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Hi
DS 5 has had writing issues and will be getting an evalaution in school so I know some of this is related to that but any thoughts on how to deal with this is appreciated. Although not sure there is anything here!

DS brings home a worksheet with different types of animals - he was supposed to circle some, x out others to distinguish them. He was also supposed to find and color pictures hidden in a bigger picture. DS basically scribbles over everything instead of even trying to color in the lines. But he did correctly circle and x out. So he did it right but its a mess. I know some of this is the writing issue. But my mom gut thinks its more about his attitude about the assignment - just do it quickly so he can go back to thinking his great thoughts or whatever else he gets to do when finished in school. With actual writing assignments, he keeps saying but I don't like it, and I finally got frustrated and said it doesnt matter, you just have to do it.

I think what bothers me is that lack of pride and willingess to do the "job" correctly. Same thing with drawings of people - bare minimum so still stick figures, sometimes I have to ask for fingers and hair. But again, not because he can't but because he doesn't want to and doesnt think its important. Or he is just masking how hard all this is for him?

So far school is interesting for him but not challenging. The homework is extensive but only a problem because he doesnt want to write.

So partly I think I am being ridiculous for being concerned that he doesnt try to make nice drawings or color nicely, but on the other hand, is this something that needs to be dealt with, the its not interesting to me so I can put no effort into it part?

DeHe

I hear you DeHe, but he is 5. It's ok to recognize that his work ethic isn't what you want it to be and try to find ways to nurture, but dont' panic, ok?

I would look for non-paper/pencil ways to increase hand coordination that actually interest him. There is a way to make decorative beads by twisting wire around popsicle sticks, sewing, clay, papermache, cup stacking, Rubix cube twisting, musical instruments, rock digging and identification, circut boards. Find him something to do that requires attention to detail and manual dexterity that relates in SOME way to a topic HE finds interesting. Then relax about the mess papers - afterall, he is showing excellent judgement about how he wants to use his resources - it's just that he's missing the opportunity to practice coloring that kids this age usually really need.

Good Luck,
Grinity

Absolutely no panicking! It does sound silly to write it down - love this board - when I say this stuff to my DH I get the "look" !!

We are looking for ways to engage him, he is getting more into Lego and his snap circuits. Although if we wanted to focus him on something else we never should have gotten him the Horrible Science box set!!! So fascinating discussions about B and T cells but not so much coloring.

I think my biggest struggle with parenting DS is when is he 5 and when is he not. He's not 5 more than he is, your using work ethic reminds me of that, it's appropriate to talk about with an older kid but maybe not so much for 5!!

DeHe

I think the seeds of work ethic are planted at age 5, and I do think that all that awful coloring benefits the development of 5 year olds.
If he loves science then perhaps to get him a microscope and ask him to keep a log of his observations, or show him John James Audubon's Birds of Americaweb4.audubon.org/bird/BoA/BOA

Colored pencils or cray pas might work more to his satisfaction in his hands, there is something physically unpleasant to the vibration in the hand from coloring.

google images for 'hematopoietic cells' and you might have the makings of a coloring book. If you print out in greyscale and let him use colored pencils he might really enjoy himself.

Asynchronous development really calls for extra brainstorming.

Smiles,
Grinity

Another idea is to allow him to do the school worksheets while watching TV, or listening to a book on tape or favorite music. Not sure that I would want to start down that path, but if he is willing to make an effort to stay within the lines, you've got a built in reinforcer.

It sounds like you are starting to accept that he isn't likely to get much satisfaction from K level assignments, and that's very important.

I also like graph paper...perhaps he would like to draw a B cell on graph paper and you could show him how to turn that into a knitting or crochet pattern.

Smiles,
G

As a mother of a child with dysgraphia, I can look back on the year of torture that was grade primary and completely relate to your post. At that time, we had no idea what was up. She had not been dx's with ADHD and dyslexia and dysgraphia, yet. To me, she seemed like the most unmotivated, lazy smart child in the world. I wanted to pull out my hair. There was nothing I could do to convince her that work should be done to the best of her ability. She seemed to 'not care' about anything. Four years later, with all of her diagnoses known, she is quick to tell us (and often) how horrible that year of school was for her. She could occasionally do what was expected, but the amount of concentration and effort that went into the easist of tasks was so overwhelming that she chose to not even try rather than try and fail.

