Researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University have created 'Watch Me Do It' to help children with dyspraxia. It is a set of short video clips to help young people with physical coordination difficulties who struggle to perform everyday tasks. So far, they have covered 27 skills including chopping vegetables, tying shoelaces and opening food packaging, such as a bag of crisps and a packet of ham, using cutlery and putting toothpaste on a toothbrush.
These activities were chosen after talking to children with dyspraxia and their parents, as well as therapists and teachers.
Dyspraxia – also known as developmental co-ordination disorder (DCD) – affects around 5 to 6% of children. That's around one child per class. Boys are four times more likely to have dyspraxia than girls and this condition sometimes runs in families.
Crucially, all videos have been recorded from a first-person perspective, using head-mounted cameras. An adult with dyspraxia explains why this matters: 'I remember how difficult I found learning to tie shoelaces. As all the videos I could find were front-on, I had to reverse all the movements and that was not easy for me. The same applied when my dad was showing me. These videos would have been so helpful as they show the movements from the same viewpoint you have when doing them and that makes them easier to follow.'
Understanding the wider impact of dyspraxia
In my book, 'How to Help Your Dyslexic and Dyspraxic Child' I wrote about seven children with dyslexia, dyspraxia or a combination of specific learning difficulties and quoted evidence from many others.
