Welcome to Karin Valentiner Ltd

Our focus is to help children, young people, parents and individual adults to achieve educational and personal success. We find out as much as possible about the factors and influences that are contributing to the situation, and offer professional advice. Our specialisms include; Dyslexia, ADHD, ASD, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, anxiety disorders, behavioural difficulties.

We can help with school issues including starting, changing or leaving school, friendships, shyness, bullying, examinations, home-school collaboration, behaviour difficulties and exclusions, specific learning difficulties, executive function deficits, anxiety, self-esteem building and social skills support.

Dyspraxia is a medical term used to describe children who have difficulties (which are out of line with the child’s age and intelligence) in daily activities that require planning and coordination of movements. It is increasingly widely used as a description by parents in the playground and in the media and yet the cause of dyspraxia is unknown, although it is thought to be due to an immaturity in parts of the brain responsible for motor skills. Dyspraxia can exist alone or alongside other specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, ADHD and dyscalculia.

As with all these specific learning difficulties, dyspraxia exists along a continuum and planning or coordination difficulties seen in some children may not be present in others. It is nevertheless worth knowing about the sort of problems children with dyspraxia experience as it can be an exceptionally frustrating and exhausting learning difficulty, often affecting progress at school and undermining acceptance in the playground.

In some children speech articulation may be immature or even unintelligible in the early years. Children with dyspraxia may be slow at dressing, doing up buttons and fastenings and tying shoe laces. In general they may be poorly organised and take time getting ready each morning. These children have real difficulty learning to throw and catch a ball and tend to avoid team games in school. They may look awkward travelling up and down stairs and can find hopping and skipping difficult. They often have poor handwriting and drawing abilities and may be described as ‘lazy’ by less encouraging teachers. Copying text from the board and books is usually very difficult for them. Other signs can include messy eating and drinking and general clumsiness resulting in frequent trips to the hospital and bruised arms and legs.

As with other specific learning difficulties, children with dyspraxia often have a poor short-term memory and may forget tasks they have learned the day before. They may find it difficult to learn their times tables and to sequence their writing. Many may have a short attention span and find it difficult to sit still. There isn’t a cure for dyspraxia but it can be helped with early identification, appropriate classroom support, help in study skills and possibly occupational therapy. For these reasons it does matter that we know what it is. Failure to recognise dyspraxia can lead to low self-esteem, lack of confidence and extreme frustration as performance in the classroom fails to reflect these children's intellectual ability. 

It is incredibly frustrating to be a parent of a bright and chatty child who cannot seem to learn to read and write despite daily practice in both. This difficulty endured by children of good (often above average) intelligence, with appropriate educational opportunities in school and at home, yet a seeming inability to learn these basic skills is known as dyslexia. It means that despite good teaching and daily reading practice, the symbols and words just don’t stick. Spellings that are practiced all week are forgotten the following day and learning number bonds and times tables are impossibly difficult to recall. 

Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty that affects children’s (and adults) ability to process word sounds and is often accompanied by a weakness in short-term verbal memory. So, if your child is failing to make progress in reading and you also find that when you ask them to collect two items from upstairs and they usually come down a minute later having forgotten what it was they when up for or when they are asked to find words that rhyme with another and they struggle, alarm bells may begin to ring. The current evidence is that dyslexia has a hereditary basis and is linked to inefficiencies in the language processing areas of the left hemisphere of the brain. It affects 10% of the population and can significantly damage a child’s confidence and self-belief as they struggle to understand why they are unable to read or write like their peers.

People with dyslexia find it difficult to remember and organise the sounds in spoken words. Most also have a weakness with their short-term memory and their ability to sequence information. This means it is more difficult to learn how the sounds they hear map onto the letters they see making it hard to decode or ‘sound out’ new words. It is also more difficult for them to remember the rules for spelling and the ordering of letters, affecting their ability to spell and organise their writing. Although dyslexia is a life-long condition and difficulties with reading are often accompanied by weaknesses in writing, memory and organisation, the outlook is not all doom and gloom. Most dyslexic people learn to read and write even if their skills are not fully automatic. However in order for this learning to take place they need to be identified early as having a specific learning difficulty and they need suitable teaching by dyslexia teachers or specialist tutors.

Most parents of children with a specific learning difficulty know there is something wrong even if they can’t identify what it is and a diagnosis provides a huge sigh of relief and a chance to do something about it. If your child starts school and doesn’t learn as fast or as easily as the other children it is important that they are observed and monitored by their teachers to ensure that they catch up with their peers. If they continue to fall behind further assessment may be necessary to establish what extra help the child may need. Most schools have good procedures in place for observing and monitoring progress in literacy and numeracy and for many children improvement is made with relatively little special provision. But some children will need an increased amount of help. For those children more expert identification and recommendation of appropriate strategies is the next step.

Parents and schools can do a great deal to help children with early identification and the right support. Having a child with a specific learning difficulty can be very upsetting but your child is relying on you to raise concerns and ensure their needs are understood and met. This helps reduce the upset and action leads to progress, achievement and improved confidence.