I wish I could go back and reparent her in that year of her life. I feel like I let her down. I should have been helping her instead of nagging her constantly. In my defense, I had no clue about any of her diagnoses. She really and truly presented like a lazy, uninterested child. If you ask her today what we, as parents, could have done differently... she says that we could have praised her more for the efforts she did make and recognize how hard she worked to do the little that she did.

Just my two cents, as a 2e Mommy.

km
I am dyslexic so we are hypersenstive to anything remotely resembling it - we are watching that like a hawk. We are having him evaluated by the school OT, actually the school encouraged us to. I wholeheartedly agree about the praise - we praise his effort and try to show him how far he has come. So I know there is a component here. He was a preemie and all his physical development has been slow - not delayed - but slow. With writing, all the things grinity recommends are the things he doesnt want to do, has never wanted to do play doh or write or color for long periods. So I am hoping some of this is strength but there is also something else there. He is actually really making improvement, its just not as fast or as close to where the want him. I fear that if he has dyslexia he will be like me - and unknowingly able to mask it for a long time and then suddenly unable to and then painful fail - I really dont want that to happen.

Some of this might indeed be a disability - but some if it is definitely the unwillingness to do it and I cant seem to get anywhere with him on that. But I posted essentially to find out if it matters - and interestingly from totally different perspectives you and G say yes!

DeHe

So recognise and praise when he does those things for a short time - I think a lot of gifted kids go in spurts - my DS hated all that stuff as well, so I'd wait until there was a new Pokemon game that he just had to have and do a super bribe, or he'd get interested in something - one afternoon he wanted graph paper but didn't know where to find it, so he drew his own!!!!(3rd grade) DH finally started to believe that there was something unusual about our boy after that day. (If I had been around I would have known where the graph paper was and DH would have gone on in denial another year.)

Friendship bracelets can be made on foam bases, that can be fun, check with your OT for more ideas because diagnosable or not, our kids NEED that motor stimulation.

Play catch.

Rest and recognize yourself after the uphill climb.

Smiles,
Grinity

With my DD, the only times I see her willing to put in any amount of effort is when a)she is learning something completely new that she has no prior knowledge of (in grade three this was black history, this year it is the intricacies of puberty... joy!) or b)a subject that grabs her attention or c)it's fun. If an assignment does not meet these criteria, than she does not deem it worthy of the 'heroic' efforts she needs to employ to do a stellar job. In her own words "Having a learning disability makes school so hard! It is like trying to drive up a really steep hill on your little brother's tricycle. "I think she copes by picking and choosing which areas of her school work to work hard on. It is inconsistent and frustrating, but I think she would just crumple otherwise.

Interestingly, DD was also premature (born at 32 weeks) and she also refused to colour as a preschooler. I had to give her a crash course on writing her name two weeks before school started because she would refuse to hold a pencil!

Best of luck to you as you sort it all out. At all costs, preserve his self-esteem. It is incredibly precious, so easily damaged and practically impossible to get back once it is lost. My biggest struggle as an OCD perfectionist was to start looking the other way and accepting the work the DD produced as her 'best effort'. I still have a hard time deciding when to push and when to back off.

Another mom of a 2e dysgraphic kid here - our ds is 12 now, but what you wrote sounds so much like our ds' early school years before we knew about his dysgraphia (he has an expressive language challenge also). Rather than writing it all out, I'll just say "ditto" to everything K's Mum said If I had *anything* I could do over again (and there is very little I would ever really care about doing over again!) it would be to not think my ds wasn't trying back then. It sounds like you're way ahead of where we were in that you're aware of potential challenges. If I was in your place right now, I think I'd focus on giving my 5 year old all the fun and interesting things *he* wanted to do after school at this point in time and downplay schoolwork at home. Keep watching for and trying to understand what's up at school, but at 5 - he's going to be find his motivation and pride in his work eventually, but he may be just a little bit young for it at the moment. Most important to me would be to determine if he has any challenges going on, to try and understand that before they cause more frustration for him.

