I wish I had one of my severely dysgraphic ds' preschool drawings handy where I could upload it to this forum - he can draw with such detail, even at a very young age, that people's jaws would drop open (not saying that to brag, just trying to give you a visual idea of what he was capable of). One of the suggestions included with his first neuropsych eval at 8, when he was diagnosed and sent off with a long list of suggestions for AT, OT, etc... was that we ask a local artist to work with him to develop his artistic ability - not because he needed help, but because he's extremely talented. (FWIW, we never did that - ds wasn't interested lol!).
I asked the very same question you have blackcat, when the neuropsych first mentioned dysgraphia - how is it possible that a child who can draw with such detail could also have a disability impacting their ability to use handwriting? Another aspect that was very confusing to me when I heard his dysgraphia was fine motor in origin was his ability to create teeny-tiny clay figures with incredible accuracy and detail. The key is that the drawing and the manipulating of clay into detailed figures aren't tasks that rely on automaticity, and dysgraphia is a neurological impairment in the ability to develop automaticity. Your ds can draw detailed maps because he can visualize them and work through putting that vision onto paper; he can also write an "h" because he can see it and put it on paper - but if he's dysgraphic, his brain will not develop an automaticity of that motion, so he's essentially redrawing it every time he has to make an "h".
Hope that makes sense!
polarbear
