My DS has dysgraphia and disorder of written expression because he has a hard time writing, as well as expressing himself with paper and pencil. He expresses himself well in typing. Our tester said that the disability is known for inconsistent work. She put that in his report. She said he will vary from day to day and something that is easy one day may be hard the next, and that things the teacher thinks should be hard might be easy, and vice versa. She told us this can frustrate a teacher who thinks the child isn't trying- after all they demonstrated this skill yesterday, why can't they do it today? But it's the nature of dysgraphia. I'm not sure I understand it, but she wrote it down, so it must be true (LOL). She said he will always have trouble with timed math tests in written form, but that if he does it on the computer where he has to type the answer, he should be OK- and he is- too bad that's not how they do it at school.
I have learned more on this message board than from the doctors we saw. The inconsistent written work is what I saw with my son and this is probably why one doctor said dysgraphia but another said low normal. But then I think motor dyspraxia is the same way, causing inconsistent performance in motor related activities like writing or piano or dance. All I was told by the developmental pediatrician was that if I made him practice enough my son could grow new neural connections and he would improve. He did improve a little but it has always been lots of work for just a little improvement and I was left feeling like it was my fault when he didn't improve as much as I thought he should and this led to more anxiety for both of us. I hated when he asked me if I even liked him. He thought I was looking at him like he was a big mix of problems that I needed to fix when I should just accept his differences. But I had "forming new neural connections" stuck in my mind and couldn't let go. I found motor dyspraxia and dysgraphia hard to explain to teachers and scout leaders. I felt they didn't believe me sometimes and thought I was just making excuses for him. I don't have anything in writing from a doctor explaining my son's difficulties. The developmental pediatrician we saw didn't seem to have any experience with kids like mine. So we decided to wait for months to see a doctor at a child study center and since the doctor also teaches other doctors and is supposed to be an expert in some of my son's issues I think we might finally get answers.
I always thought it was unfair to give kids with dysgraphia timed pencil and paper tests. My son would make a much higher score on any test he takes on the computer. Does he suddenly become smarter when he's taking tests on the computer? I don't think so. But on paper his mild disability might make him appear to be less smart, like on the spelling portion of the WIAT where he had to write the words and he quit when his hands got tired. That score reflected not his actual spelling level but his motor ability, yet he was stuck with that score. The tester said he thought he would have scored even higher than several grade levels ahead on the math portion if he would have used a pencil and paper instead of trying to do everything with mental math, but the dysgraphia made him reluctant to use pencil and paper. I made my son spend a lot of time trying to get to the point where he write out the multi-digit long division problems and keep those columns straight even though he got math concepts quickly and easily and was able to come up with his own way of getting the answers with less writing. I finally let him use a calculator, while continuing to use mental math on educational computer games, and I should have let him do this a long time ago. I don't use a pencil and paper to figure out 9854.85 divided by 23.8. I grab a calculator. But I thought I needed to make him do this by hand because he would have to do this if he ever went back to our public school. My anxiety over this got in the way of my common sense. I finally told my husband if something happened to me, he would have to take over homeschooling.
