Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy No differentiation--what do you tell your child?

My ds does not have the words "dysgraphia" as a diagnosis on his neuropsych evals either, just DCD, as well as a paragraph included in the findings stating that he has impaired fine motor function and that handwriting is a major barrier to success at school and suggestions of appropriate accommodations for handwriting. If you have that in your neuropsych eval (words that show handwriting is a challenge and suggested accommodations) you can put those accommodations into your ds' IEP - even if the IEP is written for something else entirely. The key is - it's a disability, and it's preventing him from showing his knowledge. If he didn't have the IEP for speech but still had the handwriting challenge - if the school didn't feel he needed an IEP (services) you would request a 504 plan. When a student has an IEP (here) *all* the accommodations (for whatever legitimate reason) are included in the IEP regardless of what the IEP is written to specifically address.


What I see as the difference is in the ability to remediate. If the fine motor issue is due to brain trauma that can be remediated, then you'd want to remediate. If it's dysgraphia, you want to try to remediate *up to a certain point* but for most kids, dysgraphia is something that isn't going to go away. It might get better in some ways at certain points in time, but most children with dysgraphia will never be able to show the full extent of their knowledge with their handwriting, and it's important to give them access to accommodations in place of focusing solely on remediation.

This is what was recommended for our ds in 2nd grade when he was first diagnosed with DCD:

1) Try a period of intense remediation with HWOT right away - only to focus on teaching him proper letter formation. (What happened: he couldn't do it, too much wrist pain and frustration - so we let it go).

2) Handwriting OT starting right away to address posture, pencil grip, letter formation, legibility etc. DS went through 9 months of handwriting OT and he made what I call "surface" gains - he learned a correct pencil grip, corrected his posture while writing, overcame wrist and hand pain while writing, and his legibility improved tremendously (he also no longer had uneven pencil pressure and crumpled up papers). What he *didn't* gain through OT is more subtle - his handwriting speed was still incredibly slow. The effort it took to produce handwriting still soaked up all of his working memory so there was nothing left over to focus on correct spelling, capital letters etc. Proper letter formation didn't really stick, even though he knew what he was supposed to do. Those are challenges that aren't easily seen just by looking at a writing sample, but those are the key challenges of dysgraphia.

3) Have someone scribe at school and at home starting immediately. I scribed all of his homework until he was ready to start typing it. He had a scribing accommodation at school for 3rd grade and oral response accommodation for fluency tests in 4th-5th grade.

4) Start learning keyboarding as soon as he'd finished up his remediation with HWOT. We started keyboarding right away, and began advocating for it at school right away. He really *really* needed (and still does) access to keyboarding full-time at school and at home, and starting early was a good thing. Whether or not a child is dysgraphic, if they have a fine motor challenge impacting handwriting, I'd think it would be important to have a scribing/keyboarding accommodation in place early simply to avoid the frustration and limitations of the challenge. If it's not dysgraphia but something that can improve with remediation (or be "cured") then the keyboard accommodation will eventually go away, and if it's dysgraphia, you've laid the groundwork for your student to be successful long-term instead of suddenly trying to have them learn how to type and get used to an accommodation that requires "equipment" that makes them look different when they are farther along in school, older and more worried about how they are different from peers, and when the workload has increased at school.

I'm guessing that given your ds' circumstances you might not really know for a few years if it's dysgraphia or a potentially remediable (is that a word lol?) challenge with his handwriting, but you can work on the remediation and put accommodations in place at the same time.

Hope that makes sense!

polarbear

ps - also meant to mention - our neuropsych never used the word "dysgraphia" in either her report or in our post-testing parent review session when ds was first diagnosed. I found dysgraphia online when I was doing research after the actual eval, so I went back to her with that and a few other questions. When I asked her if his symptoms indicated dysgraphia she said absolutely - but it's not the terminology that is used among psychologists and it's not the terminology that's used by schools in identifying students with needs. I have a dd with a dyslexia diagnosis from a reading professional, but she's not recognized as dyslexic at school. The differences in terminology can be very confusing - but the key thing is that what's being done to help your child fits what's going on with symptoms and the root cause of the challenge.