Best wishes,

polarbear

My son's kindergarten teacher wanted to hold him back a year so he could work on coloring in the lines even though he could read at a 5th grade level before he started kindergarten at age 5 and could do mental math including some multiplication. She thought coloring in the lines was important enough to hold him back even though we told her that he had low muscle tone and mild muscle weakness that caused him to have trouble with fine motor skills and even though he made what would have normally been a passing grade on an end of year first grade test to see if he could skip ahead to second grade the next year. I had asked for that testing before she told us about the coloring problem. I volunteered at the school during his kindergarten year and I took home some left over third grade language arts worksheets in copy room to see if he could do them. He could do the third grade worksheets without any problem yet he couldn't or wouldn't color in the lines. He could write his name before he started kindergarten and could write all letters of the alphabet legibly by the end of kindergarten but his problem was that it took him longer to write than other kids and he fatigued faster than other kids because of the physical issues. I think he could color in the lines for a short time but he would get tired and he wanted to get his work done on time so he did the best he could and when he realized he couldn't finish in time he would scribble just to get it done. He also would only draw stick figures and was embarrassed by his lack of drawing ability. The teacher would hang their pictures outside of the classroom for everyone to see. They did a lot of coloring at his school and I still think my son was better off practicing writing instead of coloring since he had the fatigue issues. My husband agrees with me. We just didn't see coloring in the lines as an important life skill. He can color in the lines now without that extra year of practice but he spent his time reading and learning things that in my opinion are much more important than coloring in the lines. We have homeschooled since my son finished kindergarten.

My son wasn't diagnosed with motor dysgraphia until he was 11. When he was tested at age 7 the OT said his writing was low normal and she did not test him long enough to see that his writing falls apart when his hands get tired. I remember getting upset with him a few times when he wouldn't do all of the writing I wanted him to do. I remember threatening to put him back in school when the OT didn't find a problem because I started doubting what I saw. I wondered a few times if maybe he was lazy but then I realized that he didn't like doing coloring or writing assignments because they made his hands hurt and made him tired. If something causes me pain I try to avoid it too or find an easier way to get things done. He learned to type.

My son started taking piano lessons when he was five to help with fine motor issues and he used Handwriting without Tears to practice writing but I never made him color in the lines again. He still draws using stick figures. He did practice drawing a few years ago using some online how to draw examples.

I have a somewhat different take. DS hated homework from the instant it was offered in K. He could do it, of course, but he hated the very idea of school intruding on his free time. (He has never been diagnosed with dysgraphia, but that may be in his mix; we remediated handwriting fluency heavily in the early grades. He also has AS, which makes him generally less flexible and less willing to do things he finds intrinsically worthless.)

IMO learning to comply and do it with reasonable quality was part of the bigger issue of learning to do things you don't want to in life. We hugely rewarded compliance and were as positive and encouraging as we could manage, so it wasn't all awful. We taught DS to make a "coping statement" like "I can probably knock this off in about 10 minutes" or "I'll do the easiest part first."

In school, in work, even in play, you will meet people who want you to do something a different way, and often you have to go along with someone else's way of doing things, or do a task you don't want to do. This becomes one of the most important skills in keeping a job, down the road. (I knew someone once who was fired because she didn't like the idea of brewing a pot of coffee.) DS is now in 4th and gives us no flak about homework; he gets it that it's part of his job, even if it's just review and not that interesting.

So DeHe, if it seems to you it's a motor issue or dysgraphia, by all means get him evaluated; but if you think it's purely that he doesn't want to comply, it may be worth working on.

DeeDee

DeeDee I think you nailed it for me - I can't tell. Interestingly, the K teacher, who has been supportive really pushed for an eval and we are allowing that to happen, said he might not qualify for anything. She notes that it just seems so hard for him and he seems to really be trying. So I am torn, I know the eval will show he is at the lower end of K, his teacher thinks he will be under it.I am not sure as this is a gifted school how that translate into what she routinely sees. But anyway, he needs more help. But on top of that, I think I am concerned that he is starting to develop what so many here have talked about - a realization that he is not learning anything and that it is a waste of time. But the attitude only manifests in the stuff he isnt good at. Some of it is definitely his current attitude - he is about to turn 6 and really seems to be in a "no" mindset - he doesnt want to do anything but read, he doesnt want to eat foods he used to like. Its weird he is taking on more responsbility by his own choice and reverting to babyish behavior in other areas - I forgot that he gets like this, sometimes before a growth spurt and sometimes before a brain spurt.

