new member writing question - Page 2

[joensally]

My bias is toward gentle early intervention.  My reasoning is that kids change over time, and have periods of openness to remediation.  DS periodically becomes more resistant to outside direction, and we've worked with him more directly when he's open to it.   If you're being child-centred, gentle and play-based, you can be working on it slowly over time.  Our DS's path seems to include moving in and out of public school, so there has been some pressure to try to bring him up to grade level.  Early on, I did more direct stuff (fun stuff, like drawing on paper which was taped to the wall using a very small piece of broken crayon).  He's been in piano for 3 years and now does a lot of formal drawing.  Also origami, and lego etc etc.  I am way too risk averse to wait and see. 

[ollyoxenfree]

I am also biased toward gentle early intervention, for all of the reasons that have been so well articulated by pp. Like Roar, I too wonder a little about the number of homeschoolers who go on to dysgraphia diagnoses in their adolescent years. My ds also struggled with writing early on. At age 7 or 8, he was beginning to view himself as a non-writer, incapable of producing written work. I can imagine how entrenched that self-image could have become and how difficult it could be to overcome. The school allowed him to use various creative accommodations for assignments (eg. oral presentations, video documentaries, photo essays) but he continued to develop his writing skills. By high school, it really wasn't much of an issue at all. By the time some kids are first forced to confront their writing difficulties, he had a toolkit full of strategies and tactics and they were so familiar to him, there was little or no extra work for him. Today, he's enrolled in a university humanities program and his courses (psychology, politics, philosophy,critical thinking) have a large writing component but he's doing very well.

We can't know whether he'd have come around with writing if he had waited it out, but I'd consider him a success story with respect to an approach of gentle early intervention and reasonable accommodations. 

Edited by ollyoxenfree - 11/16/11 at 7:09am

[purslaine]

Originally Posted by ollyoxenfree 

 Like Roar, I too wonder a little about the number of homeschoolers who go on to dysgraphia diagnoses in their adolescent years. 

My son has a diagnosis of dysgraphia.  I don't always share that (I simply prefer to say he has (had?) writing difficulties) as I am not sure I agree with the diagnosis.

He was diagnosed around age 11.  He was undergoing a WISC, the assessor thought he was behind in writing and writing speed, did a few tests, and voila  - diagnosis of dysgraphia.  There was no discussion of the fact that he had been very casually homeschooled - and had nowhere near the amount of practice schooled children did with handwriting.  I think he was being compared to schooled peers - and most HSers (even pretty structured ones) do less writing that schooled peers.  They simply do not have to do the same amount for various reason.  

I think the way he was diagnosed left a lot of room for misdiagnosis.