So, DD (just turned 6) really hates writing. However, she loves drawing and is an excellent artist for her age. (I couldn't figure out how to attach an image file of one of her drawings here.) She also has great fine motor skills. Loves making things with small beads. She holds her pencil correctly and has since she was very young. BUT she really hates writing. She wrote one short sentence this morning and it took a very long time. I also told her that tonight she has to write thank you notes from her birthday party and she complained.
It doesn't seem like dysgraphia because of her good fine motor skills. Do you think it is just her age or something else?

Thanks for your input.

No answers here, but your DD sounds exactly like my DS7 in the ways you mention. He loves to draw (even draws with 3D perspective), but is very slow (but extremely neat) in the writing department. It's hard to say at his age whether he has an LD or this is just an area of relative weakness for him that will develop at a different pace. So we've adopted a wait-and-see approach but it's on our radar, for sure.

It's easy think that relative weaknesses in gifted kids, when compared with what they can do, can seem really glaring, yet when compared to more typical kids is right about average.

How is her fluency with arithmetic? DS has high math reasoning ability yet average (even slightly below average) fluency. This has a tendency to mask what he think about in math, since so much at this age is geared towards fluency.

For what it's worth, I don't believe that dysgraphia has anything to do with fine motor skills. It's more related to dyslexia.

Wow! Yeah they do sound the same. DD loves math and also has high math reasoning ability but the fluency is not there.

So far she has written 2 thank you notes in 2 days. The first day she wrote the friend's name on the envelope then wrote "Thank" and asked me to do the rest. This morning, she told me that she would only write the 1, 2 or 3 letter words and I should write the words that have 4 or more letters.

I was trying to ask her why she didn't want to write. I asked if it made her hand hurt; she said no. I asked if the letters were too hard to make; she said no. She said, "It's just boring."

What could be going on here?

I don't know, but it's possible to have good fine motor skills otherwise, but still have dysgraphia. With dysgraphia handwriting is messy, though, and there are usually a lot of errors like writing things backwards, forming letters incorrectly, not putting spaces between words, etc. Short samples might look Ok but beyond that it goes downhill.

When you tell her to write, is she copying from something else? And is she just starting school? Can she write her name or does she have problems with that too? I think if this is the first time you are asking her to write, and she hasn't had it in school before, it's probably normal. If it doesn't start to improve within a few weeks, and she's doing it daily in school, then there's probably something else going on.

Dysgraphia? DS7 was assessed as dysgraphic and writing is very, very difficult for him. I can see him thinking about each letter before he writes it. And he muddles them up pretty easily. SLowly, slowly getting more fluid. But it's a grind. Edit to add: DS also has super fine motor skills outside the context of writing.

Sidenote: "boring" is nothing but a catch all for all things DS doesn't want to do. "Boring" may actually be boring, but it also may mean "hard," "not what I want to do right now," or "useless" (as in doing rote exercises for things he already knows).

Yeah she definitely writes some letters backwards (though I read this is still common at her age) and she forms some of the letters in a weird way.
When I was asking her to write the thank you notes, I had everything written on another paper and she just had to copy it.
She can write her name (though she does this with a mixture of capital and lowercase letters) and this is her second year in school. Last year in Kindergarten I know they did a writing workshop 3 days a week.

If she's copying, she probably shouldn't be writing them backwards. Otherwise, I agree it's normal at that age. I think you should definitely keep an eye on this. DS has some pretty severe writing issues (at age 8, his writing is still very hard to read), he has an IEP and is pulled for services, including OT and written expression, but he didn't have problems to the degree you are describing in K or 1st grade. In the beginning of K he was able to copy sentences, just more messy and slowly than the other kids. I would talk to the teacher and see what he/she says about it, and whether she acts the same way in class.

We see this with our DS7 all the time. "Boring" doesn't actually mean boring, it means "anything I don't want to do."

Ditto to all the advice you've received above. My ds is dysgraphic, and we didn't see it in his schoolwork really until 2nd grade because the writing tasks were so minimal and the expectations so low (plus it is truly developmentally typical for some kids to still be reversing letters like b/d and p/q up through the end of 1st grade.

A few things about dysgraphia:

* It's not an issue with physical fine motor skills - it's a disconnect in the neurological ability to develop automaticity. My ds, like many dysgraphics, is a talented artist who can draw with amazing precision and detail. He can't remember how to form letters - he has to rethink how to draw them each time he uses handwriting, for each word and each letter. When you're drawing pictures, it's new every time, and you're drawing from something you either see in front of you or in your head. Your pencil also doesn't leave the paper frequently like it does with handwriting. Very different process from handwriting.

* There are a few different "flavors" of dysgraphia. Some dysgraphia is connected to fine motor, some to visual processing. Some dysgraphics are extremely challenged with spelling while others aren't. Some have odd pencil grips, some don't. I am sorry that I can't recall exactly which symptom fits which type of dysgraphia, but if you google you should be able to find the info easily.

* Most dysgraphic will be able to tell you a story or answer a question in *significantly* more detail verbally than when using handwriting. You could try scribing for your dd on her homework or making up your own "test" to see if there's a significant improvement when the burden of handwriting is removed.

These are also a few things I'd watch for (in addition to what's already been mentioned above in previous replies):

* Does she hold her wrist while she writes? Or her elbow? Does she use good posture or bend around or hold her head in an odd position?

