Speaker 1: So if you were to teach me, I'll show you so.
Speaker 1: And I'm at aut Millennium Gym on Auckland's north shore
Speaker 1: with personal trainer Bailey Garnum. Bailey competed in Olympic weightlifting
Speaker 1: for years and he's teaching me to do something I've
Speaker 1: only ever seen weightlifters do on the telly. The clean
Speaker 1: and jerk.
Speaker 2: People have different handricks.
Speaker 3: Pretty yeah, what we would do is have a little
Speaker 3: bit of a gap starting between your shim and the bar.
Speaker 1: Bailey has dyspraxia and dysgraphia, neurodevelopmental conditions which make a
Speaker 1: lot of basic life tasks really challenging.
Speaker 3: So what that does is backed up, tight up.
Speaker 1: But this is a young guy who thrives on a
Speaker 1: challenge and he loves lifting really really heavy weights.
Speaker 3: If you're doing a snatch and Olympic weightlifting, you're thinking, right,
Speaker 3: I'm going to put one hundred killers, bove my head
Speaker 3: and jump under this bar as strong and as hard
Speaker 3: and as fast as possible. Why the heck would I
Speaker 3: want to do this? Like a heavy squat, you can
Speaker 3: feel the amount of weight on your back and you're like,
Speaker 3: if I don't do this properly, I may get crushed
Speaker 3: and you think, why am I doing this? And you go,
Speaker 3: you know, the nerves kicking. Okay, this is why I'm
Speaker 3: doing it, just because get that feeling.
Speaker 4: The adrenaline rush, the adrenaline rush.
Speaker 1: I'm diving into the complex and fascinating world of neurodiversity.
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert, but my daughter is neurodivergent, and
Speaker 1: a few years ago I was diagnosed with ADHD. In
Speaker 1: this series, you'll hear from experts and from many wonderful
Speaker 1: people who experience the world in a unique way. We're
Speaker 1: looking at neurodiversity from the inside. Gelda. I'm Sonya Gray,
Speaker 1: and this is no such thing as normal. Series two.
Speaker 1: Dyspraxia also known as developmental coordination disorder, previously known as
Speaker 1: clumsy child syndrome. My daughter in Nes was diagnosed with
Speaker 1: dyspraxia as a seven year old. She has challenges with
Speaker 1: coordination and things like tying shoelaces took her a really
Speaker 1: long time. But the effect is much broader. Like so
Speaker 1: many you're a divergent conditions, what we're seeing is just
Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg. Dyspraxic people often struggle with
Speaker 1: sport and so they opt out of physical activity really
Speaker 1: early on. But Bailey Garnon wants to change that. He
Speaker 1: reckons it's not that they can't do sport. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's the best thing for dyspraxia, he says, often they
Speaker 1: just need to be taught in a different way. So
Speaker 1: you've just taken me through a little bit of the
Speaker 1: beginning of learning how to do the lean and jerk.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how much balance plays into it. But for
Speaker 1: you as a dysprexic, balance can be tricky. So you
Speaker 1: kind of entered into a sport that you've already got
Speaker 1: a disadvantage, I guess. So tell me about that and
Speaker 1: how hard it was to learn and why you persisted.
Speaker 3: The environment of the gym we had was just like
Speaker 3: it was incredible. You just see these strong girls and
Speaker 3: guys just lifting these weights and the banging of the plates,
Speaker 3: and I just love the environment. And I think because
Speaker 3: Mike was doing it, here's the reason why I stuck
Speaker 3: it out.
Speaker 1: Mike is mike' schofield who's now with High Performance New Zealand.
Speaker 1: He's the coach of Meddi Witshy, our fabulous shot putterer
Speaker 1: who won a silver medal at the Paris Olympics. Mike
Speaker 1: was in his early twenties when he started coaching Bailey,
Speaker 1: and when he found out about the dysprexia, might learn
Speaker 1: everything he could about the neurodevelopmental condition.
Speaker 3: He went away and researched everything. What is it, what
Speaker 3: are the symptoms? How have people responded? So he went
Speaker 3: away and did that, and I was weak, like eleven
Speaker 3: years old. I was. I was absolutely weak, couldn't do
Speaker 3: a push up or anything. So my parents said to him, look,
Speaker 3: can you train Bailey in the gym? So he was
Speaker 3: my pt and we did two sessions a week.
