I’m 32f was officially diagnosed in 2003 with no further disabilities other than some overlaps with autism and adhd (no official diagnosis). Over the past few years I’ve developed some concerning issues I’ve especially noticed them over the past few weeks following a recent holiday:

• if a surface looks shiny my brain automatically thinks it’s slippery so I start walking like I’m going to fall over at any stage (it doesn’t matter what kind of shoes I have on as an example).
• I’m getting worse with stairs in public places especially as I need to be holding a handrail at all times, if someone goes down the side of the stairs that I’m going up as an example then I completely shut down as I try to grab onto another hand rail (I also had an incident on my way home from the airport where some daft woman was just blocking the handrail to get out of the rain)
• I cannot do escalators at all
• my joints pop and click constantly (that might just be me in my 30s though) and my knees and ankles are in pain after long periods of standing.

I’m not sure if this is normal as part of dyspraxia (my parents helpfully didn’t tell me about my diagnosis so I received no guidance growing up- they just took me to the clinics as directed by my school at the time).

I’m at university to be an occupational therapist. My dyspraxia was missed as a kid and it led to me hating myself as a child because I couldn’t do what all of the other kids were doing. That influenced my decision to become an OT, because I do well academically (when I’m not under pressure in other areas and I can throw myself into it), and I want to help kids the way I should’ve been helped.

This is relevant because being at university Monday to Friday, I’m limited in what jobs I can do. I absolutely thrive in “sit down in front of a computer” type jobs, and I also thrive doing 1 to 1 work with young children. But there’s obviously no weekend office jobs around. And again, I can’t work in a school or pre-school environment on the weekends either. This means I’m limited to hospitality, retail and cleaning/housekeeping. I did once have a retail job in cell network store, we didn’t really have a shop floor to manage which was nice, customers would come and sit with us and we’d set up their plan on the computers, and grab their phone from the back. This was perfect for me, but unfortunately I moved too far away from this job and needed the money so got this hotel job.

For me, my dyspraxia is very much to do with my fine motor skills. There’s a bit of issue with my gross motor, I only learnt to swim last week aged 22, and bump into my boyfriend when we’re walking, but those issues don’t really affect my life. But my fine motor skills are the real problem. In most areas of my life I’ve learnt to just adapt. For example, I can never tie my shoelaces properly, so I just buy shoes without laces. I get overwhelmed with cooking, so I stick to one pot recipes where I can just throw everything in there and let it cook. I manage. Our house is clean and me and my boyfriend eat fresh, because Ive adapted. But in work, I lose the sense of control completely and it all goes to hell.

So, this job I got is based in a hotel. They have a restaurant and then 15 hotel rooms upstairs. I was originally taken on as a server but was absolutely terrible. Dropping drink trays, running food too fast and it sliding off the plate on the restaurant floor, bumping in to colleagues, spilling coffee on customers etc. The memory and customer service part of service was generally okay, but once I got overwhelmed by my dyspraxia related mistakes, I’d work myself up into a panic and then my memory and social skills would disappear too. I would start the shift happy, energetic and ready to go. I’d have a perfect couple of hours, then I’d drop something and be a mess for the rest of the shift. This happened every shift.

My manager’s said I couldn’t be a server, I agreed. They told me they didn’t want to let me go and that they wanted to try me in housekeeping as the housekeeping team upstairs were short-staffed. I was nervous given my dyspraxia but I need money, and I thought it’d be a good learning opportunity. I’m okay with general cleaning, but one thing I simply cannot do duvet covers. I end up in a huge mess, frustrated and crying on the floor. We have a system at home where my boyfriend does duvet covers. I do everything else in the house as he works 12 hour night shifts, but duvet covers are his job for my sanity. I’ll do the bedsheets, pillowcases etc, but the duvet cover is for him.

