Your comment about wanting to write in cursive yet not being allowed to makes me think she is writing backward as an added way to occupy her brain. The cursive is fun and challenging to her and since she can't do that, she has thought of this as a substitute.

It wouldn't surprise me that when she masters cursive and is encouraged to use it in school, she begins to experiment with different ways to form words. Learning about graphology was a fun past-time for me and I loved to "interpret" my friends handwriting to see if what the books said about their personality was something I had observed.

Just a thought. wink