Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Dysgraphia- when to accommodate???

My DD (8) is recently diagnosed 2E with ADD and mild dyslexia. Frankly, I think it's more of a dysgraphia as she has all the symptoms and is "reading" without too much difficulty 2 grades above where she's at. So, my question is this: If dysgraphia doesn't really improve long term with more practice writing, at what age should we start accommodations? I asked her reading specialist (DD is seeing her for lessons in Orton-Gillingham) and she seemed to think I should wait. I'm torn--I don't want her NOT to practice her hand-writing, but it's such a battle every time and she's really going hard-core with her avoidance behaviors (tantrums, constant chattering and topic changing, absolute refusal to write more for the reading specialist, etc). I doubt she's getting much from the practicing at this point, and I keep thinking that if I provide some sort of accommodation it might reduce the overall stress of writing for her. Do you think this might provide too much of a "crutch"? ***Being new to this, I also posted this in another thread. "polarbear" recommended I start my own thread and also asked for some clarifications...DD was diagnosed by a child neuropsych at our request. She has yet to provide us with formal results, but I hear she's VERY slow in getting her reports done. Our reading specialist was an instructor at the Orton Gillingham school for Dyslexics in Indiana and has several degrees in teaching/special ed. She has witnessed some of DD struggles, but I will ask her directly what she thinks/knows about dysgraphia specifically. I like the idea of OT for her pencil grip, which is awkward--she curls her hand down and writes beneath her fingers. The things I see that make me suspect dysgraphia are: capitals and lowercase letters mixed throughout writing, letters are all different sizes, she won't drop letters like p,y,g, or j below the line, difficulty with word spacing (all the words run together), writing "downhill" even on lined paper, starting out at the left hand margin but keeps moving each subsequent line a bit to the right until she's starting the line in the middle of the page, and no matter how much instruction she receives she still forms her letters oddly. I can definitely see the mild dyslexia as well. She has a terrible time with spelling, reversals in both letters and numbers, and her comprehension is far below her reading ability (only if she's read the passage herself, however). Luckily, she's making some improvements in spelling with the orton-gillingham lessons. Just looking for some input...

I am struggling with the same question, so know you are NOT alone! In fact I asked my DS's neuropsych the same question at our check-up last month. He didn't really have an answer. My DS (8) with ASD and other issues still struggles tremendously with writing. I don't have an answer for you but primarily wanted you to know that you are not alone.

Right now we continue to work on writing when he is at school-2 afternoons a week-but don't require him to write a lot. Primarily to continue working on his letter formations, spacing, etc. We homeschool the rest of the week, and I scribe or allow him to answer orally 90-95% of the time. I still make him do some writing but very little and it is not a focus. I decided this year I didn't want writing to be what was holding him back from doing more advanced work.

DS is doing VT this school year, and we are hoping that it will help his writing. I am preparing to ask the school district at our spring re-evaluation meeting what accommodations we can explore for DS next year.

I am interested to hear what others on this board have to say on this subject...thanks for asking the question I have been rolling around in my head this school year!

Best wishes to you and your DD!

I know nothing about dysgraphia. But my DD19 has a Language Processing LD that she has struggled with since she was young. (She is now a sophomore in college) I remember the struggle I went through about your daughter age in deciding have my daughter tested and getting her accommodations. What made my mind up was because of budget constraints I realized that early intervention help my daughter was getting at school wasn't going to continue if I didn't have her formally labeled.

The point of accommodations is to let your DD succeed in the other aspects of her schooling, without getting bogged down with her struggles. Before making decisions about this brainstorm about what accommodations would make her schooling easier. Getting accommodations now doesn't mean they are set in stone. An IEP (in the US) is updated every year, with a 3 year review and the accommodations you set now can and will change as she gets older.

Common accommodations I can see that would help a child with dysgraphia/dylexia would be more time on tests. Ability to take tests and/or write papers on a computer. (Assuming that is easier for her.) Being allowed to give an oral report vs. a written one. Accommodations doesn't have to be all or nothing. Say your daughter needs to do a project/paper for her class. With a teacher you could agree that your daughter handwrite ONE paragraph or page, and do the rest orally or typed. Creativity goes a long way here.

I would still make sure she gets help, OT for her grip is probably a really good idea. (I just had 4 months of OT after breaking my thumb it's amazing what can be done.) Teaching kids to succeed despite their LD's is usually a combination of teaching them coping strategies as well as dealing with the issue head on. Not getting them accommodations just makes the day-to-day stuff more frustrating and makes for a kid who soon learns to hate school.

Exactly! Her verbal skills are where her giftedness shows itself, so it's painful to watch her try to express herself (she definitely has a lot to SAY) in writing. I have arranged with her teacher that some things will be written and some will be dictated and I will write them. She has been great with allowing that. For K and 1st we schooled from home. I decided to put her in a charter school for 2nd b/c I needed some help figuring out what was going on with her...I knew something wasn't quite right, but I couldn't determine what it might be. Luckily the charter school is very flexible and student centered/led so they work with her strengths and weaknesses. I love what you said about separating handwriting from expression. I think that may help somewhat with her resistance to writing. I will have t look into the typing program you mentioned. Thanks!

