The writing goes like this. She uses grotto pencil grips because she can't hold the pencil correctly to save her life. She still arches her wrist even with the grips. She can't seem to get her hand down. The letters are inconsistent in size and go back and forth between upper and lower case within words. She knows the difference between upper and lower but mixes them anyway. She reverses her p,q,b,d,g with a random occurrence. Her coloring and drawing is fairly bad. She complains to hurt to do it. She has a vision of what her stuff will look like but can't put it on paper. At home, she doesn't write one line before she complains of pain in her hand.
All of this sounds (with the exception of the drawing) sounds exactly like my ds with dysgraphia at the same age. *HOWEVER* he didn't have alternating moments where he was able to write a lot without complaining. In my ds' case, the dysgraphia is fine-motor related (and his spelling is also impaired). In your dd's case, it sounds like spelling isn't impacted (she's sound-spelling which is typical for her age) - so I also wonder if maybe there isn't something visual going on. My dd who had vision issues had inconsistent writing when she was in K/1 - sometimes it would be a total mess and she wouldn't give much effort without quitting, other times she wrote a lot and it looked much neater than usual (in her case, this happened with creative writing - stories etc - but that is what she really loves to do). Does your dd hold her head at an angle or close to the paper when she writes? Has she said anything about words moving around when she reads? Is she on track with reading? Those are just a few things that you might notice if she has something going on with her vision.
I suspect her hand hurts due to her pencil grip - so one thing you might want to try to do is to consult with an OT or a teacher for just one session who could show her the correct way to hold her pencil. OTOH - I'm guessing from what you've said that you've already tried that and she hasn't for whatever reason been able to continue with the grip? My ds with dysgraphia had a very odd grip (this is typical for dysgraphic kids) *but* he was able to learn a more-typical grip through working with an OT.... so I kinda wonder if perhaps there's something related to your dd's actual finger muscles or whatever (that's not dysgraphia) that causes her to have a tough time with her grip *if* she's already had teachers/etc try to work with her on her grip and it hasn't worked so far.
FWIW, when my ds did handwriting OT the types of things that he did to work on finger strength for improved grip were manipulating *hard* putty (not the typical model magic), putting tacs and toothpicks in and out of clay, putting pegs in and out of lightboards etc. Before he went through OT he had a lot of wrist pain and wouldn't write for more than a few minutes before giving up, but OT eliminated the odd grip and the wrist pain.
The thing about OT (where we live) is that you have to have a referral to get an appointment to begin with, and the wait list is really long - it took us almost 6 months to get our initial appointment. It's great that you'll be able to have the school OT take a look!
She plays with Legos and builds a lot.
FWIW, my dysgraphic ds also played with Legos (still does!) and loved to build things. He could also make incredibly detailed TINY models out of model magic. Yet he definitely had fine-motor related dysgraphia. It can be a real puzzle figuring out what's up with young children!
The same goes for the other motor skills you listed. DS could zip his coat, but he couldn't tie his shoes - he didn't learn how to do that well until he was 9 years old, and he still forgets how (at 12) if he goes on vacation and only wears flip-flops for a week. However, so many kids have velcro shoes now and at the age your dd is, I wouldn't necessarily think not being able to tie a shoelace means much of anything. Since you have other things you're wondering about, I think what I'd do is to try to teach her to tie her shoes this summer and see if it's something she learns without a lot of trouble and if she remembers how to do it.
The teacher wants her placement next year to be based on her academic abilities. The principal at this school tends to place the IEP kids out of the advance classes because of the IEP.
If she is referred for an IEP eligibility evaluation, most evaluations include ability/acheivement testing as part of the process - so you'll have have evidence of her strengths as well as evidence of her challenges. Don't for one minute step back and let the school argue that she should be placed in a lower level classroom simply because she's on an IEP!!!
I have no experience with this. I have a dyslexic DS but this looks different. [/quote]
In my dh's family, my ds has cousins with dyslexia. I suspect that even though it looks different, dysgraphia and dyslexia are related "enough" that you might see them both occur in the same family due to genetics.
Re what to do, who to see first. I wouldn't necessarily rush into an evaluation. If you have enough of the school year left that the OT at school can take a look, give you some advice, try a few things - go that route first. You can ask the school OT if he/she knows if there is a behavioral/developmental optometrist in your area that is recommended; if you can find a dr for a vision assessment that you feel you can trust (get recommendations from someone you can trust first!), and if you can afford the evaluation of if your insurance will cover it, I'd go ahead and get that eval. over the summer.
I am not sure I'd get the WPPSI just for the heck of seeing if anything shows up there at this point in time - I think I'd wait until next year for a full neuropsych for two reasons - first, you're not sure you really need one and second, if you wait until your dd is at least 6, you eliminate the possibility of anyone questioning whether or not they can believe the WPPSI results since your dd was young when she took the test (for instance, my ds took the WPSSI when he was 5 for a gifted program entry, and he had the classic large dip in processing subtest scores, but the tester put it aside as him being a perfectionist, him being slow because he was a boy, him being slow because he was 5, him not understanding he was timed, things like that. When he was evaluated again at 7 the tester wasn't as quick to discount the slow processing speed. IF otoh, your dd was obviously struggling, frustrated, anxious etc over school then yes, I'd consider a private neuropsych eval now rather than holding off until she's older.
polarbear
