At what age did you evaluate for dysgraphia and how did you do it? Our daughter saw a neuropsych when she was four. At that time, she was too young to test for it.
She is now six and is still resistant to writing and drawing, which gets her in trouble. Her dad has dysgraphia, and we think she might have it too. Many signs are there, but the thing that has always kept me doubting was that her handwriting, while labored, painful, with caps in the middle, etc., isn't totally unreadable, like my husband's.
We thought pain might just be bad pencil grip and resistance might just be motor, so we would put her in OT now and test in first grade if that didn't help, but after talking to the curriculum specialist at her school, I'm thinking we should test for it before we put her in OT. None of this is paid for by insurance, so it is very expensive for us and we don't want to duplicate testing or spend a lot of money on the wrong therapies.
So questions:
1) At what age did you test?
2) Did you go to neuropsych or OT first? At this point we have a neuropsych, but the OT he recommends tests cost $525. Another OT (recommended by friends) costs $210, and we'd rather do that, if it makes sense.
3) What tests were done?
4) What kinds of things did you do to assist child before he/she was old enough to type? At this age our strategy is just to advocate and make school as bearable as possible, tell her that we love her and know that it is hard, and supplement at home by keeping her skills up with computer-based learning tools, which she loves and can't get enough of.