Speaker 1: In the beginning. Mike had his work cut out for him.
Speaker 1: The just braxia meant that really simple moves that most
Speaker 1: of us pick up straight away did not come naturally
Speaker 1: for Bailey, like a basic lunge.
Speaker 3: So it took Mike, I think like three or four
Speaker 3: months to teach me how to do a lunge.
Speaker 1: Three or four months.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to learn how to do just do a standard
Speaker 3: body weight lunch. I don't know how he did it.
Speaker 3: When you think of a lunge, you know, you step out,
Speaker 3: do you ben your back leave, do you ben your
Speaker 3: front leg? What do you do you know. I had
Speaker 3: to break it down and to step. Okay, how far
Speaker 3: out do I step? Do I step?
Speaker 4: This?
Speaker 3: Word? It's my foot too close? Is it too far away?
Speaker 3: I think I used to step too far into my midline,
Speaker 3: so it causes send a mass to go all wonky.
Speaker 3: But took me a long time to learn how to
Speaker 3: do just a simple step out and lunge.
Speaker 1: Three or four months is a long time to be
Speaker 1: able to successfully step forward and be in your front
Speaker 1: leg without falling over. There are so many movements like
Speaker 1: this in and out of a gym that are not
Speaker 1: automatic for many people with dyspraxia, but the extra work
Speaker 1: Bailey's had to put in over the years give them
Speaker 1: something that other personal trainers may not have.
Speaker 2: It's an awareness that will make him a really great
Speaker 2: trainer for other people because he will be able to
Speaker 2: analyze their lunge and if they're struggling with it in
Speaker 2: some way, if they're losing their balance, then he might
Speaker 2: have more insight as to why that's happening for them.
Speaker 2: That's really taxing having to know that stuff.
Speaker 1: Ellen Nathan is an occupational therapist who you might remember
Speaker 1: from episode eleven of this podcast. She works with many
Speaker 1: dyspraxic kids, and she says dyspraxia or DCD affects every
Speaker 1: area of someone's life. It's much more than just not
Speaker 1: being able to do a lunch. There are so many
Speaker 1: daily activities at home, at work, and at school that
Speaker 1: dyspraxic people have to consciously step through.
Speaker 2: You know, it's really hard having to think everything through
Speaker 2: so cognitively. For some people, they just move their body
Speaker 2: to get to the place they want to get to,
Speaker 2: whereas there are people out there there's one in every class.
Speaker 2: You know, every classroom has at least one dyspraxic kid
Speaker 2: who picking up a pencil and writing their name is
Speaker 2: not automatic. So it's very hard to pick up your
Speaker 2: pencil and write your name while you're still trying to
Speaker 2: plan your story. So they already step behind their peers.
Speaker 2: By the end of the day, they're exhausted because they've
Speaker 2: had to think through every step still at a cognitive level.
Speaker 1: The exhaustion is real. I see it in my daughter
Speaker 1: every day, and it's backed up by research. Brain scans
Speaker 1: of dyspraxit kids have shown the neural mechanisms are firing
Speaker 1: twice as fast. These kids are putting in double the
Speaker 1: energy and focus just to walk, talk, pick up, open, close, throw,
Speaker 1: and so on. But what's behind these movement difficulties? My
Speaker 1: daughter is dyspraxic, and when people ask me what does
Speaker 1: that mean, I'm like, well, it still don't really understand it.
Speaker 1: So I guess is it possible to sum up what
Speaker 1: dyspraxia is.
Speaker 2: Dyspraxia is challenges with motor execution, so challenges with movement
Speaker 2: that you have conscious control over, and it requires conscious control,
Speaker 2: so it's not something that you're doing automatically. Yet people
Speaker 2: who have dyspraxia are often struggling with movement and therefore
Speaker 2: using more cognition around movement. Movement takes three stages to
Speaker 2: come up with an idea, to plan how you're going
Speaker 2: to execute that idea, and then to execute it. And
Speaker 2: so dyspraxia or DCD, you can have a challenge in
Speaker 2: any of those three areas or all of those three areas.
Speaker 1: And it's not just the planning and execution that's tricky.
Speaker 1: There's also the problem of sensing and knowing where your
Speaker 1: body is in relation to everyone and everything else. Allan
Speaker 1: says that's the job of one of our biggest sensory
Speaker 1: systems called proprioception. But if you're dyspraxic, the appropriate aceptive
Speaker 1: receptors aren't always going to give you the right feedback.
