My son is currently in therapy, and we recently started Handwriting without Tears. We assumed that he would teach himself to write, the way he has taught himself everything else, but he actually needs our help, and even, *gasp*, repetition. We are still adjusting to the fact that these things are difficult for him, and that we need to be actively involved.
That was a tough adjustment in mindset for my dh and myself. Before he was in school and faced with having to use handwriting, our ds was so obviously "smart" - his intellect was obvious when he spoke, and nothing he was asked to do required handwriting, so he picked up everything in life quickly, he was happy, other adults marveled at how smart he was, and dh and I naively thought school would be a breeze
I will never forget when ds had his first neuropsych eval and dh and I were meeting with the neuropsych to review her findings, and she used the word "disability" as if it was a totally normal part of our lives - I think my stomach hit the floor it fell so hard and so fast. Later as we were farther on in getting help for ds, it was just hard to wrap my head around how *much* repetition he needed for so many very simple tasks. For ds, the impact was larger than just handwriting; he didn't learn how to tie his shows until he was around 9 years old, and he's also needed intense slp therapy for help with written expression - which again, is routed in this same need to repeat repeat repeat repeat due to the lack of automaticity that is inherent in dysgraphics. It's such a weird combination of strengths and challenges.
Have you seen progress with your kids over time?
Any recommendations?
Yes! Absolutely - we've seen wonderful, amazing progress over time. Recommendations? First recommendation is to step back and not get tied down with what you might have thought was important back when you had no idea your ds would have a handwriting challenge. We did HWOT as a first step recommended by ds' neuropsychologist, but it was a complete bomb for our ds. His hand hurt when he wrote, and he was miserable doing extra HWOT at home, so we let it go. The next step (for us) was handwriting OT, and that was very helpful for ds because he learned how to use a correct pencil grip and body posture while writing, and that helped reduce the pain he felt when writing. It also gave him legible handwriting. But - it wasn't a cure for dysgraphia, and in some ways, having legible handwriting made it even tougher to advocate for him at school. Legible was good - but his legibility was limited, it didn't continue to improve with time as other children's did. More importantly, even though it was legible his handwriting was (and is) extremely slow. So that's recommendation #2, time how long it takes your ds to write. One way to time is to have him write the full alphabet out, lower and upper case, time how long it takes, then convert it to letters per minute. You can google around to find out what is a typical letters per minute for the grade level your ds is in, which can provide you with another set of info showing the impact of dysgraphia when you are advocating at school (if you need it). The other thing you'll see from this is whether or not he's forming all of the letters correctly.
Next recommendation: start him typing right away at home so that by the time he can use typing as an accommodation at school he'll be used to it. Don't worry about having him learn touch-typing, let him come up with his own system. We've been told lots of young students like to type with just thumb and first finger and that works a-ok (just like it works fine for us older folks when we text :D). Also don't worry if his typing seems really slow - my ds has slow typing and will never develop faster typing due also to his fine motor issues... but his typing is still significantly faster than his handwriting.
Other recommendations - advocate for accommodations at school starting now, and most importantly - be sure you continue to advocate for him to have challenges in school in the areas he's strong in, and make sure that life outside of school doesn't become all about remediating dysgraphia
I'm sure I could list 1800 other recommendations if I thought long enough - feel free to ask more questions if you have them!
Best wishes,
polarbear