Sounds like you found a school/teacher that is working for this year. That is great and you probably don't need formal accommodations for this year. But what happens next year? Will you have much control the teacher she gets next year. At the school my daughter attended K-8 one advantage of the IEP was I was given more input over what teacher my daughter was assigned each year.

I hope she gets the same teacher next year, Bluemagic. The current system her school is using is combining the grades and then moving individual groups from teacher to teacher based on their reading or math level. So, for example, there are 1-3rd graders in DD class right now, and the other 2 teachers have 1-2 and 2-3 respectively. Her current teacher has the high reading and math groups and then the other 2 teachers get the lower and middle groups. My only concern is that DD told the reading tutor the other day that she didn't need to provide more details in her writing next year, "because I will have the same teacher and she knows I have dyslexia"...Grrr! And after all the talks we've had about not using it as an excuse...looks like there's another talk coming up.

Let me just preface my remarks by saying that my DD's situation may be a bit more extreme and/or complex than your DD's so YMMV...

I think accommodations need to be started as soon as you see a need. There are different schools of thought so input from different professionals may lead to a delay that will be hard to overcome.

I saw my DD's fine motor/ hand-eye coordination issues at the age of 18 months. It took until she was 5 to get our pediatrician to refer her for an evaluation. We will never know what would have happened if it had been addressed earlier. We finally started OT and PT about 8 months before the start of kindergarten. They tried to work on her pencil grip and introduce proper letter formation but it was like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.

Even with a diagnosed fine motor deficit that was clearly impacting her ability to do classwork in kindergarten the school refused to refer her for an evaluation for in school services. ("She's too smart - she would never qualify.") Instead she was routinely punished for her disability, shamed and ridiculed. She developed school based anxiety which made the whole thing much, MUCH harder to address.

She was identified as significantly learning disabled the summer before first grade and spec ed services were put into place. We requested that typing be introduced and we were told no. If she didn't learn to write by hand in first grade she would never learn.

She had a fabulous first grade teacher who naturally accommodated and differentiated in the classroom. We again requested that typing be introduced but the OT said no. It was not age appropriate. DD was being marked off for things like mixing capital/lower case. It wasn't that she didn't know the proper usage - she couldn't decipher the difference between a "b" and a "d" but could tell a "B" from a "D" so she wrote them instead. Handwriting was slow and torturous. We insisted that she do all the written homework like everyone else. She would come up with elaborate answers and journal entries verbally but write more simplistic short answers on the page. It took forever and was very painful. Her letter formation improved when focusing just on that but when she actually wrote off the top of her head it was totally illegible (it still is and she just turned 9). We bought her a computer and a fun learn to type program. It didn't work for her. What MoN describes is an ideal plan but none of it worked for our DD.

At the end of 1st grade the district ordered an Assistive Technology eval. (It took a year to get it done and nothing was actually implemented until after 3rd grade had started but I digress...)

The summer between 1st and 2nd grade she had a neuropsych eval where she was labeled "NLD-ish" although NLD didn't really apply to her. ("It's easier than saying super high verbal along with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, math disability, etc...") The neuropsych and AT evaluator specifically stated that copying tasks were just about impossible for her. 40+ points difference between her verbal scores and visual perception, 50+ each between verbal and working memory/processing speed created a huge set of challenges. We introduced scribing (she ended up with a full time para), eliminated most written work except for when she was working with the spec ed teacher or OT, eliminated written homework, etc.

2nd grade teacher did not get it at all. It was a wasted year. We spent the whole time fighting to get the AT up and running. In our case it was clear that we had hit a wall and unless/until she could get up to speed on typing/dictation we were just going to be spinning our wheels and increasing her school anxiety.

We decided to start shopping for an out of district placement and had a number of people recommend a particular LD school. When I spoke to them they explained that they believe only in rehabilitative services and did not provide compensatory services. They did not believe in Assistive Technology, the use of scribes, etc. Their students hand wrote all their work no matter how much or how long it took them. They had only recently started allowing students to bring iPads or laptops to school. The students were responsible for providing these themselves though. They also had to provide their own software, training and support. It was clearly not a match for what we wanted and everyone who referred us there was shocked to learn that they had this approach in this modern day.

DD is now in out of district placement at a spec ed school where her whole day is structured around the use of AT. She is learning to type, dictate and use a variety of apps for her school work throughout the day. She has daily AT training on the iPad and twice a week OT to work on regular handwriting. At the age of 9 her writing is probably at a par with a young preschooler - totally illegible. Her letter formation and sizing have improved but her encoding is very, very weak. She has software programs with word prediction that help with this so she is able to write sentences and paragraphs independently now. She loves researching online and creating Powerpoints.

The important thing is that as she has become more capable, more independent, more successful she has been able to move past the crippling anxiety. Her strengths lie in comprehension and verbal ability. She saw that her writing was inferior to her classmates and it really affected her. She needed to be given tools to support herself. I suppose those tools could be referred to as "crutches" but that's not necessarily a bad thing...