Speaker 2: People with dyspraxia don't have as much of that information
Speaker 2: feeding back to them, so they don't necessarily know where
Speaker 2: their body is is in space and time. So when
Speaker 2: we don't know where our body is in space and
Speaker 2: time because the proper aceptor of receptors aren't telling us.
Speaker 2: That's why dyspraxic people bang into doors, why they drop cups,
Speaker 2: why they may go to catch a ball and not
Speaker 2: quite catch it properly, or go to throw it and
Speaker 2: it drops before the person. They're not getting the same
Speaker 2: amount of feedback from their muscles that tell them how
Speaker 2: much effort or energy to put into the muscle to
Speaker 2: affect whatever it is that they're trying to affect.
Speaker 1: Right, and so then developmental coordination disorder DCD, where does
Speaker 1: that for them?
Speaker 2: DCD is the term that was given to a certain
Speaker 2: group of symptoms that's a very specific diagnosis. Some people
Speaker 2: use the two interchangeably, so dyspraxia and DCD mean the
Speaker 2: same thing. Also, depends what country you're in, so America
Speaker 2: and the un are very different, and in the larger
Speaker 2: community of clinicians working in this space, there's not even
Speaker 2: agreement with these things, which is why it's so confusing.
Speaker 1: I see, Okay, Honestly, the more you learn, the more
Speaker 1: confusing it gets. What's important I think to know is
Speaker 1: that in al tiodor, the official diagnosis for this condition
Speaker 1: is DCD developmental coordination disorder. But if you say DCD,
Speaker 1: no one knows what you're talking about, which is why
Speaker 1: dyspraxia is commonly used. But most people will hear dyspraxia
Speaker 1: and think, oh, you mean dyslexia, and it's quite different. However,
Speaker 1: dyslexia and dyspraxia can co occur. You can see how
Speaker 1: this is confusing, can't you. Co Occurring conditions are extremely
Speaker 1: high with dyspraxia, so chances are there will be something
Speaker 1: else going on.
Speaker 2: I think when p people have multiple diagnoses, the other
Speaker 2: diagnosis might end up with more airtime because there's either
Speaker 2: more available, there's more funding, or people understand it better,
Speaker 2: and so sometimes you end up lumping your symptoms over
Speaker 2: to the other one that more people understand because it's
Speaker 2: tiring explaining it all the time.
Speaker 1: Bailey Garnum, the twenty four year old Olympic weightlifter and
Speaker 1: personal trainer, doesn't get tired of talking about dyspraxia. In fact,
Speaker 1: he's passionate about it. He wants young dyspraxic and neurodivergent
Speaker 1: kids to know that they can succeed in sport. It's
Speaker 1: just finding the right sport, the right approach, and the
Speaker 1: right people. As a kid, Bailey's ultimate dream was to
Speaker 1: make it big as a cricketer. He loved cricket, but
Speaker 1: cricket didn't always love him back.
Speaker 3: It always was, h I'm going to be a black cab.
Speaker 3: I'm going to be a black cab. And I would
Speaker 3: try and try and try give him my best. You know,
Speaker 3: Mom and Dad got me like a cricket coach. And
Speaker 3: when I want cricket coach, which I did all these things,
Speaker 3: and friends of mine who didn't take it as seriously
Speaker 3: would get into the better teams and I was like,
Speaker 3: I was, Mom and Dad, why am I? Why am
Speaker 3: I not in the team? And you know, there'd be
Speaker 3: a lot of anger, lash outs, And try my hardest
Speaker 3: every practice and like, why can I do it? Why
Speaker 3: can I do it? And at the time before he
Speaker 3: knew dysphraxi and mom and dad were like, keep going,
Speaker 3: We'll just keep going, We'll keep going. And then when
Speaker 3: you got the diagnosis it made sense.
Speaker 1: For many kids who have coordination difficulties, by the age
Speaker 1: of eleven or twelve, they've already decided I'm not good
Speaker 1: at sport, you know, because in those first few years
Speaker 1: it's all team ball games. They can't catch the ball
Speaker 1: and stuff. You know, they might get a better jibbing
Speaker 1: from school friends and they just go, you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do this. I'm just not sport
Speaker 1: is not for me. And I feel like that might
Speaker 1: be a big reason that you are quite an advocate,
Speaker 1: is it.
