Working my way throgh here...

Originally Posted by aeh
FWIW, my opinion (not a dictate!) is that long-term goals for handwriting should be the ability to 1) sign one's name, 2) fill out a form, and 3) write a thank-you note. Anything beyond that would be gravy.
This is pretty much in exact agreement with our child OT, who told us when our middle child was 4.5yrs "Be happy if she grows up to sign her name and tick boxes"...

Originally Posted by aeh
The bottom line is, if one has to think about the act of handwriting while taking notes, one has less attention, memory, and reasoning to apply to thinking about the content.

I think this is really key for the child I am most interested in helping now, I think she is less "disabled" with regard to handwriting than our middle child. But we know her to have WM substantially lower than all other areas of her profile. Which probably means it does boil down to "If typing is easier, she should type" (or if dictating is easier dictate). And my current job is to figure out what actually is easier for her.

Originally Posted by aeh
As to how she might reintegrate into institutional school...that depends a bit on the timeline.

1:1 devices are very standard here in public high schools (we have no middle school in our public system, so from yr7 in most states), and often from mid to late primary school in private schools. I could be wrong, but my experience tells me it's far easier to go in to a new school environment here and get agreement to continue what is already being done (or deemed necessary) than it is to get new accommodations in an existing school situation. In particular my experience is that schools are mostly only receptive to addressing a "new" issue they identified themselves and will only want to address an issue in the ways they are accustomed to, or have devised themselves.

Which is to say I have more hope of resolving this myself and then delivering her back into a school environment complete with a fully functional AT system back than I do of working truly collaboratively with a school to experiment and devise a system.

Originally Posted by aeh
I will note that there is value in learning to read cursive, as otherwise, a fair amount of historical text becomes inaccessible--such as grandma's letters or journals.

Excellent point! Or letters from elderly relatives...