The Awareness of Dyspraxia
Dyspraxia Awareness Week is upon us once again and our mission continues. As each year passes, dyspraxia gets a little more awareness and attention, which is great! But while its overall ‘awareness status’ isn’t anywhere near that of its cousins dyslexia and autism, it’s getting there steadily. Last year we saw the introduction of the first dyspraxic character in a main-stream onscreen production (Doctor Who of all things ~ a TV series wanting to teach Science and History!), which is a major breakthrough for us wanting acknowledgement and acceptance. Hopefully in the future we’ll see more characters that represent the underrepresented and unrepresented. Dyspraxia has now taken a big leap from the unrepresented into underrepresented. Don’t get me wrong, the last thing I would want is for every show to be flooded with dyspraxic characters just a light sprinkling to catch us off guard each and every time.
The World of Dyspraxia
Dyspraxia is quite the complicated lifestyle; not that it’s a lifestyle choice though! Getting the point of dyspraxia across has been my self-set mission for a while now. With dyspraxia there are complications, difficulties, triumphs, downfalls, and successes but not necessarily in that order! The main point of dyspraxia is to not lose focus of the fact that we have strengths. There’s also the fact to not lose focus that we still have dyspraxia either.
It is common for the strengths we have to be over looked, especially at first glance. Then I have found it isn’t uncommon that once we’ve proven ourselves for people to forget that we still have the dyspraxia tenancies and struggles. When the dyspraxia moments crop-up, it surprises people! Dyspraxia is unfairly inconsistent and it isn’t uncommon for us to be able to do a certain task or say a certain word flawlessly one day, but completely fail at it the next day. Having said that, these little ‘hiccups’ don’t happen too often but it varies from person to person.
The Gifts and Blights of Dyspraxia
It’s for this reason alone why I wanted to create something that combines both the positive and negative aspects of dyspraxia in one place. They co-exist so it’s poetic justice that a chart actually reflects this. Of course, I didn’t want this to overshadow or replace the current charts but to compliment and co-exist with them instead. A chart of this idea has been requested by my followers and I have finally delivered! Special thanks and shout out to the Dyspraxia Foundation Youth Group who assisted me with the final stages. The plan was for me to throw this chart out into the cyber-world earlier this year, but by the time I got back to blogging I figured I might as well wait until the Dyspraxia Awareness Week. And that’s exactly where we are, so voila!
Many people do query the positives that are brought to light and rightly so. Fact is, dyspraxia doesn’t directly cause the positives. Rather it’s a result of living with, dealing with, and growing up with the dyspraxia. Not everyone with dyspraxia can tick off all positive (or negative) parts but it’s to simply give a rough understanding who we are or who we can potentially turn out to be.
We are all different and we have our moments of both glory and embarrassment. By taking the good with the bad we become strong people. People who are very assure of who we are and where we stand in this world. Many thanks for reading my post and doing your bit to help support the awareness of dyspraxia.
Useful links:
https://dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/awareness-weeks/dyspraxia-awareness-week-2019/
http://www.dyspraxicfantastic.com/dyspraxia-dcd-awareness-page/