Does automaticity improve through maturation? Is this just part of the asynchronous development?
Yes.... but no. Yes, insofar as almost everything gets better with age and maturation and development. And most physical issues, like those affecting fine motor skills, are amenable to remediation and improve with practice.
But asynchronous development is still normal development; it just describes that different parts are happening on different timelines. Dysgraphia, on the other hand, is a learning disability, i.e. a neurological difference that is there for life. You never stop being LD, but you do get ever better at finding and using your compensations and workarounds.
So for instance, I lived with DH for 20 years without (either of us!) ever being aware he was dyslexic and dysgraphic, not until DD was diagnosed. Only then did he start slowly disclosing all the various things he did to cope. As an adult, he has quite a lot of control over his environment. So on the one hand, a perfectly functional, well-employed adult obviously doing fine.
On the other hand, though - he still cannot listen and take notes. It's pick one. (Lucky him, he's got phenomenal memory and gets away with this). Dysgraphia as a cognitive deficit is very specifically a lack of automaticity in letter formation (so it doesn't affect drawing). If he tries to take meeting notes while still paying enough attention to the speaker, he gets bits and pieces of words that are both illegible, and missing so many letters even he can't guess what they are supposed to be. Properly formed letters, in the right words, in the right order, are only something he can do if he focuses all his attention on his writing (none left for the speaker). Note that - as many others here have also described - he
can at times write neatly. But it's
very slow, and he describes it as "drawing the words as a picture", not writing letters.
The bad thing about dysgraphia is that unlike other LDs (especially dyslexia), it doesn't seem to be particularly amendable to remediation. The good thing is, the workaround is incredibly easy: all you need is a keyboard and you've by-passed it.
But - you had to know there was a but, sorry! LDs do tend to come in clusters. My household's dyslexia/ dysgraphia/ ADHD is a very common triad. By-passing handwriting is easy and great - but doesn't do anything about their other challenges, which we still have to address in myriad other ways.
