Page 35 - Part-A

Understanding Specific Learning Difficulties

While for many people DCD is diagnosed early in life, there may be other people with
this SpLD who become adults and remain undiagnosed.

The symptoms and difficulties associated with DCD that begin in childhood continue
into adulthood, affecting many aspects of a person’s life in terms of education and
employment. DCD does not affect a person’s overall intelligence, but it does make
learning new skills more difficult. It is common for adults to have found, over the years,
ways of coping with their difficulties, enabling them to hide the difficulties to some
extent and delay identification and diagnosis.

In common with other SpLDs, the symptoms of dyspraxia vary from person to person,
but will always include difficulties with coordination and the ability to carry out
everyday tasks like household repairs or driving a car.

People with DCD usually find it difficult to manage their time, and to plan and organise
their lives and responsibilities, which may lead to problems with work and home life.

Dyscalculia

Children with dyscalculia will have problems with things like:

• Counting from a given point or counting backwards

• Confusing number direction, e.g. 71 or 17

• Mixing up similar looking numbers

• Remembering how numbers are written

• The time needed to complete arithmetic tasks

• Remembering shapes.

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