You may notice your child has difficulty learning skills which come naturally to other children. Or you may notice they have some of the problems listed below. Take a look at the following common difficulties and helpful strategies to support your child.

Delays in reaching motor milestones e.g. rolling over, sitting, standing, walking, running, jumping and hopping

Problems you may notice:

1. Falls over frequently
2. Difficulty walking in straight line, bumps into people and things
3. Difficulties running, hopping, jumping, catching, kicking balls, riding a tricycle

Helpful strategies:

1. Walk on different surfaces such as thick mats, balance or wobble boards
2. Walking slowly on a straight line, circle or other shape chalked or taped on the floor
3. Hand to hand passing or throwing (across the body midline) using bean bags or other small toys - encourage the child to watch the passage of the toy as it moves
4. Catch balloons, scarves, juggling balls and different sized balls
5. Catch bubbles in the air with both hands
6. Obstacle courses
7. Go around obstacles such as cones whilst walking on knees, walk backwards, crawling (forwards or backwards)
8. Skittles (both with throwing and kicking)
9. Encourage sitting on rockers, see saws, and ride-on toys and gently encourage moving on it
10. Put the child’s feet on the pedals and push along using an adult handle so that the child experiences the movements required to move forward|

Slow or poor at dressing and hesitant in most actions

Problems you may notice:

1. Difficulty pulling clothes over the head
2. Poor balance when pulling on socks and trousers
3. Difficulty fastening clothes
4. Difficulties remembering the order of component parts of a task
5. Poor orientation of clothes

Helpful strategies:

1. Sit down to get dressed with back against some thing for extra support
2. Suggest loose-fit easy on/ easy off clothing and Velcro fastenings
3. Break down each task into small sections to be mastered one by one. Provide pictures to prompt re the sequence
4. Stick to a familiar routine about which items go on and in which order
5. Choose clothes with a logo on the front or v-neck so they are easier to orientate

Difficulty with fine motor skills

Problems you may notice:

1. Difficulty using tools, pencils, utensils
2. Late at developing hand dominance
3. Lack of hand strength and difficulty maintaining grip
4. Difficulty using two hands together
5. May not manage jigsaws or shape sorting games

Helpful strategies:

1. Make sure the child is sitting with feet flat and bottom back when working on fine motor tasks
2. Provide chunky pencils and crayons
3. Larger equipment is often easier to handle e.g. inset puzzles with round knobs rather than small pegs to hold
4. Magnetic games and toys provide some resistance which builds hand strength and are less likely to be knocked
5. Playdough can be rolled into a sausage, rolled into a ball, pinched and squeezed
6. Work at an easel to build arm/shoulder/wrist stability

Messy eater

Problems you may notice:

1. Spills food on table and down themselves
2. Difficulty using cutlery efficiently
3. May dislike certain food textures

Helpful strategies:

1. Ensure the child is sitting with feet supported and that the table is of an appropriate height
2. Provide a piece of non-slip mat underneath the plate (available from high street discount shops)
3. Provide cutlery that has a chunky handle as these are easier to hold and manipulate
4. Be sensitive to a child’s preferences for food textures
5. Keep food separate on the plate if necessary and introduce new textures gradually|

Delayed speech and language development

Problems you may notice:

1. May present with social communication difficulties
2. Difficulty in explaining needs or answering a question
3. Difficulty in retelling an incident
4. Unable to remember and/ or follow instructions
5. Attention and listening difficulties
6. Speech may be unclear
7. Difficulty understanding body language and personal space

Helpful strategies:

1. Get the attention of the child before giving instructions, and reduce distractions
2. Only give 1-2 instructions at one time and ask the child to repeat them before carrying them out
3. Use simple language with visual prompts
4. Provide time for the child to process the information
5. If speech is unclear, model correct production, but do not correct unless guided to do so by speech and language therapist
6. Role play activities
7. Provide photos to help recollection of personal experiences; use home/ school book to support
8. Use closed questions rather than open ended questions
9. Practice meanings of different facial expressions
10. Encourage child to think about how far they are away from others (keep an arms-length away)

May have difficulty in making and keep friends, or judging how to behave in company

Problems you may notice:

1. Difficulty in developing play skills and following game rules
2. May have no concept of personal belongings
3. Difficulty keeping friends
4. Difficulty in understanding the feelings of other people and the effect of their own behaviours on other people

Helpful strategies:

1. Focus on teaching necessary play skills such as turn-taking, negotiating etc
2. Introduce a circle of friends or buddy system to help the child in building relationships
3. Use social stories and role play to practice how to act in given situations
4. Work on understanding emotions
5. Use strategies such as comic strip conversations

May have little understanding of spatial concepts such as ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘in front of’

Problems you may notice:

1. Difficulties with planning, directions
2. Difficulty with time concepts such as ‘before’ ‘after’ ‘future’
3. Poor awareness of days of the week/months/seasons

Helpful strategies:

1. Use the phrases ‘now’ and ‘next’ to reinforce the sequence of events
2. Talk about the time of significant daily events as they happen e.g. “Break fast, it must be 8 o’clock”
3. Make a visual timetable with your child, using pictures to illustrate significant events in the child’s day/week (e.g. swimming, no school)
4. Have a daily timetable and a monthly calendar somewhere that the child can see often
5. Make concepts relevant to child’s own experience so s/he can build on what s/he already knows and can do

Developmental Verbal Dyspraxia (DVD) – affecting a small number of children

Problems you may notice:

1. Some motor difficulties, but the primary difficulty is with speech and language
2. Often present as very late talkers, who are quiet and shy/withdrawn
3. When they develop some language, words are very unclear due to frequent consonant and vowel substitutions and omissions
4. They may also have difficulties with oral skills such as blowing, licking and sucking and have feeding difficulties

Helpful strategies:

1. Children with DVD need to be managed by a speech and language therapist, who can provide advice specific to the child’s needs

Resistance to changes

Problems you may notice:

1. Difficulty coping with sudden changes, leading to anxiety

Helpful strategies:

1. Keep the room as orderly as possible –everything with its own place
2. Use visual timetables to give advance notice of any changes
3. Use role play and drama to explore different outcomes and scenarios

Appears not to be able to learn anything instinctively but must be taught skills

Problems you may notice:

1. Finds it difficult to engage or concentrate
2. Can do something one day but not another
3. Reacts to all stimuli without discrimination
4. Flits between activities
5. Disturbs others

Helpful strategies:

1. Give a distraction-limited learning environment when focusing on new skills
2. Reduce the social demands while learning – allow the child to work alone
3. Allow child to choose activities which meet child’s own interests
4. Break each new task down into its component parts and be prepared to demonstrate the task several times
5. Set time limits and use a sand timer

Did you know that Tree Fu Tom was created in collaboration with our very own Dr Sally Payne? The movement spells in the programme were designed to support children with movement disorders – click here to find out more about the ways in which Tree Fu Tom can help with dyspraxia on the BBC website.