Speaker 3: I'd be the classic example of not liking team sports
Speaker 3: or feeling like horrible playing team sports. I did ever then,
Speaker 3: touch rugby, cricket, water, polo, football, and none of it
Speaker 3: stuck with me.
Speaker 1: So were you always the kid that wasn't quite up?
Speaker 3: I was always the kid that marked the team up,
Speaker 3: you know, Like I got the ball in touch rugby
Speaker 3: and I ran outside the touchline and thought I was
Speaker 3: getting to try and I just I never felt comfortable.
Speaker 1: So let's say cricket. You played cricket. A lot of
Speaker 1: cricket is about coordination, like one of the things as
Speaker 1: a fellow cricket lover, whenever there's a high ball and
Speaker 1: a player under it, I freak out for them because
Speaker 1: it's like, I know they've done it a hundred times,
Speaker 1: but it still don't know what the wind's going to do.
Speaker 1: There's so much judgment in there. How were you under
Speaker 1: the high ball?
Speaker 3: I think I caught one right, right?
Speaker 1: But yeah, you persisted with all these team sports. Did
Speaker 1: you love sport?
Speaker 3: I just loved I think I just loved sports. So
Speaker 3: when I found weightlifting and I only had to rely
Speaker 3: on me, my performance outcome was not down to a
Speaker 3: coach's or other people, and.
Speaker 1: There wasn't the potential to let the team down.
Speaker 3: No, it was just solely on me.
Speaker 1: And it helped having a coach like Mike Schofield, who
Speaker 1: patiently helped him master the basic lunge and then moved
Speaker 1: him on to the serious stuff.
Speaker 3: He started introducing me into deadlifting, and one day I
Speaker 3: was about twelve, we'd been doing it for a while,
Speaker 3: and I did lifted one hundred kilos and he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: this kid's quite strong. And he goes, do you want
Speaker 3: to come to at Millennium and I'm coaching people in
Speaker 3: the Olympic weightlifting.
Speaker 1: Dyspraxia or DCD is more common than you might think.
Speaker 1: An estimated six to ten percent of the population have it.
Speaker 1: Most have no idea, they never identified, but Bailey was lucky.
Speaker 3: It was during a parent teacher interview in like year eight,
Speaker 3: my art teacher said to my parents, she said, oh,
Speaker 3: I think your son's got a learning disorder. And they
Speaker 3: were like, what do you mean and she goes, well,
Speaker 3: the way your son's hand pattern is when he draws,
Speaker 3: there's something not correct and there's something not normal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to add to.
Speaker 3: Other kids, I recommend you go again on the.
Speaker 1: Test, okay. And had they noticed anything up to that point, No.
Speaker 3: I think mum and dad had thought there may be something,
Speaker 3: but even in primary school, teachers to said, oh, he's
Speaker 3: just the late learner. I find he'll get there in
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 1: So Bailey's parents took him for an assessment and he
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with dysplexia and dysgraphia.
Speaker 3: And we're like, what the heck's of this? And then
Speaker 3: when we started learning about it, it kind of made
Speaker 3: a lot of it made sense as okay, so this
Speaker 3: is why this is me happening.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about classic I don't want
Speaker 1: to say symptoms, but maybe some of the things that
Speaker 1: dysprexics can struggle with. Tying shoe lasses.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeap, huge one for me. It's fine motor skills
Speaker 3: anything like writing for example, and exams. I'd have to
Speaker 3: have read to writers, so I wouldn't know what to say,
Speaker 3: but getting it out on paper, it just wouldn't.
Speaker 1: That connection wasn't there.
Speaker 3: It would not work.
Speaker 1: And this is where dysgraphia comes into the picture. Disgraphia
Speaker 1: is a specific learning difficulty with writing. It's a cousin
Speaker 1: of dyslexia, which is officially known now as a specific
Speaker 1: learning difficulty with reading. But back to dyspraxia. Fine motor
Speaker 1: skills are often weak in dyspraxics and that makes writing
Speaker 1: really difficult. So how does dysgraphia fit with dyspraxia? I
Speaker 1: ask Allan, the occupational therapist, to help me understand the dishes.
