When he was initially evaluated for the IEP at around age 4 he had a brief OT assessment as a part of the eval and he did not score low enough. He could trace things, draw circles, etc. However she noted in her report that he had to put an enormous amount of effort into writing and was slow, awkward, strange pencil grasp, etc. and would likely have problems later in school.
The problem with DS and getting him help is that he does just fine with visual motor integration because his visual spatial ability and visual memory is off the chart. So he can use that to compensate and look reasonable on these sorts of writing assessments that don't last very long and are more mental than physical. If you give him a pegboard, on the other hand, and time him screwing pegs into the board, he is well below the first percentile. Screwing pegs into a board has nothing to do with mental ability. The same thing happens if you ask him to pick up coins with one hand and put them in a cup, and time him. He just can't do that. But I suppose the school doesn't care about a pegboard and him not being able to coordinate his hand movements in a timely fashion, they just care about how he writes in a 5 min. block of time. Other kids his age are still struggling to remember how letters look and may be slow because of that, but he has no problem with that, he's slow because of coordination. So he looks average for his age. I may be better off just pushing for them to classify him as "physically impaired" as a result of DCD rather than as having dysgraphia.
