Dysgraphia Support?

[Charmie981]

I'm going crazy trying to get this kid to write. And I keep thinking its my fault for not teaching him handwriting well enough. I was thinking today that maybe we should take a month off of our current schedule to refresh his handwriting skills, but I think I'd rather pull my own fingernails off.

Does anyone else feel this way??

[moominmamma]

Two of my kids are/were quite dysgraphic. I never went through the fingernail-pulling phase because I just accepted that this was very hard for them and that in due course they would either dig in and do enough work to remediate the problem or else find coping mechanisms. We did handwriting work only when they thought it was fun.

For my eldest daughter the handwriting work she did was probably 2 or 3 hours worth, total, prior to age 8.5. At that point she just started writing -- privately, copiously, messily at first, but gradually, after weeks and months of driven personal creative writing (not 'handwriting practice') she developed a fluid and legible script. For my son this meant he did 10 or 15 minutes every few weeks starting at age 9 -- almost nothing, really. He is 12 now and while he can sign his name and print neatly if he takes great time and care, he writes almost entirely on the computer, where he is a capable writer who enjoys what he can do.

If you are homeschooling you don't need to use written output to evaluate what your ds has mastered. You can observe, discuss and listen in order to find out what he knows. So written work has little of the urgent early necessity that it does in a classroom of 7-year-olds. It may be considered "normal" for a 7-year-old to write fluidly and legibly, but it is certainly not necessary outside the classroom, IMO.

Miranda

[chfriend]

My dd1 (8) has a lot of trouble writing. At her request, we did Handwriting without Tears when she was younger. She recently asked for it again (because of teasing from other homeschooled children about letter reversals). I printed out the formation charts here:

http://www.hwtears.com/parents/parentextras

[Lillian J]

...but I think I'd rather pull my own fingernails off.

There was also a dysgraphia thread last month - I thought at first that this was the same one with a new post.

I didn't post in the other one, but I have to say that my husband, who has a college degree and is now retired from a long and happy career, has never been able to write his way out of a paper bag, and it doesn't seem to have ever impacted his life. Handwriting has also been a challenge for our son, but it didn't seem to have interfered with his college success - and I noticed recently when he wrote out some things for a list that it's now pretty neat and legible - so maybe the necessity of having to get more legible for his note taking, or whatever, somehow helped him get it into focus? I don't know...

Here are some materials you might take a look at - we used The "Write" Approach and really liked the simplicity of it:
Form Drawing and Handwriting

Good luck! Lillian

[kittywitty]

My ds uses Handwriting without Tears. I am not forceful about it. I just keep it around and he works on it sometimes. He has some SPD issues and poor muscle tone, so he works on it occasionally at OT, also. I am not worried about it. I know more people whose writing looks like chicken scratch than people who write legibly. I was a *terrible* writer forever and still am semi-illegible. I don't want it to be something tedious, so I try to find ways for him to write where he's comfortable. Like by buying him Draw Write Now or blank books to "write his own" stories in.

[ReadingMama]

My son is 9 and has dysgraphia. We did the OT thing (for 2 years) and the Handwriting without Tears thing, and while ds CAN write legibly, it takes too long to be really functional. As a result of the thread Lillian linked, I've begun accomodating him for handwriting. If we're using a workbook and the purpose of it is not handwriting, he tells me the answers and I write them down. It has really helped in math. Now that I write his answers for him, he's moving ahead at a good rate!

If I start to worry about it, it helps to remember that good handwriting isn't a requirement at this age. He's not writing checks or filling out invoices. Another thing that helps me is to remember that typed communication is used a lot more than handwritten communication in most fields. We still haven't gotten serious about typing, but we will soon. It's a great way to self-accomodate!

Ds still works on his handwriting. He spends maybe 5 minutes a day writing. I mainly have him do it so he remembers how to form letters. He has some dyslexic traits too, and sometimes forgets how letters are formed.