Author: Margo

2 Essential Things to Look for in a Dyspraxia Tutor

Written by Margo on July 27, 2021. Posted in Dyspraxia. No Comments on 2 Essential Things to Look for in a Dyspraxia Tutor

There are subject teachers and there are specialists who can teach you how to learn more effectively.

In this article, we’ll explain the two essential things to look for in a dyspraxia tutor. They are:

Study skills tutoring, not subject matter tutoring
Neurodevelopmental expertise

The advice here is based on our decades of experience tutoring students with dyspraxia and other neurodiversities such as ASD (Autism/Aspergers), dyslexia and ADD/ADHD.

At the end of the article we’ll discuss the pros and cons of online tutoring vs. in-person tutoring.

1. Study Skills Tutoring

Almost all tutors out there are subject matter tutors.

What does that mean? Well, it means that they tutor their students in specific subjects like math, biology, reading and writing, etc.

But dyspraxic kids don’t learn and think like most ‘normal’ kids. So if traditional subject matter tutors try to teach them as if they were just like every other student, they may learn to get by, but it’s unlikely they’ll thrive.

In contrast, a study skills tutor does not teach a specific subject. Rather, they teach your child how they learn.

They teach your child:

How to work with the limitations of their dyspraxia
How to understand and appreciate the particular genius that dyspraxics have
And perhaps most importantly, how to bridge the gap between
- Their unique thinking style and
- How their teachers and others around them expect them to explain their thinking in order to get good grades

Fundamentally, a study skills tutor teaches your dyspraxic child how to learn and how to communicate to get good grades. Once your child has learned how to learn, they’ll get much more out of their regular classes and tutoring from any specific study skills tutors they work with in the future.

So, when considering a dyspraxia tutor for your child, we recommend starting with a specialized study skills tutor.

If a tutor’s profile starts by listing the subjects they teach, and then at the end has something like “Special Educational Needs: Aspergers, Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Autism, Dyspraxia” that’s an indicator that they’re most likely a subject matter tutor, not a study skills tutor.

Look for the profiles that start with their focus on study skills tutoring and dyspraxia. It’s fine if they also mention subjects they have expertise in, but that should be near the end of their profile, not the beginning.

2. Neurodevelopmental Movement

At its core, dyspraxia is the result of issues with neurological development. Thus, supporting your child’s neurological development is key – for their academic success and for their life in general.

This is where the field of neurodevelopmental movement comes in.

Quite simply, neurodevelopmental movement gives your child a way to fill in the neurodevelopmental steps that they somehow missed along the way.

Madeleine Portwood has written extensively about this approach in her book Developmental Dyspraxia: Identification and Intervention: A Manual for Parents and Professionals.

So, we recommend looking for a dyspraxia tutor with expertise in creating a customised neurodevelopment movement plan for your child.

Read about Roisin’s experience and results in her Neurodevelopmental Programme: Roisin’s Story

NOTE: You do not necessarily need to find a single person who is both a study skills tutor and a neurodevelopmental movement expert. The two are closely related and some individuals have both skills, but it’s fine if you find two people to fill the two roles, so long as they work together closely.

Online vs. In-Person Tutoring

Unfortunately, these two simple criteria eliminate most dyspraxia tutors you’ll find online. Finding a great dyspraxia tutor near you might be impossible.

Considering an online tutor opens up a lot more options, but does it really work?

It’s probably obvious that study skills tutoring works well online, but what about neurodevelopmental movement support? Wouldn’t that need to be in person? Well, it turns out, no. In the old days, to develop a neurodevelopmental movement plan for a new client, we used to drive or fly to meet with the child and family, and observe them in person.

This creates the obvious challenges of travel time, costs and scheduling. But the bigger problem was that by flying in we could only observe a child for a limited amount of time in one specific situation. We couldn’t get a full picture of the child doing a wide range of activities in their daily lives.