I thought the housekeeping training would be a good opportunity to finally crack duvet covers! The poor housekeeping supervisor tried teaching me so many times but eventually got frustrated and kicked me off doing beds. I ended up just doing bathrooms and floors. There has been staffing issues recently with housekeeping and I’ve been on my own at times. I’ve sort of managed duvet covers, but it takes me 40 minutes and I have to use a weird ass method where I practically climb into the duvet cover and pull the cover in from the inside. I know, it’s fucked up. But I’d only had 4-5 rooms a day so I was getting away with it.

Today I had all 14 rooms to clean, alone, by 3pm. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get away with it this time and I was in a state of panic the whole day. I stripped the beds, cleaned everything else in the rooms, and then called the general manager to meet me in one of the rooms. I held my hands up and confessed I couldn’t do beds. They asked how I’d managed other housekeeping shifts if I couldn’t do beds, and I admitted either the lead housekeeper was doing beds for me, or when I was alone previously I had gotten lucky getting quiet days where I could get away with spending 40 minutes on a bed. The general manager said we’d do the beds for all rooms together and she’d train me. Despite having her stood next to me and repeatedly showing me, I still couldn’t get the damn duvet cover on. We then tried pillow cases. I can never do the ends neatly but I’ve always gotten away with it. But my general manager saw how I was doing it and wanted to train me on that too. Once again, I was watching what she did but when I tried to replicate my brain wouldn’t communicate with my hands and I’d freeze. She said she was speechless and didn’t know where to go from here, particularly as I’d already been moved to housekeeping from the restaurant.

I could feel myself dying from embarrassment. It was so demeaning. I have a house, a partner and I’m studying for a degree for fucks sake. But I felt completely fucking brain dead in this situation. It was horrid. I held my hands out, told her I admitted defeat, and walked out. The relief was amazing.

I’ll need another part-time weekend job until I finish uni, but I’ve decided it can’t be cleaning or hospitality. Maybe retail but only if it’s the sort of retail where I’m based at a desk, like the previous sales-based retail job I had. I can’t do jobs that require hand coordination, and I’m relieved to have finally acknowledged that. I still remain confident that I should be okay in my career after I finish university, but having to work these part-time jobs in the meantime in soul destroying. They are all based around physical coordination and little hand-coordination tasks (serving in a restaurant, bed-making in a hotel, shelf-organisation in retail etc). I hate it. It’s been the hardest part of being a student for me. I’ve sometimes considered quitting uni so I can get a Monday to Friday office job, a job I can actually do. But I know I’d be harming my prospects long-term.

Hi everyone! I (28F) was diagnosed with dyspraxia about 15 years ago. Honestly, in my adult life it doesn’t bother me much - I don’t write, I don’t play team sports and I plan for regular breakage 😅

Only recently, I have been renovating a new apartment and the old hand and wrist pain has flared up - so much worse than it ever was!

My question is does anyone have any tips for dealing with or soothing this pain ? I’m expecting to have to continue working on the apartment for a few months and I’m getting slower and slower as the pain gets worse. Any tips you could share would be a lifesaver..

I 19f have been in the process of trying to track down my old dyspraxia assessment from when I was a child. My parents werent very hands on whilst I was growing up and when they were they were suffocating. The issue comes from they have lost my assessment and the assessor that did the assement no longer exists so I cant find a copy. I am in my second year of uni in the process of trying to get support however they refuse unless I have my formal assessment. The uni offered to get me reassessed however didnt inform me of the £350 fee that i cannot afford until a few days before my assessment . Now im stuck almost halfway through my degree with no support and fees that I literally cannot afford without going into debt

I forgot about this but I have personification and mapping. The mapping one works weird with dyspraxia.

Hi, I was recently diagnosed with dyspraxia. I also have ADHD and autism. In my report the OT recommended getting a full evaluation by a physiotherapist because hypermobilty/ low muscle tone are so common. Does anyone here have experience with a physio. What was the assessment like? Thanks in advance 😃

I have been diagnosed with dyspraxia my whole life. rn I am in college and to get there I have to stand on the bus for 40 minutes (very difficult for me as i have issues with balance) as there's never any seats, and then walk ten minutes. there is no other way to get to the college as i cannot afford a taxi every day. doing this four days a week, and then going out on the weekend, gibes me massive pains in my legs.

