Why Is My Child Always Behind?

Why are they so slow, so messy, so disorganized? Why can’t they just get their stuff ready like other children?

Neurodiverse children with issues such as dyspraxia, dyslexia, ADHD, and autism often struggle to complete tasks on time. You’ll see this at school: perhaps they just take so much longer in class that they have to finish the task during break or take it home to finish it there. It’s not just that. They may be last to stop their work and pack up, last to put things away, last to get in line, last to get ready for the physical education class… or for swimming or whatever else it is. They always keep everyone waiting.

You see this at home too: These children often don’t seem to know how to go about getting going in the morning. They can’t just get up, and go through whatever steps are expected of people their age, such as brushing teeth, getting dressed, or showing up for breakfast.

Sometimes they need support through the whole process and it takes up a lot of time and energy. Then when they’re up and ready, do they have the things they need to go to school? Do they take the right things? When at school, do things get dropped, lost or left behind? And do they bring things back from school? They may be the last ones to join the line in class, and when in line, are they too close to the next person, or not quite in line? Perhaps they get criticised about that too.

When you have difficulties with your body map, with the organization of your body, it can take you longer than others to get dressed (or to get into the pool or out of it). Maybe finding the right way into your clothes takes quite a bit of conscious thought instead of being automatic. Your fine motor control may be involved, so laces, buckles, buttons and zippers are hard to sort out. Perhaps you just end up untidy, wearing things backwards or inside out, buttons misaligned, shirts not tucked in well. You might have forgotten items of clothing, like socks, or put your shoes on the wrong feet.

When we are born we begin to learn where our bodies are and what we can do with them. For many this learning is rather straightforward. They may even develop into agile, graceful children who could easily be athletes or dancers. For others, especially if they were born prematurely or had other early challenges, that learning about their own body may be less reliable.

Does that matter if you don’t want to be an athlete or a dancer? Hmmm… or a musician, or a driver, or a handyman, or a chef, or a technician, or a barista… you get it.

So yes, it matters. It matters in day to day life, being able to move each part of your body over, under or through without bumping into things or spilling things. It all has to do with motor planning.

These challenges can impact the learning of math concepts, which are originally learned through the body (think: not only ones and twos and fives and tens, but symmetry and forward and backwards and higher and lower and heavier and lighter etc.)

And these challenges can impact how they sort one part of the body from the other, which can impact the pencil grip or typing, for example, which has a lot to do with how you do at school and how you express yourself in writing.

I have observed again and again that when the ability to plan motor movement is inefficient, this often correlates with a difficulty planning other things. From what clothes we need in the morning, to what we need to take to school, to being ready at our desk with the book and pen at the ready, to planning how to build a sentence or an essay that has a beginning, middle and end. In short, sometimes the physical challenges may be mirrored in a difficulty knowing how to begin the thought process to start the task.

It may sound like a stretch, but think about this for a moment: When you have a difficult time planning, you may also have a difficult time remembering how to plan – what to do, when to do it, how to do it.

It is not surprising, then, that some children who have an underdeveloped sense of the body and its movement, are always struggling just to keep up with the rest of the class.

Sometimes these children just seem out of sync with the rest of the class. Personal organization of your body reflects into everything you do and achieve at school.

We are often told that they ‘will grow out of it’. Maybe. Their issues may become less obvious. Their life choices may involve giving up on becoming an athlete or a dancer or a musician or a driver or a handyman or a chef or a technician or a barista or whatever it was that they had in mind, and coming up with occupations that require less coordination. However, often the difficulties with organization, planning and time management persist into adulthood unless both the sense of the body in space and the ability to sort what parts of it need to move and what don’t are addressed through a targeted neurodevelopmental program. It has been our experience that it is not too late to work on this in adulthood and even older adulthood.