Fortunately, the Internet and smartphones have saved us from that. It turns out that an excellent way to gather the observational information is for the parents and caregivers to take short video clips of the child going about their daily life – in all the different environments the child visits, doing a range of different activities. With this collection of video clips, the neurodevelopmental movement expert can gather much richer and more complete information than was ever possible through in-person visits. Other information can be gathered by doing tasks during online meetings – a lot can be learned from watching how a person does what they do.

Then the remainder of the developmental program can easily be done online. Typically the expert will show the parents simple activities to practice with their child. Then all the actual neurodevelopmental activities are done as structured ‘play’ time between the parents and their child.

If the child is in their teens, the tutor may also work with the child directly online.

So these days we’d say that the most important thing is to find the best tutor (or tutoring team) for your child. So long as your schedules match up, there’s no particular advantage or disadvantage to having a local tutor vs. an online tutor.

If you would like to talk with one of our experts to discuss what would be the best approach to tutoring your dyspraxic child, book a free consultation today.

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Do You Sometimes Feel People Just Don’t Listen to You?

Written by Margo on February 13, 2019. Posted in Dyslexia, Dyspraxia. No Comments on Do You Sometimes Feel People Just Don’t Listen to You?

People labelled as dyslexic, dyspraxic, autistic or with ADHD often feel their ideas go unheard and underappreciated.

As a young teacher, once a week at staff meetings an issue would be raised, we would discuss it, choose a solution, and then go off and do it. As the dyslexic dyspraxic in the room I was a good problem solver. I always had a solution to offer. Unfortunately no one took my ideas seriously – except my friend Bernie, who would repeat my idea in his own words. Everyone would immediately love “his” idea and it would be enthusiastically implemented.

Working with many neurodiverse people over the years made me realise that my experience was not unique. I realised that like me, other neurodiverse people with labels such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism or ADHD often feel unheard or unrecognised.

Neurodiverse people tend to think differently. Dyslexics like me often think in patterns and associations. This allows us to see connections that others don’t, making us excellent problem solvers. The dyspraxic can often just see the solution in a pure ‘aha’ moment and the person with ADHD can see the complexity and possibilities in a flash. Many on the autism spectrum can collate and sort information and patterns that others don’t.

Like most of us I have overlapping co-occurrence, which means I am dyslexic and a bit dyspraxic and probably a bit ADHD too… It was not until I was 50 that I realised that I was not communicating in a way that my colleagues could really understand.

In order to communicate our unique insights we need to fully understand how our experiences differ from that of our listeners. My experience is that they often cannot keep up with the richness and complexity of our ideas and our thought patterns. If we want them to hear us, to take us seriously, we need to meet them where they are, and gently introduce them to our ideas. We need to understand how they think in order to know how to better communicate with them.

The remedy to this dilemma is often uniquely personal… it’s not just about how they think but precisely how that differs from our expectations of their understanding.

How can neurodiverse thinkers learn to be heard?

We are only 10% of the population, the minority, and the others are the 90%, so it’s up to us to adjust our communication approach if we want to be heard. The good news is that as creative problem solvers, once we understand how other people think we are often able to change the way we present our ideas so people actually listen to us…

The dyslexic needs to understand that while we are comfortable leaping from topic to topic like jumping from branch to branch in a mind map, others are often unable to keep up with us. We need to learn how to recognise when we have lost our listeners and how to go back and collect them.

We need to lead them carefully, guiding them from idea to idea, step by step, until we move them from where they are to where we want them to be.

This applies both in spoken situations and in writing.

We have been teaching this to dyslexics for years, and I believe it’s the single most important lesson I teach. We’ve seen students who have practised this turn their lives around. Bullying has disappeared, communication with teachers has improved and even family relationships have improved.

A few students “get it” in a way they can actually use it the first time around. However, it usually takes at least some coaching and careful adaptation to make the magic happen.

For me this was life changing. Being heard is one of the most fundamental human needs. It is necessary for personal, professional and academic success.

If you would like to talk with one of our experts to discuss what would be the best approach to tutoring your dyslexic child, book a free consultation today.

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