This is the fifth and final instalment in our series helping parents identify potential signs of dyspraxia (also known as Developmental Coordination Disorder, or DCD) from toddlerhood through to early adulthood. If you missed the earlier stages, you can catch up on Part One: Identifying dyspraxia in the early years (ages 2 to 4), Part Two: The infant school years (ages 4 to 7), Part Three: The junior school years (ages 7 to 11), and Part Four: The secondary school years (ages 11 to 18).
By the time a young person reaches their late teens and early twenties, society often assumes their developmental foundation is complete. However, modern neuroscience and developmental psychology increasingly recognise that adolescence extends into early adulthood – roughly up to age 25 – before the prefrontal cortex is fully developed. While your child may now be taller than you, they are still developing. My daughter received her dyspraxia diagnosis just a couple of months before her 18th birthday, while I was twice that age! In short, dyspraxia can go unrecognised for a long time. The increased demands we face as we transition into early adulthood can be the stage where it all becomes clear.
For young dyspraxic adults, this period can be a quiet crisis point. The physical clumsiness of childhood may have softened into learned workarounds, but the executive functioning, spatial navigation, and motor-planning demands of adult life increase exponentially.
Looking back on my own young adulthood, securing a record deal and pivoting away from university study into music – and later working in public services – brought a wave of independence that I intellectually craved. Yet, beneath the surface, navigating the physical and administrative overhead of adult life felt like swimming against a quiet, constant tide. I could confidently sing on stage but I couldn’t put a shelf up. (And I was from a world where men were meant to be good at the latter and not the former!)
If you are a parent watching your 18-to-25-year-old navigate this period of late adolescence, here are key signs that dyspraxia may be playing a hitherto unrecognised role in their life, mapped across the core five-part framework that followers of this series will by now be well acquainted with.
Fine motor skills and domestic independence
While fine motor demands shift away from school handwriting, everyday domestic survival requires an entirely new tier of physical precision and manual coordination.
Self-presentation: Some dyspraxics find they can eventually master tasks that don’t come naturally to them – but some find the difficulties persist into adulthood. If your young-adult child looks scruffy, it could be dismissed as a quirk of character, but could their appearance instead be due to difficulties with grooming activities’ fiddly fine-motor skills?
Fiddly kitchen tasks: Speaking of fiddly tasks, the kitchen is littered with them. Can openers (my nemeses!), corkscrews, opening plastic packaging, finely chopping vegetables… the list goes on. A compensation made by a young dyspraxic adult might be avoidance of cooking meals from scratch, instead relying on convenience food. If you’ve noticed a culinary pattern, be curious. Sensitively ask them whether they’re struggling with kitchen tasks. If they have been quietly struggling for years without understanding why, they may be relieved to finally talk openly about it. I know I would have been at their age!
Gross motor skills and physical pacing
By this point, your young-adult child may have experienced employment-based challenges that indicate the possibility of dyspraxia. Other adult responsibilities may also expose hitherto unrecognised difficulties.
Employment: Early jobs often expose difficulties that school never did. Operating equipment, learning practical procedures, navigating unfamiliar workplaces, or managing physically demanding tasks may reveal coordination challenges that were previously hidden. Be curious. Check in with your child. If you already have suspicions about DCD, then ask them how they’re getting on with the practical aspects of their role – assuming these are applicable.
DIY and other domestic tasks: Many young people move out between the ages of 18 to 25. Those who remain at home might be expected to participate in home maintenance or other novel domestic tasks. Even something as seemingly simple as taking the bins out can prove awkward for someone with dyspraxia.
Sequencing and executive functioning
The leap to university, training programmes, or early careers requires a massive upgrade in executive functioning – planning, time estimation, organisation, and self-direction, all skills that dyspraxics can find challenging.
Higher education & workplace friction: A young adult may be intellectually capable – capable of writing outstanding essays or producing creative work – yet repeatedly struggle with turning work in on time, keeping track of deadlines, or maintaining an organised digital and physical workspace. The gap between intellectual capability and executive functioning may be stark – and confusing.