Speaker 2: Dysgraphia is specifically around translating ideas as written word or
Speaker 2: as imagery. Can I draw a picture? If I want
Speaker 2: to draw a giraffe? Can I draw a giraffe? I
Speaker 2: may have an image in my head, but I cannot
Speaker 2: translate that onto paper. Dyspraxia is kind of all movement,
Speaker 2: so gross motor, fine motor, all the life tasks, so
Speaker 2: getting yourself dressed, doing up zips, brushing your teeth, brushing
Speaker 2: your hair, throwing a ball, riding a bike, managing stairs,
Speaker 2: eating with an life and fork. That's all dysprasak that full.
Speaker 2: Can I affect the world the way that I want
Speaker 2: to through motor movement?
Speaker 1: Allen says dysgraphia and dyspraxia are distinct diagnoses, but like Bailey,
Speaker 1: you can have both. And that presented many challenges for
Speaker 1: Bailey as a child.
Speaker 3: So riding the bike was a big one. My granddad
Speaker 3: taught me how to ride a bike twice. I learned it,
Speaker 3: forgot it, then he retaught me how to learn it.
Speaker 3: My parents, when I was younger, they would travel for
Speaker 3: work in the school holidays, so I would spend a
Speaker 3: lot of time with my grandparents. They lived in Lake
Speaker 3: Talpo and there was this set of like monkey bars.
Speaker 3: I remember. It took a few holidays and me going
Speaker 3: every day, and he would go every day with me
Speaker 3: until we could get it, till I could complete this
Speaker 3: kind of monkey bar circle.
Speaker 1: Just having someone close to you that was patient, oh year.
Speaker 1: So he wasn't like, come on, Bailey, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: the baby. Other kid can do it.
Speaker 3: No, no, and no at all. But if I didn't
Speaker 3: have the grandparents that I had, I don't know how
Speaker 3: or what things would be like.
Speaker 1: Now, having the right people in your corner makes all
Speaker 1: the difference. Allan Nathan understands that well. She works with
Speaker 1: some very young children. Many of them are really struggling,
Speaker 1: so she's developed techniques to tease out what might be
Speaker 1: going on for them.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that I do when I
Speaker 2: go and meet kids and I'm doing various assessments that
Speaker 2: might be for dispracts or it might not, I will
Speaker 2: do a task that for their age should be automatic,
Speaker 2: like catching a ball, and I'll chat to them about
Speaker 2: their day. What I'm testing is do they have automaticity
Speaker 2: in those two skills? Can they automatically talk while catching
Speaker 2: a ball? Because if they stop talking when they catch
Speaker 2: the ball, that tells me that they've had to think
Speaker 2: about that there's no room to talk and think at
Speaker 2: the same time. It's one or the other. I remember
Speaker 2: turning up to a school where there was a child
Speaker 2: that was running away from school and really upset. My
Speaker 2: teachers were really lost, and it was his first six
Speaker 2: months at school. He was biting kids and I think
Speaker 2: he'd broken another student's arm. That was pretty big. I
Speaker 2: got in there to do an assessment and I was
Speaker 2: just walking through the playground with him. Five year old boy.
Speaker 2: He just could not walk and talk. He'd take a
Speaker 2: few steps and he'd tell me something about his day
Speaker 2: and he'd stopped walking. Then when I would start to talk,
Speaker 2: he'd start walking again. And I was like, gosh, you're
Speaker 2: five and a half. You're at school. You can't yet
Speaker 2: walk and talk. These two things aren't automatic for you yet.
Speaker 2: So when he comes in after lunch, he's so exhausted.
Speaker 2: His body is tired and his brain is tired. He
Speaker 2: wants to do the art activity, but he just can't.
Speaker 2: He's got no spoons left to do that, and he
Speaker 2: can't organize his thoughts into clear ideas. He can't articulate
Speaker 2: those ideas in language, and then he's getting left behind,
Speaker 2: and you know, his peers are all doing full pages
Speaker 2: of work and he's just scribbling through his book because
Speaker 2: he can't hold a pen He can't hold a pencil,
Speaker 2: he can't translate his ideas yet, oh my goodness, And
Speaker 2: no one would see that. They're just saying behavior that's
Speaker 2: putting other students at risk, which is putting other students
Speaker 2: at risk. But he needed help.
Speaker 1: I know, if you hadn't come in, how many other
Speaker 1: people are going to pick up on that?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really complex.
