What is the reason you want him writing by hand? As a 4th grader DD herself asked to stay with OT longer when it was suggested it wasn't worth the effort. Her reasoning was that she wouldn't always have access to technology and needed to be able to write a note by hand if necessary. By 6th grade she declared "Continuing to work on handwriting is a bloody waste of time." She can now form letters, more or less the same size and facing the right direction. They don't necessarily stay on the line and aren't always spaced properly. So technically her "handwriting" has improved but when combined with her dyslexic spelling no one but an experienced sped professional can read what she wrote. It's a lot of time and effort with minimal tangible result. I'm proud of her for sticking with it but I agree that there are significantly better ways for her to spend her time.
Over the years many people have pointed out that few people really write by hand "in the real world". Voice notes and keyboarding are now everyday methods used even by NT adults. I thought they were just being kind but I am seeing it more and more. I still write notes by hand during meetings but frankly more often than not I can't read my own handwriting later. I'm trying to push getting DD an AT work around for note taking - I see that as her biggest challenge to re-entering a mainstream environment. But for just about everything else her AT seems to serve her pretty well. Last year when she participated in the district's TAG program with gifted NT peers her AT approach was in some ways a benefit. She saved hours not having to copy things she had written by hand and was able to work more easily with her research by copying and pasting between documents on her iPad. I realized that all those kind folks had a point.
While a can see a semester working with an OT on hand writing basics I'm not convinced at this point there is a huge benefit to him spending a ton of time on this. His academic needs will be getting more complex and I would rather see him have time and energy to focus on learning new and interesting material rather than arduously handwriting then copying over and over trying to correct spelling. He could type using spellcheck and then edit once. From my perspective this would leave more time and energy for actual learning. I know it works better for my DD. Just a thought. I credit Polarbear with emphasizing this over the years as I tried to figure out the best path for DD and her challenges.
Great news about local families benefiting from DD's high/low situation. Bit by bit 2e kids are getting what they need as we share our experiences. It warms my heart.
I had DD try the thesaurus technique aeh outlined above and we discovered google docs doesn't seem to have one built in. We loaded a thesaurus app but I'm wondering if we're missing something. It would be easier to tap a button while working on her document rather than having to copy and paste between apps. Any ideas?
