TPP 174: Victoria Biggs Shares Her Story of Being Dyspraxic
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
30 min
3 speakers
7 chapters
transcribed 12 hours ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'd spent most of my life starting to think I was bad or broken or just not trying. I absorbed all the things that were said to me. And the moment of diagnosis with a wonderful empathetic psychologist showed me that actually things were different.
Welcome to Tilt Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. I'm your host, Debbie Rieber, and today we're talking about dyspraxia, a developmental disorder which is most often associated with challenges related to motor coordination, but it's also often marked by disorganization, clumsiness, and poor short-term memory. My guest is Victoria Biggs, and she knows firsthand what it's like to grow up with dyspraxia. And when she was sixteen years old, she actually wrote a book to help teens like her get through adolescence. It's called Caged in Chaos A Dyspraxic Guide to Breaking Free. Today, Vicki is a university research fellow and lecturer, a teacher in a school for children with trauma related mental health problems, a writer and a storyteller.
In addition to having dysproxia, Vicki is also autistic. In our conversation today, Vicky talks with us about her own story of growing up with dyspraxia and shares her personal insights on how parents and teachers can better support dyspraxic children. And now, without further ado, here is my conversation with Victoria Biggs about growing up with dyspraxia. Welcome to the podcast, Vicky. Thank you. So we have a lot to talk about and actually today we're talking about something we haven't covered on the show as a solo episode yet. So I'm really looking forward to getting into this. But before we get into the heart of our conversation, can you take a few minutes to introduce yourself to us?
Um I'm Victoria Biggs. Um I'm a teacher in a special school for young people with trauma related mental health problems. You've often got additional learning differences layered underneath. And I have learning differences myself. I'm autistic, and I also grew up with severe dysprexia, which very much inform the way I teach. In addition to that, I'm an academic and researcher with the University of Sheffield in the UK.
Excellent. So and uh just curious and uh we're gonna talk about your teaching in a little bit, but I'm curious, is there a specific age range that you teach?
Yes, uh twelve through seventeen year olds, what we call secondary school here in the UK.
Great. Okay. Well, I do wanna hear more about your work in education, but before we do that, we are gonna be talking about dyspraxia today and because this is a new conversation for this show, would you mind just taking some time to explain what exactly dyspraxia is?
Okay.
What is dyspraxia and how does it affect motor, cognitive, and social skills?
Dyspraxia is a neurological disorder or difference and there are three main domains in which it affects people. Um the most obvious is physical coordination, balance, spatial perception. Um dysprexic people are impaired in their movement, for example, fine motor skills like handwriting or doing up buttons or the big gross motor skills like running, walking, riding a bike. Um one of the ways in which I'm affected by balance coordination spatial perception issues, for example, is crossing the road. I struggle to tell how far away the traffic is, how fast it's coming. And so yeah, you notice these kinds of physical issues among people with dysprexia. And then there's cognitive difficulties as well, difficulty with processing speed, short term memory, that kind of thing.
Um so you may see dyspraxic individuals as coming across as very scatty, disorganised. Um when I disclosed to my university I had dyspraxia, uh the occupational health nurse just laughed and said, You'll be another academic then um because of this stereotype of the nutty professor. Um and finally it can affect you socially too. Like some dyspressive people will have difficulty interpreting nonverbal cues, body language, that kind of thing. And dyspraxic children who may not have had the same opportunities to join in with their peers because so many of children's games are based around coordination, sports.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:04
2
What is dyspraxia and how does it affect motor, cognitive, and social skills?
3:04–8:15
3
How did Victoria’s diagnosis change her perception of herself and her challenges?
8:15–14:00
4
What motivated Victoria to write *Caged in Chaos* and what does the book address?
14:00–19:24
5
Which practical strategies does Victoria recommend for building self‑confidence in dyspraxic teens?
19:24–23:40
6
How can parents model imperfection and support their dyspraxic child’s emotional growth?
23:40–28:33
7
What occupational‑therapy and life‑skill interventions helped Victoria develop independence?
28:33–30:26
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
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TPP 091a: A Conversation With Steve Silberman About His Book “Neurotribes”
TPP 521: A Conversation with Dr. Peter Gray About Restoring Childhood
TPP 253a: Advocate and Author Jonathan Mooney on Why Normal Sucks
TPP 520: Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids