When I was in my late twenties, I discovered that I had a disorder. My sister diagnosed me in the living room and it was both a shock and a relief to have it named.
Sarah is an occupational therapist, specialising in working with children. I forget how it came up, but I started reminding her about a game we’d played once in a hay barn and, as I described the incident, she made her diagnosis.
The event that I remembered took place on the De Jongs’ farm in South Africa. I was there with Sarah and my cousins Katya, Ann and Lisa. We were playing a game that involved climbing the bales of hay until we were near the tin roof, finding hiding places between the scratchy bales and imagining terrifying enemies looking for us: men with huge bulls’ balls. (It sounds like an incongruous image for a young children’s game but we were on a farm and the oversized genitalia on the bulls had been eye opening to say the least.)
I was the oldest of the cousins and was about eight. We climbed on our imaginary horses, each given an original name like ‘Midnight’ or ‘Wild Fire’, and cantered our way down the bales, evading our hunters. Well, the others cantered and trotted and leapt gracefully from bale to bale, while I brought up the rear, stumbling, tripping and taking a terribly long time to make the descent.
Each little girl leapt to the ground and turned to wait for me. I finally made it to that last bale and then stood frozen. I couldn’t work out how to get down.
“Come on!” the girls screamed. “They’ll get you! They’re right behind you!”
I needed longer. I needed to work out how to step down from the bale of hay. But my cousins were calling and the scary men with great hanging balls were just behind me so I told myself I could do it and jumped. Only I didn’t jump. My feet didn’t leave the bale. Instead I fell forwards like a felled tree and landed face first on the concrete floor.
The girls couldn’t understand what had happened. Why didn’t I just step off the bale? Why had I taken this face dive instead? Because I was the oldest they assumed I had done it deliberately, that it was part of the game. But it was simply that I’d tried to move too quickly.
Planning movement
As a child, it was impossible for me to do anything physical without first thinking it through. I had to know that I would bend my knees, put my hands down to the bale, shift my weight and step off with my right foot. Once I had worked it all out, I then had to deliberately send the message to each limb. Without that process in place, my body didn’t know what to do and I would fall, without even the self-preserving instinct to put my hands down first.
Three years old: knock-kneed and half-shoed!
Growing up, I assumed everyone had to go through this painful process and that I was just slower and worse at it than others. I knew I was clumsy and awkward, that I was uncoordinated and couldn’t catch a ball, but those seemed like character flaws that went with my tendency to daydream and live in my own world. In my twenties Sarah told me there was a name for this and that it was a disorder. Gross motor planning disorder, in fact. Or dyspraxia.
My OT sister is most impressed at the way I’ve coped with my disorder without any support or diagnosis. I put it down to persistence and stubbornness. Attributes that I have by the wheel barrowful. I didn’t learn how to walk down stairs until I was six. But that didn’t stop me. I’d sit down on my bottom and bump down a step at a time and only stand up and walk again once I was on flat ground. I did this in public places and at school because it was the only way I could manage the stepping down process.
High jump and escalators
High jump at high school was a nightmare. The teacher thought I was stubborn and disobedient but it was impossible for me to leap into the air. I’d go to the end of the queue of girls in navy undies and blue T-shirts, with my stomach twisted and my heart racing. She’d shout at me to hurry and to jump when it came to my turn and I’d run up to the bar, pause, and then run straight through it. Falling onto the mat in a tangle of legs and arms. I could as easily have jumped over that bar as flown into outer space. So she’d lower the bar and demand I do it again – with the same shameful result. And again, and again. The whole class stood around, laughing and whispering about the girl who couldn’t make it over a bar even when it was knee high. My cheeks grew redder and redder and I was acutely aware of my wobbly thighs as I ran again and stopped short, just like every other time. My brain urged my legs to jump but I just couldn’t do it – I didn’t know how to activate the right muscles or what to tell them to do.
As I write this other memories come flooding back: like arriving in London when I was ten and encountering my first set of escalators. Mum, Dad and my little sister all stepped on and turned back to me: frozen at the top. A moving staircase – this was a whole new level of pain. Dad had to run back up the escalator but he couldn’t get me to step on. It was physically impossible for me. They thought I was frightened and tried to reassure me but it wasn’t just fear. It was doing something enormously difficult at the best of times and having to time it because the stair I was stepping onto was moving away from me. There was just no way I could take that step. In the end, Dad picked me up and put me on the escalator. For the next few months I’d cry every time we got on the Underground and I knew there was an escalator coming. We learnt to find the lifts.
It’s not a hopeless story. I did learn to use escalators and I now can hop on and off almost as effortlessly as other people. It just takes me a long time to work out how to do physical things. I have to take baby steps and repeat them over and over and over again before they eventually become habitual.
Help
Apparently crawling as a baby is a really good way to wire your brain so that you don’t have these problems. (I never crawled.) So, if you have a baby, give your little one lots of tummy time and persist with them until they get the hang of crawling. And if your child seems to have real problems with coordination, take them to see an occupational therapist. There is help available!
Find out more about dyspraxia.
[...] name and a last name that differed from the one on my passport and birth certificate. I was an awkward and dreamy child and having a name that seemed to bear no relation to me made life even more [...]