I have known for a long time that I am different from most other people. But I haven’t always known why and how to cope with it.
A long time ago now, when I was still a small child, at Infant school I would be taken aside from the rest of the class for extra reading or other curricular things. This wasn’t a punishment or a sideline for being disruptive but something that I take to be a measure from a supportive infant school of a child on a statement of special educational needs. (SEN)
The reading topic was Humpty Dumpty. My helper, Miss Jones was her name) would read a line to prompt me, which I would then have to repeat, looking carefully to make sure I was getting the words right.
We got all the way to “All the King’s Horses and All the Kings men”. And suddently everything stopped
Now come on, Jonnie, this is very simple. Read this. (I’m paraphrasing that last bit)
It says, “All the kings horses and all the kings men.
“All the kings horses and all the kings men…”
“All the kings horses and all the kings men…” she almost shrieked.
I knew what I had to do.
I’m not quite sure to this day what made me unable to. It wasn’t that I was trying to be rebellious and not do what I was asked. All I remember was the teacher getting increasingly agitated the longer I didn’t do it and I just froze and barely responded.
But something in my brain stopped me from taking the action. It was almost like my head just gave up and shut down from being forced to do any work at all, even something as simple as reading a line from a book.
This is a moment that has stayed with me to this very day.
I think I still get elements of this where I’m quite happy just to sit and not think about anything because this way, it is less taxing on my brain which has a million other things, small things to think about each day. It is at a moment where Dyspraxia is in action. The neurons, the chemical messages in the brain are not being properly sent.
If I can think to myself “I can do that a little later”, I feel like my brain is giving me the thumbs up and I feel better about things.
Back in those days and throughout secondary school, I had no word for my learning difficulties. I’m not sure how widely known it was back then. Yes I was on a Statement of Education Needs up to the end of secondary school but I had no way back then of knowing how to say, “I’m struggling with this”. I mean, all I was doing was reading from a simple book. And I knew how to read. I just wasn’t able to do it.
A similar “brainfart” that happened to me once was when, believe it or not, I had a moment, about a minute or 2, that I basically forgot how to write. The information; the recall of how to do the actions was just gone.
How do you sit there in a class, put your hand up and say, “Please miss, I’ve forgotten how to write”. I ended up making an attempt on my own and worked out I’d written the letter “e” backwards.
It was a bizarre moment that only lasted a couple of minutes tops, but those sorts of things happened to me from time to time with no real label apart from the fact I was clearly a special needs child to go on!
But today we have one. Dyspraxia.
When a Dyspraxic “episode” happens, it looks like someone isn’t really trying, and maybe sometimes people will play up out of frustration but an increased awareness to support and understand people who are undergoing similar experiences can only be a good thing.
All we ask for is a little more time to get things right and where needed reasonable adjustments for us to succeed.