazing to me. Josh has a very lively and determined personality himself and for several years his teacher tried to blame hearing problems for his lack of progress in some areas. My questions were always about the difference in attainment across his learning skills. It seemed the difficulties lay where writing and eye tracking were involved, yet the teacher continually badgered me to get hearing tests organised. My limited understanding of exactly what was going on in the classroom (I was not encouraged to be a helper mum - too many questions/ideas of my own I suspect !) did'nt allow me to observe his activity. When we finally discussed thye dore programme (March this year) the teacher suddenly became amazingly co operative and even listened to suggestions from me. It seemed to be a relief to know it was'nt her fault.

Keep up the work you are doing and I wish you the best. I'd like to hear about the pain thing. Keep posting.

On the pain issue - my son also has a history of overreacting to things that shouldn't hurt  In fact when he started Dore I posted on another site how he was recoiling and saying "ouch" every time I tried to help him into the right position - for example his feet on the balance board.  Reading your posts has made me realize that he doesn't do that anymore.  We also have a long history of having to take labels out of clothing - again he's wearing pyjamas this summer where I haven't had to cut the label out.   I'll be tuned into the stomach issue now.  I also have a feeling it's been a while since he made that complaint.

I don't think my son's dyspraxia was as severe as Cameron's or Josh's.  We've had great results in the 4 months he's been on the programme particularly with handwriting and reading.   Neither is quite there yet but there's been dramatic improvement in the size of his writing which is finally age appropriate and the amount of time he can read without tiring.  In fact, this week for the very first time in his life he has become a voluntary reader and is walking around with a book (though still using a finger to track).

So do hang in there, the changes will come even if it takes that little bit longer. 

Hi MACC - we have seen good results in many things - writing included - I think I'm now getting a bit demanding and not quite noticing Josh's progress. I must try and be more patient. He's doing great in lots of areas but the pain thing is still there for things as you say 'that shoud'nt hurt'. His reading has always been really good and he reads at every opportunity. One big thing that we saw this evening is Josh using a knife and fork - in the accepted way ! No big deal for most people but getting back to the pain thing, Josh complained it was painful to try and use a knife in the right hand. I think its easy to forget how difficult life has been for him and a reminder once in a while gives me a huge lift which, in turn, gives me a boost to remind him of his success. He also created a map for an imaginary game this evening with lots of labels on it - checking every now and again if he had the correct spelling. I think this is fantastic as pre dore he would have tried to hide the map rather than share it because he new the spellings would probably be wrong.

Great to hear of your success. Keep posting your signs of improvement. This kind of thing keeps me going.