Oh wow! I'm a newbie but my son is the same way! He's a 12yr old that is very advanced reading/language arts wise but HATES to write. His handwriting is atrocious due mainly to his kindergarten teacher forcing him to choose a hand. He's ambidextrious and we had always been told to allow HIM to choose a dominant hand and then his kinder. teacher in the public school forced him (without our knowledge I might add) to choose so he chose right...he should have probably chose left. So to make a long story short he does everything but write with his left hand. He could be a doctor his handwriting is so bad!
For the most part I am teaching him to keyboard however teachers have NOT been so easy to work with. A few have allowed him to do this during composition tests but most have not. Therefore his grades suffer because he will NOT write lengthy paragraphs. Flat out will NOT do it. He'll tell me that he "answered the question" in one sentence and doesn't see the need to elaborate. A huge part of it is that he is forced into the regular classroom and doing grade level reading instead of being allowed to excel (which is an entirely different topic!) so he's bored and zoning out and then refusing to write.
What we did for the keyboarding is to get our son a smaller keyboard...in fact it's the one that I prefer using since I"m not a huge person myself. It has helped him to begin to get over the "hunt and peck" method and into the correct way of typing. Laptops work well for this too.
And maybe it's gifted boys in general but my son had/has a huge head on a skinny body as well! When he was delivered via csection the OB even said "holy ($&% look at this kids head!" LOL
