I find there’s a lot of complicated over-exaggerated jargon out there when it comes to giving people practical advice when dealing with issues. I think a lot of advice out there comes from a genuine place. But there are too many voices (amateur and professional) that can sometimes overwhelm you when you’re trying to figure out how to deal with some issues that have been plaguing you your whole life. Sometimes the best advice comes from the people most affected by the problem.
For me the best advice I ever heard to help tackle my dyspraxia wasn’t what you would think. It was as simple as this.
‘’Notice when you go into auto-pilot.’’
That little bit of advice was better than any physical therapy or memory game that I was told to do back in the day to help overcome my natural born weaknesses. Back in the day asking a child (especially one with dyspraxia) to practice physical therapy exercises everyday without someone standing there literally monitoring every second of the exercise is like trusting your mate when he tells you ‘’ill buy ya the first one’’ when you pay for the taxi to the pub, it’s just not going to happen.
I’m not saying those things don’t help. For people with severe dyspraxia it’s probably the case that without physical therapy those poor people just couldn’t cope in life. As someone who has had the disorder for as long as I’ve been falling over flat surfaces, I’ve had to deal with the joys of being naturally clumsy, unorganised and un-focused my whole life, so after 29 years of ‘clumsy child syndrome’ I think I’m authorized to give my own version of ‘’notice when you go into auto-pilot’’ dyspraxia advice.
As the title suggests, my advice to you is simple. Whether you’re at work or school, pick up the nearest pen to you and hold onto it for the day. If you get to the end of the day and still have that pen in your possession then you my friend have won the day!
Make a game of it, give yourself a pen streak! If you manage to go a week with the same pen on your person, make an event of it. I would even brag to your friends about it because they have definitely gone through more pens than there are days in the week throughout their day if I was to guess!
If you lose your pen don’t beat yourself up about it, once you keep focused on the pen that’s the point, start again and pick a new pen. If you haven’t figured it out by now, basically the point is - switch the auto pilot off. For 99% of people, they can go about their lives perfectly fine in auto-pilot but for us, one of the many gifts dyspraxia gives us is the challenge to focus on what we are doing 100% and with that comes the opportunity to master whatever task laid out in front of us and become just as good, if not better than those not blessed with the skill of falling over flat surfaces.
We may be clumsy, but at least we haven’t lost our pen.
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