Doctor enters realm of dyspraxia
Celebrated series gaining praise for featuring relatively unknown and frequently misunderstood condition
The return of Doctor Who has thrilled fans and new viewers alike — not only for its new wielder of the sonic screwdriver, Jodie Whittaker, but for becoming one of the first British TV shows to feature a character with dyspraxia. The condition, which impacts physical co-ordination and is thought to affect up to 6 per cent of the British population, still remains fairly obscure for most of us.
Tosin Cole plays warehouse worker Ryan Sinclair in the series, and is shown struggling to ride a bike, failing to climb a ladder and mocked as a result, with taunts of “I suppose you’ll be blaming this alien invasion on the dyspraxia as well?” As such, a spotlight has been thrown on the growing number of adults receiving a midlife diagnosis of dyspraxia, which is more commonly associated with children. Mark Robinson, a trainee solicitor, had little idea what dyspraxia was when he received his diagnosis at the age of 40.
For years, he’d been badgered by teachers about his poor handwriting and teased by friends about his clumsiness. He’d always assumed he suffered from dyslexia, and as he embarked on a new career in law, decided that he needed to seek help once and for all. He visited an educational psychologist and, on picking up the psychologist’s report, was surprised to read the word “dyspraxia” printed next to his name. But the diagnosis quickly began to make sense, Robinson says.
While his verbal reasoning skills had been placed in the top 5 per cent of the country, he had always struggled to keep up in timepressured exams. He thought most vividly of his abysmal physical coordination: as somebody with Jamaican and St Lucian ethnicity, he says, there was a stereotype that he should be great at dancing and sport — but he was “useless at both”.
Indeed, dyspraxia is very much a “Cinderella” condition; the misunderstood relation to betterknown dyslexia, according to Dr Sally Payne, of the Dyspraxia Foundation. It is up to three times more likely to occur in children than adults, she says, and normally affects large body movements as well as fine motor skills. Dyspraxic people might find it difficult to balance themselves on a wobbly bus, throw or catch a ball, and handle pens, scissors and cutlery, with speech affected in a small number of cases. The causes remain a mystery, although the condition is more likely to be found in children who were born prematurely or with a low birth weight, Payne says. At a ratio of about two to one, it’s far more likely to affect men than women.
But it’s the more subtle, emotional impacts of the condition that are often forgotten, she says, which apply particularly to adult dyspraxics. After leaving school, it’s easy to avoid scary situations; dyspraxic adults aren’t forced to endure a humiliating PE lesson every week, or a brutal written exam every summer. Instead, it’s the fear of looking “clumsy” or stupid that bites most harshly. This fear can flare up in high-pressure situations, Payne says, noting a scene in Doctor Who where Ryan, trying to flee from an alien, freezes while climbing a ladder.
As a longtime fan of the BBC show who remembers Tom Baker whizzing around space in the 70s and early 80s, Robinson is delighted to see the programme give dyspraxia a look-in, and others seem to agree. Theatre director Josh Seymour, who was diagnosed at 11 after his parents noticed he couldn’t write in a straight line, spoke on Twitter of the “inconveniences” of the condition, such as asking for help with opening an unfamiliar window, and the hours of anxiety he endures before he has to find his way to a new place. He said he was “really excited” that Cole’s character might “open people’s eyes to this often invisible condition”.
Eddie Argos, a musician, says his dyspraxia was diagnosed relatively early but he “went through [school] with teachers not understanding it or claiming that dyspraxia wasn’t actually a disability. Pretty amazing to see it portrayed in Doctor Who.”