Learning to drive

Hi

I guess one of the key skills that we worried most about with Anthony was would he ever be able to drive a car.

It's such an important skill, for work, social networking, independence and general self esteem -but we thought his Dyspraxic nature would mean he'd never piece together all the attributes to be a competent driver.

Luckily we were wrong, but all the early indications were that he wouldn't.

1) He didn't like playing cars with his toys and wasn't keen on bumper cars (dodgems) , pedal cars or fairground rides - a truly terrifying experience when he stood up screaming when the ride was in full motion and the owner had to hit the emergency stop button !

2) Although he learned to ride his bicycle aged 6 - he was not (and never has been even as a teenager) keen on riding for fun .. and his road sense - judging speeds and distances - was not great.

3) In later years he was very poor at controlling video games involving race cars - crashing with annoying regularity. His right/ left and forward/reverse all seemed muddled up

At that time we were still of the opinion that he would grow out of this, ..... but my first major doubt was when he was 14 or 15 and we took him and his younger brother Ben to an outdoor GO Kart track in Spain. Ben was fine absoultely loving it zooming around the course, but Anthony was incredibly nervous and was going very slowly (5-10 mph) around the course and kept bumping into the safety rail.

The course operator ran out a few times to get his Go Kart straightened up and started again.

But worse was to follow as went round a corner .. tried to brake .. but hit the accelerator .. going at full speed over the banking and straight into a tree. He was shaken but unhurt .. although the race track manager banned him immediately. -Needless to say Anthony was very upset and definitely did not want to try again

2 years later we did persuade him on a holiday in Ireland to go again - first thing in the morning (with no-one watching him) - and he went round very slowly 10mph all the way with me beside him in a 2 seater GoKart.. His confidence was boosted

.....and when he was 17 he took proper driving lessons.

The manual gearstick (Stickshift) was too much for him so learned in an 'Automatic' Car... and after 6 months of lessons he took his first driving test .

He failed (which we had expected) - but not by too much - and within another 3 months he had passed 2nd time.

We bought him a fairly decent Rover car (as he was now attracting girls and needed the "right wheels") ... I was nervous and DISASTER within 7 days of passsing his test he had written the car off.

Luckily no-one was hurt and the "slightly" encouraging news was that he hadn't crashed by doing ordinary driving .. instead he's been egged on by some dubious friends to drive at high speed in a Supermarket car park late at night. - and had run straight into a lampost ( - we later found out that one of his friends was sitting on the bonnet (hood) and Anthony was driving effectively blind).

It was a miracle the other lad wan't hurt or killed - but he escaped unharmed .. jumping off just beforer the car hit the lampost

It was stupid, dangerous and costly .. but it was becuase Anthony had deliberately driven like a lunatic .. not because he couldn't drive normally.

The incident shook him up and since then he has become an accomplished driver , accident free for the last 30 months.

So I hope that shows that dyspraxia can be overcome - maybe they do grow out of it after all??

Thanks

Des

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Middle years and friends

After Anthony moved up to "Big School" aged 11, like most children he went from one of the oldest boys at Junior schoold to being tone of the youngest at Senior school.

We had looked at lots of different schools and managed to persuade the Head of a smaller school (700 children) to accept him, even though we live slightly outside the school's regional boundary.
Because he was slightly outside the regional boundary, he only knew one other boy in his class.

Even though he still suffered from OCD and anxiety and was physically smaller and quieter than average, the other students looked after him. He didn't seem to suffer any bullyingat all.

One example -playing rugby on a cold winter's day, Anthony became almost hypothermic. and went into something of a trance, ... the teachers didn't notice - but the other children did see that he was in trouble and "shutting down"

The whole group helped him get dry, warmed up, get dressed and bought him a hot chocolate drink.

Even the tougher boys looked out for him - his personality engendered support and assistance from a high percentage of his peer group.

By the time he was 15, his lack of obvious academic skills caused him to be placed in the lower teaching groups - but he was still quiet, diligent and tried hard in his lessons (which was appreciated by most of his teachers) - and won various awards for outstanding effort (if not for actual achievement).

However his final year at senior school (16) his best friends were in year below him and he was easily led and got into some minor scrapes (part of a gang who "egged" a house etc).

To stop that escalating, we manged to secure him a Saturday job at a local retail store, which kept him occupied at weekends and gave him increased self esteem ... and disposable income.

Today at 21 he has a wide variety of friends of both sexes and appears a very confident and likeable young man