So here we are, approaching the middle of Dyspraxia awareness week. The Week when we try and spread our wings and show the world what Dyspraxia is all about, share its difficulties and celebrate its gifts.
It seems a good time to stand back and reflect on our own little adventure into raising awareness, our Blog.
When I started the blog back in April, with the permission of Moglet #2 raising awareness was very much part of the package. Yes, in part it gave us a sounding (well, more sounding off!) board, to express some of the difficulties and frustrations we were encountering and also a way of celebrating our achievements. Reaching out to other people in the dyspraxic community to gain and offer support, to share tips and stories was very much part of our thinking. I wanted to feel that on those days when every shoe was lost and we were accumulating bruises like fashion statements, there were other people out there that understood. Who had been on a similar journey. Who could sympathise and guide, offer practical suggestions and funny stories. So firstly I was using the blog to raise my awareness, of our situation and the links I could forge to make us stronger.
Very quickly when the emails and comments started coming in, I realised that we were reaching people who weren't dyspraxic and more than that had no previous knowledge of dyspraxia In some small way we were educating people about the world we found ourselves in. The blog suddenly took on a whole new light. Yes it was important to keep banging home the challenges faced by Moglet #2 and those like him, but I also felt an overwhelming responsibility to celebrate and embrace the positives of dyspraxia too. I began shouting loudly about strengths; positive thinking, sense of humour, the ability to be creative, to think outside the box. The more I looked for them the more strengths I found. So now I was raising wider awareness, whilst simultaneously raising my own awareness.
Finally we reach for me the most important part, the reason this blog was setup in the first place. Moglet #2. I started writing this blog to help my preteen son, struggling with the leap to Seconday School. To encourage him to acknowledge his dyspraxia, come to terms with it, embrace it and take control of it. I wanted him to see that it was very much part of him. I wanted him to know that fighting it wasn't going to make it go away, that ignoring it would just let it trip him up(sometimes literally!) again and again. I wanted him to accept it was part of him and use it to his advantage. I wanted to raise his awareness.
When the emails and the comments started arriving he slowly began to see that he wasn't alone. He began to recognise that there were other people out there who had walked a similar path to him and were achieving great things. Finding out he could learn to drive was a real break through, joining an online teenage support group was another. Suddenly he was slowly willingly to talk about his dyspraxia. He was trying to put into words the way certain things felt, trying to explain what he found difficult and why. By raising his own levels of awareness he was starting to raise ours.
Moglet #2 has come a really long way in a year. Yes he still forgets his homework, he relies entirely on his planner and even then it's a bit patchy!Socks are never going to be his friends ( it's a sensory thing!) and of course the logical place to put them when you take them off is down the back of the sofa!! But his levels of awareness are so much higher and still climbing.
Today as I write this blog I am bursting with pride, yes for the little steps we have taken, but also because, today was a momentous step forward.
Today, at his own request and suggestion my Moglet #2, who this time last year hated the word dyspraxia, stood up in front of his entire Year 8 group. He stood up and delivered a 15 minute assembly on Dyspraxia. He was honest about how it affected him, he outlined ways people could help. He even answered questions from his peers. He was a champion of awareness.
We love you Moglet #2.