For the dysgraphia/dyslexia crowd, my worries stem from how hard he has to think to get 9 and 6 correct, when he gets tired he reverses, etc. But the main oddity I noticed is that he never starts numbers or letters in the same place or does it the same way. Making the shape is not rote. But then most of the time it doesnt manifest in a wrong shape - so normal age thing, or not, time will tell, I guess.

At any rate, we are very conscious of his self esteem - but also there seems to be a bit of arrogance developing about his reading level, etc, mainly in reponse to the fact the he gets things from school labeled for 2nd or even 3rd grade - so we had a discussion that brain age is not always the same as physical age - same as soccer skills or art skills. Funny to be talking about asynchrony with him!!!

So get the eval, praise the effort and a positive attitude, manage the crappy attitude and try to get him doing more fine motor.

And piano sounds like a great idea!

Everyone thanks! everyone says this all the time, but you really can't talk about this with other parents - even when you are in a gifted environment!

DeHe

I volunteer weekly in my kids' classes. I saw quite a few kids even in second grade reversing letters, 6 for a 9, etc. I see very few now in third grade. I think it still can be "normal" up to age 8 or so. If your child is in kindergarten, maybe it will settle out. Piano is a good idea for fine motor control, as could be taking drawing lessons, etc.
We have my son (who doesn't have dysgraphia) do the first two books of Handwriting Without Tears, a page a day, and his handwriting looks much, much better.

We were also told that reversals are very common through 2nd grade. Jack'smom's reply reminded me of something that might be worth considering. Once we had a dysgraphia diagnosis for our ds, we were told to try Handwriting at Tears at home to attempt to teach him the correct way to form each letter. Our neuropsych's recommendation was to work on HWOT for 20 minutes per session for several months over e summer. Our ds couldn't make it past 5 minutes without extreme hand pain and was never able to finish more than 1-2 lines of practice printing in the HWOT sheets.

If you were to try HWOT or a similar handwriting program at home and saw similar things, that would be a strong indication of dysgraphia.

I also think that's what "normal" has to be viewed in light of two extenuating circumstances for DeHe's ds - he has a dyslexic relative (genetics can be a clue) and his teachers have raised concern.

polarbear

It does sound like a great idea. Just keep in mind that if your DS does have dyslexia and/or dysgraphia it will NOT come easily. We pushed DD through two years of piano and it was a toss up as to who suffered more ;-) Dyslexia makes it very hard to read music and dysgraphia makes it hard to control your fingers. In theory, it sounds like a great exercise for all of those weaknesses. In reality, be prepared that it may be yet another battle ground.

(And I am soooooo pro-piano otherwise... I have my grade 9 RC, put myself through university by teaching and played piano/organ at church for 16 years. It broke my heart, but I had to let DD stop lessons)

Five minutes was about my son's limit for handwriting also and it still is even though he takes piano lessons and he did use a squeeze toy to strengthen his hands.

My son would occasionally reverse letters and numbers even after the age of 8. Sometimes he would do math and tell me the right answer as he was writing it but his 5 would be written backward and looked more like a 2. He didn't do it all the time, just occasionally. He never did it when the OT was testing him and he didn't have trouble learning to read, in fact he taught himself to read at 2 but couldn't read for very long because his eyes got tired quickly but would continue to identify the words if I spelled them out for him.

In piano his teacher has always had to highlight the right and left hand notes that are played together because of some strange vision issue that I have never been able to figure out and he would sometimes play a chord with the top and bottom notes reversed--some kind of vertical reversal thing and it tends to happen when he is getting a migraine but there are other days when he plays really well even though he didn't practice at all for a week. When he first started piano the teacher had him using an additional book that required writing but it was so hard for him to write small enough and in the lines that she stopped having him use it. She said she could teach him without using that book.

He couldn't practice as much as other kids could because of the pain and fatigue problem so his handwriting never really became as automatic as it should have but it is legible enough that if he has to fill out a form at a doctor's office he can do it. He will just have to type things that require a lot of writing.