Does anyone have any advice on how to ease this pain? Most of the time I push through it, but sometimes it is just awful.

I've (M37) been diagnosed with dyspraxia when I was a child. I almost had to double years in high school twice due to extremely low grades at music, handicrafts and another similar course.

I've also been plagued my entire life with intense doubts of low self-esteem, leading to me basically not trying many new things, in particular hobbies that involve a physical component. But I also have these things, like low self-confidence and difficulty, whenever I need to plan a lengthy project at work. Are there other adults here who have difficulties with planning ahead? And who have fluctuating senses of self-esteem? I think this is related to my dyspraxia, as I've had this my whole life and my earliest memories go back to not being to do fairly simple physical stuff other kids could. Is this relatable to folks here?

Does anyone struggle to eat out of certain materials eg plastic Tupperware and rubber straws my brain just doesn’t like it idk why

18M and never really bothered but now I’m getting older and just learnt how to drive, I now want to learn. I want to try and be more independent so that I can bring value to a future partner rather than me not knowing how to do anything.

I’ve started boxing a few months ago, and we practice about 15min of skipping rope as a warm up. The problem is that I’m really really bad. Every 10-15 jumps I have to stop, either because my body just says “nope” and my muscles stop working or because the rope is tangled I don’t even know how I did that. Am I the only one? If someone has advice, it would be more than welcome :) Anyway let’s get back to the 15m of torture rope tonight!

i’ve never felt more useless and depressed and hopeless in my life i’m 16 years old in the UK and in college i failed my gcses so im doing carpentry in college everyone in my class is far ahead of me while i struggle on everything constantly needing assistance from the teacher and messing up and having to restart no matter how hard i try and practise i can’t seem to get better and get the hang of it of course im getting better and improved but so slowly and so far behind everyone else i cant keep up with them and its taking a toll on me because i just cant seem to get the hang of it and get better and complete the assessments with a pass im so lost and so scared for my future i dont know what to do

Does anyone have any experience getting a diagnosis as an adult? I’ve know I had dyspraxia since I was a child but I was apparently never officially tested for it

I live in Australia

This is a little bit of a rant as well I suppose.

I am getting sick and tired of having this condition. Tonight it took me best part of an hour just to iron some dress pants then got shine on them then unfortunately the crease lines didn't line up and somehow faded.

Is it a product of myself? I don't know. It's just not nice. I hate how long it takes for me to do just one task. I have autism as well so don't know if that factors in.

I hate it.

As a result I try and look for every little blemish etc when ironing and doing tasks.

I just am so sick of it though. It's not pleasant.

It also doesn't help that my dad puts a lot of pressure on oneself to perform to my best and berates me when I don't.

let's say I'm looking for an item, and it's in the closet, and I know it's in the closet, in fact it's right in front of me, you tell me that it's there

But I literally can't see it. Or I might watch it and not even realize it's the item that I'm looking for. I remember as a kid my cousin hided my laptop for fun, then he was telling me to look on the left, it was right literally right next to me, for 2 minutes straight I didn't realize it was there, he was telling me to look on the left and I'm like ''stop lying, it's not there'' and he was laughing while telling me that ''ITS ON YOUR LEFT LOOK!!'' and I thought he was fooling me and all of a sudden bam it appeared out of nowhere. I freaked out and I thought I was stupid or something. It was LITERALLY on the left side of me 1 meter away and I couldn't see it, how?

