This is the fourth, penultimate instalment in our series helping parents identify potential signs of dyspraxia (also known as Developmental Coordination Disorder, or DCD) from toddlerhood 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), and Part Three: The junior school years (ages 7 to 11).
The step up to secondary school (spanning Middle and High School in North America, or Key Stages 3 to 5 and GCSEs/A-Levels in the UK) represents a massive leap toward independence. As the teenage-brain specialist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore describes in Inventing Ourselves, this is the stage in life where connection with peers and the need to ‘find our tribe’ becomes more important to us than our family. For parents, this is the stage where we naturally start stepping back – expecting our teenagers to increasingly manage their own schedules, travel independently, go out and about independently beyond their local area, begin handling some household chores, and navigate growing academic workloads.
For a dyspraxic teenager, however, this transition can feel like being thrown into the deep end of an executive-functioning obstacle course. As with some other forms of neurodivergence, dyspraxic brains are likely to find multiple aspects of adolescence more challenging than those of their neurotypical peers.
I still shudder at the following memory.
It was 1992; I was 12. Some friends and I had gone to the city centre. After gazing longingly at Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive games, we made our way to the afternoon’s highlight: to play Laser Quest, an early ’90s craze. While I was still more than 20 years from my diagnosis, I just knew that I would be hopeless at this visually-spatially demanding game. Too young to laugh at myself I instead panicked, made my excuses, and mournfully got the bus home. I regretted it for weeks afterwards. How I wish I’d understood my disability rather than just assumed I was stupid.
If dyspraxia has not been identified earlier, secondary school and teenage family life can be where the difficulties experienced become more visible, though not necessarily diagnostically identifiable. Secondary impacts of shame, frustration and avoidance, as per my anecdote above, can impact teenagers’ mental health. In her book Stumbling Through Space and Time (which I reviewed on the blog recently), DCD advocate Rosemary Richings speaks compellingly about navigating education and growing up with dyspraxia – and this teenage stage is where those spatial, domestic, and organisational friction points hit peak intensity.
(A quick note on school terminology: I’m writing from the UK, where ages 11 to 18 span Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 / GCSEs, and Sixth Form / A-Levels. If you’re in North America, this corresponds directly to Middle School and High School – roughly Grades 6 to 12.)
Here is how dyspraxia can present in adolescents between ages 11 and 18 across five core areas.
Fine motor skills
As academic demands transition into high-stakes examinations, fine-motor fatigue and coordination differences can become a major hurdle for dyspraxic teenagers, especially for those whose DCD has not been diagnosed, and for whom reasonable adjustments have not been made.
Exam performance vs verbal intellect: Adolescents are expected to write a lot during these years, especially in essay-driven subjects like history. For those whose handwriting is slowed by dyspraxia, a striking gap between what a teenager can articulate in deep, intellectual family conversations and what they can physically produce under timed, written exam conditions can manifest. Handwriting can be illegible, slow, or physically painful during long essay papers or homework tasks. As I described in a previous post, my teenage daughter’s dyspraxia diagnostician has recommended a word processor for exams on account of her DCD-impaired handwriting speed.
Practical subjects & labs: I was fascinated by science and got the theory but struggled with the practicals, ultimately resulting in my shunning the subject (another regret!). Talk to your teen if you suspect they may be dyspraxic. How do they get on with kit like Bunsen burners in their chemistry lessons? What about the tools they need to manipulate in the practical side of their design & technology lessons? And what about the protractors, compasses and other geometry tools that become increasingly important during maths lessons?
Grooming & self-care precision: Grooming becomes extremely important to image-conscious teens. This is a natural aspect of adolescence and has no doubt been magnified in this image-projecting Instagram era. Does your teen struggle with make-up, shaving, styling hair? What about fiddly jewellery or knitting their school tie? Do they take considerably longer than their peers before or after PE? Again, look out for avoidance – did they enjoy sports when they were younger but now seem to feel ‘ill’ every time they have a PE lesson?
Gross motor skills
In secondary school, physical expectations shift toward adult sports, team dynamics, and navigating crowded environments.
PE & sport avoidance: Look out for a loss of enjoyment, or even active avoidance of, PE and team sports. Misjudging spatial distance, poor hand-eye coordination in fast-paced games (like basketball or netball), or feeling self-conscious about physical clumsiness might lead a dyspraxic teen to prioritise the avoidance of embarrassment by skipping exercise altogether.
General movement & posture: A dyspraxic adolescent may continue to trip over paving stones, bump into doorframes, or slump awkwardly when sitting at a study desk due to underlying core stability and motor planning differences. What might have previously seemed like ‘clumsiness they’ll grow out of’ might now look like an increasingly stark difference when compared with peers.
Domestic tasks & heavy lifting: A dyspraxic teen may experience significant difficulty with age-appropriate domestic chores that involve motor balance and coordination – such as carrying trays of hot drinks, chopping vegetables without too much effort, folding laundry neatly, or helping out with assembling flat-pack furniture. (At 46, I still break out in a cold sweat at the thought of flat-pack furniture.)
Sequencing
Secondary school demands high-level multi-step planning. For a dyspraxic teenager, sequencing bottlenecks can easily look like disorganisation or rebellion when it is actually motor and working-memory friction.
