World Autism Awareness Week

It’s World Autism Awareness Week this week (27th March – 2nd April)! My little brother, Ramsey, has autism. We’ve known he’s had autism for a while now, but it wasn’t until this week that he was officially diagnosed with autism. Although the majority of people have heard of autism before, not enough people understand exactly what it is. I had an idea of some of the aspects of autism before finding out that my little brother had it, but I really have learnt so much more about it recently. So seeing as it is World Autism Awareness Week I thought I would share with you what I know about autism as well as talking about some common misconceptions. I’m determined to raise as much awareness as I can!

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From ‘Clumsy child syndrome’ to ‘Dyspraxia’

Following on from my last blog post about awareness, I wanted to talk a bit more positively about how far awareness has come so far. Although there is not enough awareness at all about dyspraxia, it has still come a long way so hopefully it will go even further in the future.

The importance of awareness

Ignorance is such a significant issue for many people with dyspraxia, whether it’s in the workplace or school unfortunately so many people have faced ignorance at one point or another. Awareness has such a major part to play in this. If only people were more aware of what dyspraxia was then they might not be so ignorant.

How do I explain dyspraxia?

If I was to say to someone that I had dyslexia, they would most likely know roughly what I was talking about. However, I don’t have dyslexia. I have dyspraxia. There’s nowhere near as much awareness of dyspraxia as there is dyslexia. In the past when I’ve told people that I have dyspraxia I’ve often been given blank looks or simply asked “What is dyspraxia?”