Financial & administrative organisation: While dyspraxia is not a calculation disorder, tracking expenditure, remembering bill due dates, managing digital banking interfaces, and completing complex paperwork (such as student finance or passport applications) can cause severe executive function overload.
Following colleagues’ verbal instructions: When I got my first ‘proper’ job I found it really challenging to hold a sequence of verbal instructions or directions in my head. In the end, I resorted to writing them down. In retrospect, this was one of the first times I adopted a self-accommodation.
General visual-spatial awareness and navigation
Navigating new cities, campuses, and transport networks places heavy demands on the brain's spatial processing systems for university students. For those who’ve gone into work, finding their way around busy, sprawling workplaces – where relevant, of course – can be a challenge. This is also the period in which the majority of people consider driving, another age-appropriate task that dyspraxics can find extremely difficult due to the significant spatial-processing demands involved.
Finding their way around: Is your young adult finding their way around a new environment challenging? I remember finding working in a labyrinthine office at the age of 27 mind-blowingly disorientating, spending the first few weeks anxiously trying to find my way around, desperately hoping my lack of confidence with the building’s layout wouldn’t be mistaken for universal incompetence.
Driving avoidance: Do they show a persistent, deep-seated reluctance to start driving lessons, making excuses or preferring public transport, walking, or relying on lifts well into their twenties? I was terrified of driving and never progressed to lessons, a decision that made sense to me given the level of anxiety I felt around the idea.
Travel & spatial navigation stress: As I’ve written when reflecting on the cognitive cost of travel, navigating crowded transit hubs, busy airports, or new city layouts requires an enormous amount of real-time spatial computation. Do they get easily disoriented in unfamiliar cities or train stations, needing to rely heavily on GPS or pre-planned routes just to feel secure?
Secondary symptoms: masking, fatigue, and low self-esteem
The most poignant sign in this age group is the cumulative emotional impact of living with unidentified DCD as the stakes of adult life rise. The shame that can emerge from repeated feelings of incompetence and embarrassment can gradually erode a young adult’s confidence and self-esteem. I speak from vividly recalled personal experience. Maybe your young adult masks or tries to fit into a social life that doesn’t work for them, taking a gradual, cumulative toll.
Social & spatial energy drain: In early adulthood, socialising often shifts to busy, unpredictable, noisy environments – crowded bars, unfamiliar city centres, or large group events. Does socialising leave them unusually depleted? The hidden effort of processing background noise, spatial proximity, and physical positioning in a crowd takes a genuine toll on energy levels.
Late-night socialising: It is well documented that dyspraxia’s extra processing demands can leave dyspraxics exhausted by the evening. As evidenced by the likes of psychologist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, adolescence is characterised by a drive for peer acceptance and in-group connection. For dyspraxics this can mean forcing yourself into late-night socialising that you’re far too tired to enjoy – with a knock-on effect on the days that follow. Some young people may seek unhealthy ways of compensating for chronic fatigue or social exhaustion in an attempt to keep pace with their peers.
Internalised shame & burnout: Young adults who have gone undiagnosed often internalise their struggles, labelling themselves as ‘disorganised’, ‘lazy’, ‘behind in life’, or ‘incapable’ compared to their peers. This can manifest as persistent anxiety, low mood, or a reluctance to take life steps they are intellectually more than ready for. Avoidance was certainly a defining feature of my late adolescence.
Supporting the young adult
As I have mentioned in the series’ previous posts, one of these indicators alone may well be explained by another cause. It’s all about an accumulation. By the time I was in my late teens there was a series of signs that I might be dyspraxic, from my fear of getting behind a wheel to the stress I felt trying to find my way around a new building to the fact that I lacked the competence to help out meaningfully when it came to DIY in the home.
Spotting these signs in an 18-to-25-year-old isn't about stepping in to manage their life for them. It’s about offering a lens of understanding.
A late diagnosis or recognition of dyspraxia at this stage can be transformative – granting access to Disabled Students' Allowance (DSA) at university, Access to Work support in employment, and, above all, the understanding your young adult needs to step into adulthood with self-knowledge, self-compassion, and effective self-accommodations.
(Are you an employer or manager looking to create an inclusive environment? If so, check out my companion guide series on what dyspraxia means for employers and workplaces.)
