Question202, I don't know if our experience will help you or not, but this is how diagnosis happened for our ds (he's now 14, but was diagnosed at 8).
1) We tested when he was in 2nd grade (had just turned 8). He was diagnosed by a neuropsych, and we didn't take him in specifically for dysgraphia testing - in fact, we'd never heard of it at that point! We took him for neuropsych testing because he was struggling in school (no written output, teacher convinced he had ADHD), and our ped recommended neurospych eval because of the broad width of the testing and eval.
2) We did see an OT after the neuropsych, but that was after we already had the diagnosis. If you're going for a diagnosis through an OT, I'd try to get as many personal references as possible first (from other parents, your neuropsych, your ped, etc) before deciding which to go with. I've had experience with two different OT groups here in our area, and the degree of detail, depth, etc varied dramatically between the two. I don't know if it is the same everywhere, but the services and eval we received through the OT group at our local children's hospital's peds department was far superior in depth and ultimately usefulness than the private OT group we went through for our second go-round of OT. The reason we went with the second group was wait-list time - it would have taken us up to a year to get back onto the roster at the hospital.
3) Our ds was diagnosed by discrepancies in scores on ability subtests, as well as discrepancies between ability and achievement subtest scores - that was the "clue". The neurospcyh also looked at handwriting samples, and did follow-up tests to determine if the ability test discrepancies were due to either vision or fine motor issues (Beery VMI). She also used executive functioning tests (NEPSY) and some type of ADHD test as well as a functional behavior analysis - these probably aren't necessary if you know going in it's dysgraphia you are either dealing with or trying to rule out. Our ds also had a test through the OT, but I can't remember the name of it at the moment. I can look it up later this weekend if you'd like to know the name.
4) We started our ds typing right away, but he was diagnosed at 8. FWIW, my younger children started typing at the same time (they aren't dysgraphic but wanted to learn how to type and use the computer) - they were 4 and 6, and they caught on fairly quickly. Most OTs will recommend "adaptive" typing for young children rather than touch-typing - you let the child figure out how to type and come up with their own system, sometimes using only thumbs and index fingers, sorta like texting
The one thing that was really key for us though was the official diagnosis - without that we would have had a really difficult time advocating at school, and more importantly, having the diagnosis helped us (parents) understand how to put together an accommodations and remediation game plan looking forward. This is one reason I would suggest considering at least a parent interview with your neuropsych - our neuropsych's advice was invaluable in helping us understand what to do to provide accommodations etc for our ds. In hindsight, I suspect I could have researched and figured much of it out on my own, but it took so much time researching when I *had* that expert advice - I can't imagine how much longer it would have taken without the advice of having the neuropsych observe and evaluate my ds.
Hope some of that helps!
Best wishes,
polarbear
