What is dyspraxia and how does it affect everyday tasks? No Such Thing as Normal

Bayley Garnham overcame dyspraxia to become a weightlifter and personal trainer.

As a child, 24-year-old Bayley Garnham dreamt of one day becoming a Black Cap.

“I loved cricket so much”, he says. “I was always training, I had a one-on-one cricket coach, I did everything. But no matter how hard I tried, I just wasn’t any good.

“I’d say to Mum and Dad ‘Why? Why can’t I do it?’.

Garnham is a guest on this week’s episode of No Such Thing As Normal, called What is Dyspraxia? He tells podcast host Sonia Gray that the reasons behind his struggles on the cricket pitch were revealed when he was 11 years old.

“My art teacher told my parents there was something wrong with my hand pattern when I was drawing. She said ‘I think your son’s got a learning disorder’.”

A specialist assessment led to a diagnosis of DCD (Developmental Co-ordination Disorder), commonly known as dyspraxia.

“We were like, ‘What the heck is this?’ Then when we started learning about it, it made a lot of sense.” The diagnosis also explained his difficulty with tying shoelaces, learning how to ride a bike and handwriting. But dyspraxia can affect almost every area of life.

Gray’s own daughter is dyspraxic, but as a parent she struggled to understand exactly what the diagnosis meant, or how to explain it to other people. She says the process of researching and producing this episode has given her a better understanding of the condition, and how it affects her daughter.

“I have a new appreciation for the effort that goes into just getting through life”, she says. “So many activities that most of us do automatically, require conscious effort if you’re dyspraxic. It must be exhausting”.

To the outside world, the inability to execute tasks smoothly can look like laziness or clumsiness (dyspraxia was previously known as Clumsy Child Syndrome) but research into the brain activity of dyspraxic children shows they are putting in twice as much effort as their neurotypical peers.

Bayley Garnham has never shied away from effort, and he fell into a sport he excelled in - Olympic weightlifting. His trainer was Mike Schofield, who now works for High Performance NZ, but Bayley says Mike had his work cut out for him in the beginning.

“It took him three or four months to teach me how to do a basic lunge,” he says. “I don’t know how he did it, he was so patient. But I think he loved the challenge … he was always looking for ‘a way’.”

Garnham is now an in-demand personal trainer himself, and many of his clients are neurodivergent. He says there’s a perseverance there that has been honed through years of having to problem-solve their way through life.

“Often it’s just a matter of breaking things down in a different way, being flexible,” he says. “If you take the time to find out how they learn best … and you pair that with their drive and persistence …They’re away. They’re away flying.”

No Such Thing as Normal is a NZ Herald podcast, hosted by Sonia Gray, with new episodes available every Saturday.

Season One won Best History & Documentary Podcast at the 2024 NZ Radio and Podcast Awards, and was one of Apple Podcast’s Most Shared series in 2023.

The series was made with the support of NZ on Air.

You can listen to it on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.