I wouldn't worry so much about having the diagnosis in place now or what accommodations to have in place now - I'd place my first priority on getting a full neuropsych educational evaluation for your ds so you can better define what's really going on. It does sound a lot like my ds, who has dysgraphia related to developmental coordination disorder - but there are several different potential causes for dysgraphia (if it is dysgraphia) and the neurospcyh eval is your best bet for fully understanding what's going on. Once you know that, you can move forward with setting up remediation/accommodations/other helpful therapies etc.
A few notes about dysgraphia:
Our ds went through handwriting OT and that gave him a good pencil grip, as well as helped quite a bit with his handwriting legibility. So OT was a *good* thing. However, it didn't take away what is at the core of dysgraphia - dysgraphics' brains are unable to develop automaticity of handwriting (and sometimes other tasks), so when a dysgraphic is writing, their entire working memory is taken up with remembering how to form the letters and there is little to nothing left over for focusing on tasks such as spelling, punctuation and grammar, much less thinking about the content of what they want to write. So a dysgraphic child can go through handwriting OT and come out with nice looking handwriting but it doesn't mean that they are now magically able to show all their knowledge through handwriting - they will still be dysgraphic and still need accommodations.
Most dysgraphic students that I know are moved to keyboarding full time asap to enable them to show their knowledge without the drain of handwriting. If your child has a diagnosis, it will be much easier to get official accommodations in school than without a diagnosis, but while you're waiting for a diagnosis there are still things you might be able to do. Some teachers have no problem with letting a child type assignments, use a personal laptop in class etc - so that's one place you can start. Our school district also has a policy (which isn't publicized, but definitely exists) that states that by a certain grade (I think it's 5th) children who can type faster than they can write have to be allowed to type (I may not be recalling the exactly correct words, but that's the gist of the policy). We found out about that policy through an advocate when we were caught up in the middle of struggling to get accommodations for our ds who actually had a diagnosis. You can also do some informal testing at home to quantify the impact of handwriting - things like testing the numbers of letters per minute your ds generates when copying (you can find guidelines for the expected rate by googling "letters per minute" + "handwriting" + "grade level" etc. You can also have your ds "write" a story for you using handwriting vs typing and time him. You might want to try having him answer rapid-fire math facts questions orally vs using handwriting. Things like that. The info you get will be helpful for you and also for the neuropscyh when your ds goes in for an eval.
I would also look through samples of your ds' schoolwork (handwriting) over time. Right now - is he still reversing any letters? Does he have uneven spacing of letters and between words? Does he mix up capitals and lower case? Does he remember to use punctuation? Does he have a difficult time staying in the lines on lined paper? Is his handwriting extra large if he's given a blank piece of paper to write on? Also ask him if his wrist gets tired or if he gets headaches while he's writing. Look to see if he holds his wrist or elbow to steady his arm while writing. Look to see if he forms his letters the conventional way kids are taught in school or does he do it in an odd way? Does he form them the same way each time he writes them? If you don't seen any of these, that doesn't mean your ds doesn't have dysgraphia, but if you see them, they could be symptoms of dysgraphia.
Re accommodations: if your ds needs accommodations, he needs accommodations. Don't wait for high-stakes testing, get them in place now for a number of reasons. First, he needs them. Second, some kids resist accommodations because they don't want to look different - getting over that bump in the road can take some time. Lastly, accommodations can take practice - very few kids can just leap into typing or voice recognition or whatever and automatically do well - they need practice. You don't want to suddenly start an accommodation and then expect to use it on a high stakes test a short time later.
Finally, I think the most important reason to get an evaluation is to have data that will help your ds understand himself.
Gotta run - hope some of that was helpful!
polarbear