Speaker 1: Dyspraxia is really complex because there is so much to
Speaker 1: contend with every day, and because it can affect so
Speaker 1: many things, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, perception, attention,
Speaker 1: and speech. Many of the client's Bailey trains are dyspraxic,
Speaker 1: and he sees the full spectrum.
Speaker 3: I trained one boy at the moment who's had a
Speaker 3: very bad speech impermit, so he knows what he wants
Speaker 3: to say, but then everything just gets jumbled up, which.
Speaker 1: Must be so frustrating for him because it's all in there.
Speaker 1: It just can't get it out.
Speaker 3: It's just getting it out. So it's a huge spectrum.
Speaker 3: That's why I think it's so unknown. It is because
Speaker 3: if you say, looked at me on face value, you'd go, well,
Speaker 3: when he doesn't have just fraxi up.
Speaker 1: It's well hidden, and the well hidden aspect makes it
Speaker 1: even more difficult to explain to people that you are trying.
Speaker 1: You have listened to instructions, you want to do it,
Speaker 1: you just can't. Was there ever a point that you
Speaker 1: got frustrated and was like, I just can't do it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lots of times. Yeah, through everything. Through cricket. You know,
Speaker 3: if I got out, I'd throw my bat a curse.
Speaker 3: I'd just pack a huge tantrum and be the same
Speaker 3: in the gym. You know, just that level of frustration
Speaker 3: builds up and you're.
Speaker 1: Just like, I guess not something we talk about enough
Speaker 1: because for you, in your mind, you can see it. Like,
Speaker 1: let's take cricket for example, you're batting. You can imagine
Speaker 1: where you need to place your bat and you know,
Speaker 1: placement of all that stuff, but your body is not
Speaker 1: playing ball excuse the pun, and so the frustration with it.
Speaker 1: It's like, guys, I am really good. It's just that
Speaker 1: my body is not caught up with what my brain
Speaker 1: wants to do. Occupational therapist Ellen Nathan says one aspect
Speaker 1: of dyspraxia that isn't discussed enough is the cognitive component.
Speaker 1: Things like time management and sequencing can be really, really hard.
Speaker 2: Whether it's morning or night, whether it's the weekend, tomorrow
Speaker 2: or yesterday.
Speaker 3: You're lost.
Speaker 2: You just lost in space and time with other people
Speaker 2: saying hurry up, it's a school day, and you're like,
Speaker 2: but what school day like? Am I at the start
Speaker 2: of the week? Am I at the end of my week?
Speaker 1: I get it.
Speaker 2: It must be very discombobulating, very discombobulating, but people often
Speaker 2: don't recognize that.
Speaker 1: I've interviewed Ellen a few times now. She's a practitioner
Speaker 1: who really knows her stuff. But what I didn't realize
Speaker 1: until this interview is that her expertise comes partly from
Speaker 1: personal experience.
Speaker 2: I have dyspraxia, and my child has dyspraxia. It makes
Speaker 2: everything that much harder.
Speaker 1: That's crazy that you are dyspraxit That will allow me
Speaker 1: to ask you what it feels like. What's the experience
Speaker 1: of being dyspraxic.
Speaker 2: A dyspraxia is all gross motor and a little bit
Speaker 2: of fine motor with handwriting. I remember doing a whole
Speaker 2: class writing backwards purposefully, and then I I came up
Speaker 2: with my own font, which was curly. I knew i'd
Speaker 2: fall off the line or my lenness would be big
Speaker 2: and small, so I just created this really creative curly
Speaker 2: font in all different ways, like draw a circle and
Speaker 2: write my name inside the circle, because I can't write
Speaker 2: my name in a straight line, so I would end
Speaker 2: up writing it inside rainbows and on a unicorn's horn instead.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like I knew what I couldn't do,
Speaker 2: so then I had to become creative to make what
Speaker 2: I can do look good.
Speaker 1: And that creativity piece is strong for dyspraxics, it has
Speaker 1: to be. They are constantly developing workarounds just to get
Speaker 1: through life. Daniel Radcliffe, famous of course for Harry Potter,
Speaker 1: has dyspraxia and he wears the badge proudly. He acknowledges
Speaker 1: the struggles and he still can't ride a bike. But
Speaker 1: the positive side, he says, is that always having to
Speaker 1: find solutions has honed his imaginative skills. Of course, real
Speaker 1: world it's the practical skills or lack of that are
Speaker 1: what people notice.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I think makes dispraxia quite
Speaker 2: hard for teachers and for parents is that you can
Speaker 2: have a skill one day and it's gone the next.
