Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Dysgraphia- when to accommodate???

Let me just preface my remarks by saying that my DD's situation may be a bit more extreme and/or complex than your DD's so YMMV...

I think accommodations need to be started as soon as you see a need. There are different schools of thought so input from different professionals may lead to a delay that will be hard to overcome.

I saw my DD's fine motor/ hand-eye coordination issues at the age of 18 months. It took until she was 5 to get our pediatrician to refer her for an evaluation. We will never know what would have happened if it had been addressed earlier. We finally started OT and PT about 8 months before the start of kindergarten. They tried to work on her pencil grip and introduce proper letter formation but it was like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.

Even with a diagnosed fine motor deficit that was clearly impacting her ability to do classwork in kindergarten the school refused to refer her for an evaluation for in school services. ("She's too smart - she would never qualify.") Instead she was routinely punished for her disability, shamed and ridiculed. She developed school based anxiety which made the whole thing much, MUCH harder to address.

She was identified as significantly learning disabled the summer before first grade and spec ed services were put into place. We requested that typing be introduced and we were told no. If she didn't learn to write by hand in first grade she would never learn.

She had a fabulous first grade teacher who naturally accommodated and differentiated in the classroom. We again requested that typing be introduced but the OT said no. It was not age appropriate. DD was being marked off for things like mixing capital/lower case. It wasn't that she didn't know the proper usage - she couldn't decipher the difference between a "b" and a "d" but could tell a "B" from a "D" so she wrote them instead. Handwriting was slow and torturous. We insisted that she do all the written homework like everyone else. She would come up with elaborate answers and journal entries verbally but write more simplistic short answers on the page. It took forever and was very painful. Her letter formation improved when focusing just on that but when she actually wrote off the top of her head it was totally illegible (it still is and she just turned 9). We bought her a computer and a fun learn to type program. It didn't work for her. What MoN describes is an ideal plan but none of it worked for our DD.

At the end of 1st grade the district ordered an Assistive Technology eval. (It took a year to get it done and nothing was actually implemented until after 3rd grade had started but I digress...)

The summer between 1st and 2nd grade she had a neuropsych eval where she was labeled "NLD-ish" although NLD didn't really apply to her. ("It's easier than saying super high verbal along with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, math disability, etc...") The neuropsych and AT evaluator specifically stated that copying tasks were just about impossible for her. 40+ points difference between her verbal scores and visual perception, 50+ each between verbal and working memory/processing speed created a huge set of challenges. We introduced scribing (she ended up with a full time para), eliminated most written work except for when she was working with the spec ed teacher or OT, eliminated written homework, etc.

2nd grade teacher did not get it at all. It was a wasted year. We spent the whole time fighting to get the AT up and running. In our case it was clear that we had hit a wall and unless/until she could get up to speed on typing/dictation we were just going to be spinning our wheels and increasing her school anxiety.

We decided to start shopping for an out of district placement and had a number of people recommend a particular LD school. When I spoke to them they explained that they believe only in rehabilitative services and did not provide compensatory services. They did not believe in Assistive Technology, the use of scribes, etc. Their students hand wrote all their work no matter how much or how long it took them. They had only recently started allowing students to bring iPads or laptops to school. The students were responsible for providing these themselves though. They also had to provide their own software, training and support. It was clearly not a match for what we wanted and everyone who referred us there was shocked to learn that they had this approach in this modern day.

DD is now in out of district placement at a spec ed school where her whole day is structured around the use of AT. She is learning to type, dictate and use a variety of apps for her school work throughout the day. She has daily AT training on the iPad and twice a week OT to work on regular handwriting. At the age of 9 her writing is probably at a par with a young preschooler - totally illegible. Her letter formation and sizing have improved but her encoding is very, very weak. She has software programs with word prediction that help with this so she is able to write sentences and paragraphs independently now. She loves researching online and creating Powerpoints.

The important thing is that as she has become more capable, more independent, more successful she has been able to move past the crippling anxiety. Her strengths lie in comprehension and verbal ability. She saw that her writing was inferior to her classmates and it really affected her. She needed to be given tools to support herself. I suppose those tools could be referred to as "crutches" but that's not necessarily a bad thing...