Robert's mother shares her experiences of how she dealt with her son's Dyspraxia.

"My son Robert was born in the spring of 1992. When he was about two and a half years old I was sat down by three good friends who pointed out that I had 'a problem' with Robert. He wasn't talking at all, still just making toddler noises and he was not playing with other children at all. After a bit of convincing I came to the conclusion that they were right, and so I started my long road of discovery.

At first we thought it was his hearing, but it wasn't that. We were referred to a local speech and language therapist who I took Robert to see, but I came out feeling so very guilty about having a child as bad as Robert, that I almost felt like giving up!

After consultation with the speech and language therapist Robert started group speech therapy on his 3rd birthday but unfortunately he made no progress at all. At the age of five and a half Robert was placed in a Speech and Language Base in a local school. It was a brand new "Base", untried and untested, but we were hopeful that it would be the answer to Robert's problems. At this point we had no idea what his problems were.

Having been at the Base for nearly a year, I felt that Robert had made no progress whatsoever. I felt so disheartened; I thought there must be a school where I could send Robert away to learn how to speak properly. That summer I met Heather van der Lely who is a Professor at UCL in London doing research into children with language disorders and also studies children from Moor House in Surrey. I called Moor House, who put me in touch with Afasic who then put me onto I CAN. I joined Afasic and found their conferences very informative and was grateful for their support knowing that there were others like me and my family out there was an enormous relief.

After looking around a few schools we decided that Meath School, near Chertsey in Surrey, was the right school for Robert. When Mark (my husband) and I were looking at Meath we were asked all sorts of questions about Robert, and began to understand that he had a classic case of Dyspraxia. Robert started at Meath School at the end of the Summer Term in 1999 (aged seven) and immediately fitted in. He could still barely string two words together. At the Christmas production that same year, Robert was up on the stage in front of all the family and friends and said "Go see the baby". To say that I was emotional about it is probably an understatement!

After a couple of years we had to look at secondary schools for Robert and we settled on Dawn House, another I CAN school. He is still at Dawn House School and doing extremely well. Our hope for his future is that he may hold down a job, maybe even have a long-term relationship and possibly even become a parent himself one day."

Samantha, Gwynedd, North Wales

I have a son whom has attended the same primary school since his schooling has begun, following his elder brothers and sisters. He never crawled and was like an escape artist getting out or car seat belts etc, he was never happy sitting in a pushchair but I never really understood why. Although we did lots of creative stuff at home, painting etc, I hadn’t really noticed that he couldn’t actually hold a pencil in the 'normal' way, as he would paint, colour etc and have lots of fun, hands on.

His early years teacher told me that he would trip over objects in the classroom and suggested that he may suffer from dyspraxia in a mild form. I had never heard of it, and researching it on the internet was like a light going on, it gave me so many answers and understanding to the behaviours my son was doing at home. Unfortunately although that teacher was very observant the teachers that followed seem to know little about dyspraxia. They seem to think that giving the child an hour a day of one to one will help, yet, if they understood dyspraxia, they would know that the child gets tired easily and handwriting is a big chore. It is tiring as he has such hypermobility in his hands that holding a pencil is very difficult. Imagine what it is like to write with a bendy pencil then imagine what it must be like to write with bendy fingers!

His one to one teacher recently discussed the writing board aid with other members of staff in front of my son, they think because he is slow at writing that he is thick, but they don’t understand that he is probably more intelligent than them. His fingers can’t work as fast as his brain but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work!

If anyone out there knows of a DCD friendly school, I am willing to sell my house and move because I have had enough, please get in touch. Thanks.