Speaker 2: You can have it in one setting and it's not
Speaker 2: in the next setting. It often doesn't generalize or translate,
Speaker 2: and that's one of the challenges. So it's like learning
Speaker 2: the task all over again. Playing basketball outside with the
Speaker 2: hoop your dad's put up on your garage is going
Speaker 2: to be super different to the hoop in the gym,
Speaker 2: So those skills will not translate as well as they
Speaker 2: would for a non respectit person, And they're getting feedback
Speaker 2: from the adults in the room saying things like, you
Speaker 2: can do this, you can do better, this is not
Speaker 2: good enough. You know this, No I don't.
Speaker 1: It's easy to get frustrated when kids are inconsistent in
Speaker 1: their abilities, but it's not a choice. It's part of
Speaker 1: the dyspraxic profile, and Bailey Garnum wants people to understand
Speaker 1: that with the right support, the unique talents of these
Speaker 1: kids can shine.
Speaker 3: When you get a distractic kitddle someone with a learning condition,
Speaker 3: when you get them into something they're passionate about because
Speaker 3: they've had to persevere through so many things. They will
Speaker 3: push the boundaries more than maybe a child who doesn't
Speaker 3: have a learning condition, because that child doesn't know what
Speaker 3: it's like to have to push so hard to just
Speaker 3: be good at something. And then when you find something
Speaker 3: that you're good at for a distractic kid or anyone
Speaker 3: with a learning disorder, you go, oh, I'm actual, you're
Speaker 3: already good at this. Or I may have a bit
Speaker 3: of natural ability with this. You pair that with a
Speaker 3: learnt drive and learn persistence. Yeah, they're away, they're flying.
Speaker 1: Bailees is. Much of his success and confidence is thanks
Speaker 1: to his original Olympic weightlifting coach, mike'schofield. I asked him
Speaker 1: what it was about Mike's approach that he valued most, being.
Speaker 3: Able to be flexible and change things and say things
Speaker 3: in a different way. But you know, we went to
Speaker 3: Mike and when I got diagnosed, and we said, look
Speaker 3: here's what it's happened, and he goes, oh, it makes
Speaker 3: so much sense. The age I'm at now is the
Speaker 3: age of Mike, Cause when he met me and I
Speaker 3: just go like, whoa you know, respect, Yeah, huge respect.
Speaker 1: You've had really key people and your life. Haven't you
Speaker 1: your granddad Mike yeap and does that kind of make
Speaker 1: you go? I want to be there for kids.
Speaker 3: You need someone to believe in you or who can
Speaker 3: articulate what you see in your head. I try to
Speaker 3: be not one dimensional how I approach everything, and that's.
Speaker 1: The key to life. You've got life right there, I think.
Speaker 1: I just I want to say, it is so powerful
Speaker 1: what you're doing because you are like, hey, I've got
Speaker 1: dyspraxia and I'm doing it. Just when I was a
Speaker 1: kid dyspraxia, no one need ever heard of it. They
Speaker 1: were just the unco kids, the kids that wouldn't get
Speaker 1: picked in Pe, would be picked last for the team,
Speaker 1: the kids that would get a bit of shit for
Speaker 1: dropping the ball or whatever. Or they're on co and
Speaker 1: co was the word. I don't know, that's still the
Speaker 1: word now. And now I'm like, oh my god, these
Speaker 1: kids with the right person, Yeah, it might take them
Speaker 1: a little bit longer to get it, but once they
Speaker 1: get it, they can do it as well as, if
Speaker 1: not better than, someone without dyspraxia.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you liked this podcast, please rate and review it.
Speaker 1: It helps people find it. No such thing as normal
Speaker 1: as produced and presented by me Sonia Gray. The editor
Speaker 1: is Jamie Lee Smith. Owen O'Connor and Mitchell Hawks are
Speaker 1: executive producers. Production assistant is Beck's War and you can
Speaker 1: find us on Instagram No Such Thing as Normal Podcast.
Speaker 1: The series is brought to you by the New Zealand
Speaker 1: Herald and teen Uniform and it's made with the support
Speaker 1: of New Zealand on Air. New episodes of No Such
Speaker 1: Thing As Normal are available wherever you get your podcasts.