I'm not sure if I am doing the right thing at all.
First the history:
My child is in her last week of the second grade.
She has DCD and is extremely physically disorganized. She was diagnosed with Disorder of Written Expression at the beginning of the school year, but school did not accept the diagnosis as they can't accept discrepancies as proof. (She was diagnosed based on WISC and WJIII discrepancies.)
She has handwriting problems!!! She also can't draw. At all. Pretty much all of her projects are draw something and write about it. Her teacher is lenient, but she's honestly not producing output that shows that she's learned much and it keeps her from contributing much in groups.
She gets some accommodations because they accepted ADHD, but we're not even sure she has that. She might very well have just big time handwriting avoidance and not a lot of other things to do at school since they spend so much time in reading and math and she already knows what they're teaching in those areas.
She's been in private handwriting tutoring for a year, and we've seen a lot of consistent progress over the year but not enough to express her thoughts in writing. As she grows, her thoughts grow. When I compare her composition to her classmates, she isn't the worst, but she is at the bottom. She is at the top in academic knowledge/nonwriting skills. When she's writing on lined paper, her handwriting is very neat--in fact she's made "E"s across the board in handwriting. I don't think anyone sees how difficult it is for her no matter how much I groan and moan. They see that she can do it when she tries. I watch her space with her fingers and erase every little line she doesn't like. To me those Es show a lot of hard work and determination, but everybody else sees the opposite.
She is weak in skills related to writing: punctuation, capitalization. She spells poorly when she writes but has a very easy time with spelling words. It's not that she doesn't know the rules. She just can't apply them. She has no confidence in composition and doesn't get much practice.
So, the question:
I need to help her get her skills up there because her handwriting problems keep her from learning what she needs to be learning in school.
This summer she has agreed to spend 30 minutes a day on learning to type and writing of some kind--and we'll do something fun to celebrate. I can't be sure, but I do feel like her writing problems are tied to the DCD and harbor this secret belief that if she just practices enough, writing will become more automatic.
Can anyone suggest a writing curriculum, resource or program that will help me teach her how to write (composition)?
Also, does anyone have a like child? Does it get better for kids with DCD-based handwriting problems over time if you just work really hard? Also, does the asynchrony between what a child can think and write contribute to handwriting problems? If so, does that get better as they get older?
I know typing will be okay once she can do it. But I also know you can't type on a lot of these tests and I just don't see them giving her a disorder of written expression diagnosis ever. She just works too hard. (They don't see "hard worker" all--they see work avoidance.)
