Why don't you just belt up!

SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE.  ( the complications of a seemingly simple task for those with dyspraxia/DCD)


In this blog I will unpick the seemingly 'simple' task of sitting in a car and doing up a seat belt.
For those of you who have been following this little series of blogs you will know the following but for those who haven't I need to point out that dyspraxia/DCD affects a great deal more than motor function. Motor difficulties along with a compromised perceptual profile can make the most simple of tasks very complicated indeed.


Motor skills are a function, which involve the precise movement of muscles with the intent to perform a specific act. Most purposeful movement requires the ability to "feel" or sense what one's muscles are doing as they perform the act.

Perception = the way you take in information through your five senses and make that information meaningful to you. Your Perceptual Style acts as a filter between sensation and understanding. It is at the core of who you are and it impacts greatly on how you function.

When we consider successfully doing up a seat belt we add a further skill into the mix and that is the ability to 'cross the midline'.

What is “crossing the midline”?

By the age of 3 or 4 years old, a child should be able to use both sides of the body together. This is the ability to move one hand, foot, or eye into the space of the other hand, foot or eye. We cross midline when we scratch an elbow, cross our ankles, and read left to right. Crossing the midline of your body helps build pathways in the brain and is an important prerequisite skill required for the appropriate development of various motor and cognitive skills. Children who have difficulty crossing the body’s midline often have trouble with skills such as reading, writing, completing self care skills and participating in sports & physical activities. These skills require a type of coordination that comes from experience with “cross-lateral motion,” which is movement involving the left arm and right leg, or the right arm and left leg at the same time. 

Children with dyspraxia/DCD are often(but not always) late to develop this skill Laterality may not be established until late in primary school. I once watched a child actually swap hands in the middle of a page , the left hand writing on the left side and the right hand the right.

The guardian.

They do not recognise that their bodies are made up of two different sides, they lack that awareness and neural pathways are late to establish.

Apply this knowledge to the task in hand and you begin to understand the difficulties.

To successfully do up a seat belt you need to :-

• Pull a taught strip of material across the midline of your body.
• Place a small fiddly rectangular metal object into a hole that it only just fits.
• Press down until you hear an audible click against tension pulling n the opposite directon.
• Manage all the above with very few  visual cues and so much of it is done by 'feel'.

Perceptual and fine motor skills of the highest order required. The very things that are often compromised.

I introduced the idea of backward chaining in my last blog (breaking down a task and working through it in reverse). It is useful in may scenarios. Here it is worth the child learning simply to click the seat belt into place whilst facing it just by sitting on the car seat and looking.

Practice the various components and then one by one bring them together and allow your child to be successful and therefore motivated to do more. If they get stuck go back a step .  It took my son two years to conquer this particular task.

The movement required to cross the midline can be practiced. Some examples of how to help can be found here https://www.growinghandsonkids.com/crossing-midline-exercises-for-kids.html

If you work with an Occupational therapist ask for their help.

By now you should be able to apply this to almost every new skill that a child is asked to learn.....

• Getting dressed
• Doing up shoe laces (and over rated skill in my opinion).
• Walking across a busy dinner hall with a plate of food.
• Putting coins into a slot machine.
• Learning to swim.
• Brushing teeth.
• Wiping one's bottom.
• The list is endless.

All of these things that are difficult can be improved so don't despair.

A great idea is to video your child attempting these new skills. It takes time and practice and patience and empathy for them to be successful. I used to video three tasks each year (getting dressed, using cutlery, riding a bike) and on those days when my boy and I felt that we were getting nowhere we would watch the video from the year before and celebrate how far we had come!!!!!

Please note that this blog focuses on children but bear in mind that dyspraxia/DCD is a life long condition and new tasks later in life can be difficult to master. Ask a young man with dyspraxia who is learning to shave!!!!!
When one begins to understand how extremely difficult these every day tasks are it is really easy to recognise how remarkable people with dyspraxia are. The tenacity and forgiveness they exhibit is often heroic. They get up and try again even in the knowledge that they may well not be successful. We must recognise the effort rather than the achievement, celebrate the improvements and one day look back and realise that he/she CAN do it!!!!! 

For further info and general advice re dyspraxia/DCD www.dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk