My 10 year old is finding ways to work around the dyspraxia/hypotonia that causes difficulty with writing.

He took a long break from math (Aleks) because we had trouble with our internet service for several months and it is his least favorite subject. When he started back to work on middle school math course that he was about half-way through before he quit, he found that he could get answers to some math questions much faster by not writing anything down. For example: 3/10 divided by 4/15 he clicked on the fraction box thing that I thought could only be used once for the final answer and typed in 3/10, 15/4 and 45/40 so that all were on the screen at the same time, then 1 5/40, then 1 1/8 for his final answer after backspacing over the ones he didn't need. We had talked a few days ago about the need for showing his work so he could check it because he would sometimes get distracted when doing mental math and have to start over. He told me he was "digitally writing it down." I knew typing helped with getting his thoughts on paper but I never knew you could type math. He knows that he can't use this for everything and he will write out problems when he absolutely has to. He says I can't expect him to not use these tools if they are available.

He actually enjoyed his last Cub Scouts meeting because they worked on the Citizen badge and he got to talk about what he knew about government, the election process and the electoral college and the scout leader let them discuss politics, but he and the scout leader did most of the talking. He said the leader asked him how old he was and what grade he was in. He gets asked this question a lot. He had to fill out a worksheet and he said he apologised to the cub scout leader for his bad handwriting. At least he is able to explain to other people that he has a disability now, instead of trying to hide it. I think finding out that the actor who played Harry Potter also has this mild disability helped him. I think it also helped to find out that one of our neighbors has an older daughter that might be 2E. She only had one teacher in all of her years in school who really got that she needed to learn differently. One teacher had her put in special ed, but she told them she wasn't learning anything so they put her back in regular classes where she somehow overcame her difficulties and in high school she ended up making the highest scores on math tests in a school for gifted kids that she tested to get into. My neighbor said the one teacher who encouraged her daughter made a huge difference in her life.