Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional School services for Dysgraphia?

Sorry if this has been covered before. DS has an IEP meeting tomorrow and I'm planning on suggesting to them that he has motor dysgraphia, as related to his developmental coordination disorder. They have been fighting me on giving him any kind of OT services, even though he already has an IEP for speech. Is Dysgraphia something that qualifies a child for school OT? What about a 504? I realize maybe this is different depending on the state, but just wondering what others' experiences have been.

I think this is something that will vary from school district to school district, even within one state. Our ds' dysgraphia did not qualify him for OT through our schools. We were able to find out that this was likely prior to talking to the school, which was helpful. Our neuropsych was familiar with our school districts' requirements for qualifying, and our local advocate was able to give us the specifics. Our school district *does* offer services, but in order to qualify a student has to score extremely low on the fine motor OT tests, and our ds didn't score low enough.

If your ds doesn't qualify, one thing you might do is to ask the school's OT to give you some suggestions of fine motor strengthening exercises you could work on with your ds at home, and also have her give the teacher suggestions of things to help him with in class. The school OT should be able to help informally with pencil grip and posture etc.

Has your ds had an OT eval through school yet? If not, I'd definitely request it.

Good luck!

polarbear

When he was initially evaluated for the IEP at around age 4 he had a brief OT assessment as a part of the eval and he did not score low enough. He could trace things, draw circles, etc. However she noted in her report that he had to put an enormous amount of effort into writing and was slow, awkward, strange pencil grasp, etc. and would likely have problems later in school.
The problem with DS and getting him help is that he does just fine with visual motor integration because his visual spatial ability and visual memory is off the chart. So he can use that to compensate and look reasonable on these sorts of writing assessments that don't last very long and are more mental than physical. If you give him a pegboard, on the other hand, and time him screwing pegs into the board, he is well below the first percentile. Screwing pegs into a board has nothing to do with mental ability. The same thing happens if you ask him to pick up coins with one hand and put them in a cup, and time him. He just can't do that. But I suppose the school doesn't care about a pegboard and him not being able to coordinate his hand movements in a timely fashion, they just care about how he writes in a 5 min. block of time. Other kids his age are still struggling to remember how letters look and may be slow because of that, but he has no problem with that, he's slow because of coordination. So he looks average for his age. I may be better off just pushing for them to classify him as "physically impaired" as a result of DCD rather than as having dysgraphia.

Is it possible they don't know what dysgraphia is? We had the IEP meeting and when I brought it up I got blank stares from everyone (incl. the school OT). The special ed director who was there to kind of mediate (since the last meeting was a disaster) immediately wrote it down but I saw no signs of recognition on anyone else's faces. How would they evaluate him for that if they don't know what it is? I am worried he's going to get a sub-par eval.

Yes. Though the school psychologist should be doing the testing and be very aware of it. However, let me give you my experience. I first had DS evaluated for dysgraphia and dyslexia by his school. Yet, it got me basically nowhere because the school psych simply would not use the word dysgraphia at all... there is really nothing in the report about it, etc. I point blank asked her if he has dysgraphia and she said something like "I can certainly see your concern re dysgraphia" but she would not tell me directly that he has dysgraphia. I felt like the school eval was a bit worthless because of that - i.e., that I couldn't get any kind of direct confirmation that he is indeed dysgraphic. When I finally took him to the neurpsych, she said it was really obvious he has dysgraphia. It has been obvious to me for years now but it should have been more obvious to the school at least by last year. Now, I will have the dysgraphia dx (actually it will be called "developmental coordination disorder affecting fine motor and handwriting" (or somerthign like that) in the report because, the neuropsych said, school will not recognize dysgraphia but it has to recognize DCD. I am not sure how much I will even use that to get accomodations now anyway - it seems like the EDS diagnsosis is taken much more serious by the school (so far at least) and the accomodations are essentially the same so I fidn I just rely on his EDS to get necessary accomodations. When we do 'slip' and refer to the disgraphia we get blank stares. DS's teacher also told me whe has never heard fo dyspraxia or DCD befre either .

Anyway, I hope that helps you in yoru decsion process some...

The DSM IV calls it a 'disorder of written expression', aka a written output disorder. If you try that language they might show a glimmer of recognition. We use 'dysgraphia' casually, but on anything official it's 'written output'.

OT is on the parents, not the school, in our jurisdiction, but we have multiple accommodations in place for written output.

I would second that they probably have never heard the term Dysgraphia. "Dysgraphia" is not in the DSM and is instead termed "Disorder of Written Expression", so some will only know it by that term if they know it at all.

Ultimately all the manifestations of the Dysgraphia seem to be potentially covered in the DCD diagnosis and that is one they have usually seen before. My son's diagnosis states "DCD w/ dyspraxia and hypotonia" with a prior reference to "R/O Disorder of Written Expression" in a previous report.

My DS gets great OT and accommodations from his school - and it makes me so sad to read some of these posts to deny services - but even with an open and welcoming school and administration - my DS's IEP says nothing about dysgraphia or disorder of written expression - I will have to look it up - but I literally think it says writing issues!

DeHe

Dysgraphia and dyslexia are (neuro)psych diagnosis and neither something school "psychologists" (many of which are not phDs) are qualified to diagnose (they aren't qualified to diagnose anything) nor something special ed law recognizes.

From the school's perspective a diagnosis is meaningless (ask me about ours!) if it doesn't lead to issues in the classroom that meet the criteria for a disability under IDEA. The details are state-specific to some degree, but federal law provides a framework. For "pure" dysgraphia the IDEA category would be "specific learning disability", and the Department of Education framework is here:
http://idea.ed.gov/explore/view/p/,root,dynamic,TopicalBrief,23,

Potential pitfalls for you:
"Must not require the use of a severe discrepancy between intellectual ability and achievement for determining whether a child has a specific learning disability"

along with "The child does not make sufficient progress to meet age or State-approved grade-level standards [...]; or the child exhibits a pattern of strengths and weaknesses in performance, achievement, or both, relative to age, State-approved grade-level standards, or intellectual development, that is determined by the group to be relevant to the identification of a specific learning disability"

Also "not primarily the result of: A visual, hearing, or motor disability".

With a diagnosis of DCD or EDS and a child performing academics above grade level you might be better off pursuing qualification under Other Health Impaired.

And this: http://legalclips.nsba.org/?p=1369 is disheartening.

Yes this is the basis of my son's IEP - "other health impairment"