Getting Things Done

 I owe you an apology. I've been having a little trouble focusing over the last couple of weeks so I haven't been posting much. I do have 3 or 4 drafts hanging around that I will eventually clean up and post. I promise.

My lack of focus has me thinking about attention and hyperactivity. My 15 year old nephew visited for a week and had to do homework while he was here. He has ADHD and has chosen not to take medication. I told him one afternoon that he had to do 1 hour of schoolwork. I sat reading a book in the next room. First, I heard the chair shaking, the table shaking and the sound of him petting a cat on the table. Seven minutes later, he was calling his dad on the phone. Twenty minutes after he started, he was back to work. Then he got himself a snack and went back to work. I read my book for a bit, looked up and saw that he was lying on the floor playing with another cat. I told him (for probably the 30th time) to get back to work. He said, "hey, I only have 5 minutes until I'm done". I told him that no, he had to get an hour of work done. He went back to his homework. It ultimately took him 2.5 hours to do one hour's worth of work. It was clear that he can't really help it and I'm impressed by his tenacity. I tried very hard not to laugh but I have to admit that it was entertaining to see what would catch his attention next.

Some people with dyspraxia also have ADHD. It has been suggested before that I may have ADHD but after watching Finn for a week, I'm pretty sure that I don't. I can sit still and concentrate for hours at a time. I wrote my undergraduate thesis in a 12 hour marathon because I was able to focus when it was required. When we received our first novel in second grade, I ran home, found a quiet place and read the whole thing. My problem is a wandering mind, it's internal distraction rather than external. I can drift off in the middle of a conversation and find myself thinking about things totally unrelated to the conversation. The other person will make a noise or something and I will realize that I have no idea of what I was going to say or even what the conversation was about. This can be a problem during interviews, meetings or other conversations. People who know me well recognize when I've mentally drifted away. I'm more subtle now then when I was a kid but I'm sure that my expression makes it obvious. I have to work hard to stay engaged in conversations or at least to appear engaged.

There is a plus side though.Waiting in line or waiting for other things doesn't really bother me. I happily spend time daydreaming and letting my mind go where it wants. I watch other people getting frustrated and irritated but not me - I have dyspraxia.

Childhood Skills Part 1b

I missed a couple of things in the last post that I want to mention.

A brilliant teacher who had watched me run (and fall) during recess decided to teach me how to fall properly. She took me to the gym and had me climb up a rope a bit and then let go (there was a puffy mat under the rope). She helped me learn to roll as I fell until it became automatic. I think that this clever teacher is the reason that I didn't haven't broken any bones falling.

I began ballet when I was six. My mother picked the studio very carefully. The instructor was very old school and strict but kind. She realized pretty quickly that I didn't know my left and right apart. She showed me the trick of holding the my arms bent up at the elbow, with hand open and palm facing away from my body - the left hand forms the letter L. She would also move my whole body in the correct direction. Together, these two techniques helped me to learn my directions. Ballet also helped me become aware of where my body was in space and where my limbs were. I had the advantage of a mother who knew some ballet and could help me at home. I also don't have as much difficulty with gross motor skills as I do with fine skills which made it possible for me to develop skills in dance. I credit ballet with giving me the skills to learn sports (except those with small balls which I still can't do). Many people seem to do martial arts now and I think that the principles are the same.

Childhood Skills Part 1

 Likely the first sign of future difficulties that my mother noticed was my lack of a dominant hand. I would use my right and left indiscriminately. My mum began to encourage me to use my right hand for fine motor activities. She believed, rightfully I think, that using both hands would decrease the amount of practice and skill development that children normally develop with their dominant hand. Later in my life, she wondered if she made a mistake in picking my right side - maybe I was supposed to be left handed and perhaps my coordination problems were because I wasn't using my dominant side. I suspect now that I didn't have a dominant side so I would have had the same problems if I was left handed.

The last month of kindergarten wasn't much fun. I spent an inordinate portion of my time trying to tie shoes and putting clothing with buttons, snaps and zippers on a doll. I don't know if there was a requirement at the time that children be able to accomplish these skills before moving on to first grade but there was definitely pressure on me to succeed. Naturally, I avoided these tasks whenever possible since they were hard. I did manage to accomplish these basic skills before the end of the school year. I didn't do any of it very well but I did manage to tie my own shoes and do up my own coat before the end of the year. I was devastated when my cousin wouldn't let me use her colouring books because I couldn't colour within the lines.

I learned reading and math easily enough but I struggled with holding a pencil.. At home, I had similar problems using cutlery. My parents, wanting their child to succeed, worked hard with me to acquire skills. I coloured a lot. I had my grip on a fork and knife corrected again and again. My problems became more obvious when writing neatly became important. I had trouble keeping my letters within the lines. I started occupational therapy at school to improve my skills. This helped a lot because the therapist always gave me a chance to do something I was good at the end of a session. I imagine that pick-up sticks and cutting shapes were supposed to be fun but they really weren't. My brain knows what to do, it's just the transition from brain to body where it all goes wrong. In grade three, I went crying to my occupational therapist because my teacher had declared that I couldn't learn cursive until my printing was better. I didn't care about the writing part but I was being denied the ability to read cursive. My OT immediately taught me the letters so that I could read what was written on the chalkboard. So even though there was intervention and knowledge about my difficulties, I still encountered problems with teachers.

Meanwhile, my parents worked with me at home. I got tired of using a fork because whenever I tried, I was corrected. Colouring and drawing weren't fun. I knew that I wasn't doing things correctly and it frustrated me. One birthday, I got a bunch of Barbies. My Barbies only wore swim suits because I couldn't get any other clothing on easily. One Christmas, I got the game perfection. The game involved putting shaped pieces into a hole that matched. If you didn't beat the time, a loud buzz would sound and all the pieces would fly out of the box. I knew that the purpose of the game and the Barbies was to improve my coordination. My wonderful parents spent an afternoon trying to teach me double-dutch skipping (my dad got pretty good at it). I loved the skipping part but I couldn't coordinate my two hands to the same speed and rhythm. The other girls wouldn't let me skip with them. I was frustrated and angry at myself for not being able to do such simple things. I was aware of my coordination problems but I still compared themselves myself to my peers and found myself lacking. While my parents help and the OT improved my skills, they also left me feeling inadequate.

Problems with later childhood next...

Shoulds

I spend a lot of time blaming myself for not succeeding at things that I should be able to do.  I hope that at some point I'll be able to accept that there are things that I find difficult or can't do and that it isn't my fault. I'm not there yet.

Things that I should be able to do (according to me)

1. Drive a car
2. Walk without bumping into anything or tripping
3. Not spill things all the time
4. Not break things
5. Draw a picture that doesn't look like a young child did it
6. Start projects around the house and then finish them
7. Know how to organize myself and do simple things without having to think them through and give myself a pep talk first
8. Not lose things
9. Remember how to do physical things that I've learned in the past rather than having to re-learn them over and over (like diving)
10. Make beautiful things like stained glass or mosaics
11. Stop daydreaming and pay attention
12. Remember what someone told me 3 minutes ago
13. Take good notes in meetings
14. Recognize places that I've seen before
15. Recognize people and remember their names
16. Not be awkward in work and social situations with more than 3 strangers
17. Be confident and outgoing
18. Tie my shoes and have them stay tied
19. Untie knots
20. Remember what I went upstairs to get
21. Do more than one thing at a time
22. Accept change with enthusiasm instead of terror