Managing belongings & technology: Losing keys, phones, or sports kit is not unique to dyspraxic teens, but a pattern may be an indicator. Expectations around executive functioning rise steeply during secondary school. Look out for issues with homework management, particularly the sequencing demands that come from managing it across multiple online portals, paper planners, and phone apps.
Physical sequencing in routines: Dyspraxics can struggle with too much physical sequencing, something I described in a recent post about my preference for baking simpler cakes than those produced by my partner. Indications that your teen may be dyspraxic can come from them struggling with physical sequences like operating combination padlock codes on school lockers, opening complex door keypads, or timing multiple cooking steps when cooking in technology lessons or the home kitchen.
Disorganisation around the house: Okay, the adolescent ‘bomb site bedroom’ is a well-worn cliche that may have some generalisable truth to it. However, a room that remains in perpetual chaos, especially in combination with some of the other signals I’ve described, could indicate DCD.
General visual-spatial awareness
Visual-spatial processing governs how teenagers map themselves and physical objects in three-dimensional space. Visual-spatial demands grow throughout childhood and adolescence. If dyspraxia has remained hidden up to now, you can expect it to become more visible during this period of development.
Travel & spatial navigation: There are several indicators to look out for: Getting consistently lost in familiar local areas, experiencing anxiety about learning new public transport routes, or struggling to read maps and navigate large, crowded spaces like shopping centres (malls) or multi-storey secondary school buildings. My daughter was extremely anxious about finding her way around secondary school when she made the move up from the junior department. Looking back, this was a very strong sign that, like me, she was dyspraxic.
Crowd geometry & personal space: Secondary schools are very busy places, particularly the densely populated public sector, like the inner-city school I attended. Misjudging personal space in packed school corridors, accidentally bumping into peers in crowded hallways, or finding busy social environments visually and spatially overwhelming are all indicative of DCD.
Page & digital layout: Visual-spatial demands within the school curriculum are much greater during these years. Look out for difficulties with aspects of geometry and constructing graphs in maths and geography, particularly if your teen is otherwise doing well in these subjects. Difficulties with processing alignment in digital formats, such as spreadsheet layouts, may also, when combined with other factors, suggest dyspraxia.
Aversion to driving: Teens can begin driving lessons during the latter end of this stage – at 17 in the U.K., for example. While driving isn’t for everyone, be curious if your teen shows no interest whatsoever. Like me, their lack of interest may be more down to complete lack of confidence with visual-spatial processing rather than a lack of desire to drive.
Secondary symptoms: masking, shame, and burnout
During adolescence, peer comparison, social belonging, and tribe-establishing drive motivation and decision-making. Hyper-self-awareness around being ‘different’ or ‘clumsy’ makes this stage the peak period for secondary psychological symptoms. As a teenage boy in a predominantly working-class community, I felt deeply inferior because of my inability to master the practical skills others found easy. Avoidance became my default adaptation. My mental health suffered. This is a classic example of what I mean when I refer to ‘secondary symptoms’ – the cost of primary symptoms.
Teenage fatigue & ‘after-school collapse’: Some dyspraxics return home from school completely exhausted because of overwhelm, or irritable because of the frustrations they’ve experienced. Dyspraxic adolescents expend an enormous amount of mental and physical energy ‘masking’ their physical awkwardness and organisational struggles during the day to fit in with peers. This can lead to emotional meltdowns in the safety of the family home. If this sounds like your teen, be curious. Gently try to understand the root cause of their emotions.
Internalised shame & low self-esteem: DCD can result in a deep-seated sense of feeling ‘incompetent’ or ‘behind’ compared to friends who learn to navigate public transport, sports, or domestic tasks easily – or who have begun booking driving lessons. This can manifest as withdrawal, anxiety, or low mood.
Deflection & the ‘class clown’: To protect themselves from peer embarrassment, dyspraxic teenagers can resort to extreme avoidance or adopt a persona – acting as the class clown to divert attention from their struggles and to win peer favour, or by pretending not to care about schoolwork.
Accumulation of observations
In teenagers, dyspraxia can easily – if somewhat lazily – be misread by parents and teachers as apathy, laziness, or teenage rebellion. But when a young person consistently leaves their room in chaos, struggles with basic kitchen tasks, or forgets their gear, it is rarely a lack of care – it may be an executive-functioning and motor-planning bottleneck.
Recognising dyspraxia at this stage opens the door to vital formal accommodations (such as using a laptop or receiving extra time in GCSE, A-Level, or SAT/ACT exams) and, most importantly, allows you as a parent to help your teenager build practical self-accommodations for adult life. It also means that you can work alongside professionals to help your teen to make reasonable adjustments at home, both in a practical sense and in terms of helping them recognise what works for them and what doesn’t. You can also help them see the advantages. Being unable to drive might mean they get around town by walking or cycling, which will boost their physical health – and offers mental health benefits, too.
Coming up next:
Development does not stop at 18. It is widely accepted that adolescence continues until around the age of 25. In the final instalment of our series, read Part Five: Young Adulthood (Ages 18 to 25), where we explore how dyspraxia shows up during these final years of adolescence.
(Are you an educator? Check out my companion guide on how to spot signs of dyspraxia in teenagers at school.)
