If your primary child is diagnosed with Dyspraxia, what have you told them - if anything?

[HonoriaGlossop]

My ds is being referred to the Ed Psych at his infant school as his teacher has told me she suspects he might be dyspraxic.

When she said this, many things seemed to 'fall into place' for me, it would explain alot of ds' difficulties with cutting, pencil control, writing, drawing anything recognisable. So I won't be surprised if he is diagnosed as Dyspraxic.

However what I'm wondering is for those of you who have been there, how did you explain it to a child of 5? DID you explain it at all?

My worry is that ds does not want to hear anything out of the ordinary about himself; he was found to be colour blind and when the optician was talking about it he got very agitated and kept repeating that his vision was perfect.....I don't want to just give him a label for the sake of it. The point of the label is for him to be helped, not for him to feel bad about himself.

He NEVER mentions being behind in his school stuff; which he clearly is. Despite being a bright lad with good understanding and very articulate, he is in the bottom group at school with only two other kids, one of whom has English as a second language. But he never talks about not being able to do stuff that others clearly can; I just KNOW he feels it, but he won't talk about it.

How do I raise it without knocking his confidence further, bearing in mind that he's presenting school as perfect already, no problems?

TIA. Sorry for ramble - I'm confused on this issue.

[LIZS]

ds was a little older but we focussed in his awareness of the difficulties he was having , in comparison to others just as they may in turn find reading, for example, hard, and that someonee would chat to him ,play with him and ask him to try things to see how they may be able to help find things less effort.

The "label" itself is meaningless to him so we don't use it but the difficulties are probably already underlying his behaviour somewhere even if he has devised coping mechanisms for himself.