* Does she break her pencil lead frequently?

* Do her papers look crumbled up when she's done writing?

* What does her handwriting (and output) look like relative to classmates?

* What does her teacher say about her handwriting?

And I'll second what Elizabeth and suevv noted about the word "boring" - it was a real catch-all answer at our house up until around the beginning of 4th grade - when our ds had a bit of a developmental growth spurt in which he was able to describe how he was feeling with accuracy.

One other question I'm curious about - does your dd resist writing when the task might be fun? Instead of thank-you notes (which 2 out of 3 of my kids would resist, whether or not they are dysgraphic lol!)... does she like shopping or cooking? Could you ask her to write a list or recipe out and see if she is still really slow and begging to not do the work? Or ask her to write a caption on one of her pictures? Just anything that was writing that was related to something that was fun for her

Best wishes,

polarbear

My son has dysgraphia pretty severely. I could really see he was not like the other kids when I volunteered in the classroom as early as pre-K and kindergarten. Really started being obvious to me (and to him) in kindergarten. Teachers kept telling me it was "normal" but I thought it was very obvious when I would go in and volunteer ... yeah, some of the kids wrote a few letters backwards but not to the extent of my son. Very few of the other children seemed to find writing so difficult and arduous. Knowing how bright he was also was a factor... I think the teachers thought he was just average and a slow in some areas (writing). Some thought it was just plain behavioral and oppositional. My son actually was the one who brought it to head for me when he laid down on the floor and said extremely upset, "what is wrong with me?!?! I know what an 'A' looks like and what it is, but I can not get my hand to make one... all of the other kids can do it easily and I can't. I feel like I am much smarter than them - they did not even know what the word 'pollute' means, but they can easily make letters and I can not! Something is really very wrong with me."

DS9 is dysgraphic and when he was your DD's age and undiagnosed I could not understand why copying down one brief sentence in a thank you card was such a difficulty. Thank you cards took weeks post birthdays (we send e-cards, now that we know what's going on). He also resisted writing, quite vigorously, and would crumple up his work and tear up worksheets. Like Irena's DS, he knew he was different from the other children and asked for help 'to get his work finished on time' in class.

'Boring' has the same expansive definition in our house that other posters have mentioned and was a frequent explanation for disinterest in writing activities pre-diagnosis.

What kind of specialist does testing for dysgraphia?
I too, thought that since my DD10 could draw (exceptionally well) that wasn't the issue. BUT, unless she really takes her time her handwriting is illegible. She can't even read her own handwriting sometimes, and it is soooo small. She writes stories all the time though, particularly cartoons. She can flip out a paper in a nanosecond but can't spell to save her life. She's also ADHD (inattentive). Any connection? Oh, I just remembered, she loves to do calligraphy with her pen and ink. Sorry to butt into this conversation, but I am very curious as well.

Search, and I think I have posts in another thread on dysgraphia/dyslexia evals. But in brief, you'll be looking for a psych (neuro, school, or clinical), and an OT. The OT documents and diagnoses the fine motor coordination aspect of dysgraphia. The psych documents the cognitive and achievement profile of weaknesses in automaticity, often processing speed or working memory (though not always both), and written expression deficits.

I just got this response from her teacher:
"I looked again at her writing and it is very typical for this time of year. They all need to practice spacing and not writing capitals in the middle of words. They all need to practice using lines and forming their letters correctly. I go over this every day by modeling and leaving it on the Smartboard. Is there something about it that you are troubled about? Again, her writing is very average for the time of school year. Hope this helps!"

Do you think based on what I mentioned before and this response, I should just 'wait and see'?

Bmoore4, I don't want to alarm you or be the type of person who, because my son has an issue, thinks everyone has that issue . BUT I would definitely caution you not to rely much on the teacher in your assessment of the situation and whether or not to look more into it. I know that sounds wrong but my son's teachers insisted he was average, insisted his writing was normal for his age, insisted they was nothing wrong other than behavioral, maybe manipulation, maybe adhd (isn't focused enough to write), maybe PDD-NOS...

Mostly, they insisted he was completely average and typical. I would volunteer often in the classroom and felt it was really VERY blatant that there were big issues with his writing. One school OT spoke up and said 'yes reversals are normal at this age but the extent and the amount' that my son does/did them is not normal. She gently and quietly encouraged me to keep going. The next school OT insisted he was normal.

My son has pretty severe dysgraphia. He is 10 and STILL routinely reverses most number and a few letters.

So, I guess my advice is go with gut feeling and get her looked at specifically for a writing disorder (if that is your gut feeling) and do not let the teacher's opinion hold much sway. If I had listened to my son's teachers the dysgraphia may never have been discovered!

ETA I don't have time now to do it but I have in the past posted the specific tests used to diagnose my son. I had to request specifically that the school test for writing disorder/dysgraphia and I had to specifically request specific tests otherwise they would do evals that were mostly adhd evals and behavioral issues evals.

My experience has been that (1) most teachers have so much less training/ awareness of LDs than you would ever imagine, and (2) parents are far better judges of when there is something different with their kid. If you think there is something wrong, trust your instincts and don't wait for the teachers to catch up. If there actually is something, the sooner you support it, the better.

Add in the ability of gifted kids to compensate and hide disabilities, and what I see again and again is kids who start to break down with anxiety in the classroom long before teachers have any clue what it is costing that child to try and keep up with their classmates every day.