And once I was playing hide and seek with my friend and I LITERALLY looked at under the bed, and I'm like ''ight, she's not there'' and her mom LAUGHED FOR WHOLE 10 MINTUES NON STOP GOING ''HOW COULDN'T YOU SEE HER'' and it was super fcking obvious and easy to see her

Considering that Dyspraxia gives us a poor observation of surroundings, can this apply to this field? I just never heard anyone talking about this

I also have ADHD idk if it has anything to do with it.

TD;LR: Sometimes my brain is unable to find items even tho my eyes see it. An object can be in front of me and ill miss it out

Anyone here got experience with martial art/combat sports?

If so, which one would be easier for someone with Dyspraxia to learn?

i feel like people never understand how hard it is to live with dyspraxia , there’s barely any awareness about it and it’s just a drag to have to explain why you so clumsy all the time and why your so weak like i feel like it’s one of the hardest developmental conditions to live with which of course may be a bit of a stretch but i’m sure you’ll understand what i mean

My hands don't work like others do. I cant go 5 seconds at my job without dropping things, breaking things, wasting my time cleaning up after myself. I wasn't made for manual labour that requires a baseline degree of dexterity, I wasn't born with that.

But I'm struggling to get a job elsewhere. Could be that I'm making sure to disclose and ask for interview questions due to the melting pot of neurodivergant bullcrap I was born with. I mean I didn't disclose with the only paid job I've ever had now. So I suck at the job I have, and I can't get one anywhere else. It makes me teel so worthless, like I don't deserve to have any job. I am not useful. I cannot help people, either because my awful hands won't let me, or because an HR Representetive doesn't believe I'm capable of contributing to their workplace.

I'm sad. I hate being born like this.

.

Just curious.

Just curious to know about your strategies to deal with Dyspraxia.

I've noticed this thing that happens to me, where I just completely forget what I was doing when using screens and I go from one window to another.

For example, I might be scrolling through Facebook, see a an advert for the shop I have a credit card with, remember I need to pay it. I would then close Facebook down and completely forget what I was going to do.

I might be looking through Reddit, find an interesting post, and want to research it further. I would close the app down to open Google, but I'd open Google and then forget what I was going to Google.

When working on a laptop, and I'm using one window to take information from to put into a document. When I would change from the information window to the document window, I'd forget what information I need to carry over. I've largely solved this particular problem by getting a second monitor.

But it is weird. Is it a dyspraxia/neurodivergent thing? Has anyone else experienced something similar?

18M and don’t feel masculine because of my dyspraxia as I am so clumsy and awkward when it comes to sports. I don’t know how I can provide for someone when I have no physical skills. How can I show I am good enough to their dad when I’m so bad at everything?

So I have a job that’s pretty new in retail and it’s basically fulfilling online orders. Love the concept but it’s a lot of moving around. About around 2 ish hours I tend to be exhausted already….. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s my dyspraxia because I worked a job that probably required more than this job and gave me a break every 2-3 hours. Target actually helped me in that department. I work at Michael’s now, get paid 9 dollars and hour and most times I have to ask and wait to get a break, most times it’s over 5 hours in when I work 6-7 hours. It sounds petty but 15 minute and 30 minute breaks make a big difference. Like I feel much better afterwards. I finally asked why I don’t have any 15 minute breaks at all and only 30 minute breaks. They basically said I have to work 7 hours to get both. I know legally I guess they don’t have to give it to me but it makes it almost like torture. Especially when they actually take it seriously one day and then when it was my turn for a break my boss supposedly forgot.

Anyone have any advice on if we legally get an extra break because of have dyspraxia or even tips on how to pace myself? Also I worked maybe 12 hour shifts at target and was fine but apparently I’m doing worse now.

I just told my bf that I have dyspraxia and they now are asking me questions (what is not a bad thing) I just want to know how do you tell your friends or even teachers that you have dyspraxia a and how did you handle it

I had tests this week in school and I have to use a school issued laptop for the week to do all the long writing the pressure I feel from this ignorant bastard's walking into a room they immediately start whispering about me and why I have a laptop like I can't hear them I want to be normal