Another handwriting story - 02/21/14 04:48 PM
My younger son as far as I know has no other E (his brother has ASD and hypotonia and he went down a different handwriting road) but is HG and grade accelerated by one grade. Currently in 4th grade.
In preschool he had a fist grip and then moved to a grip with all four fingers on one side of the pencil and his thumb on the opposite side. Being a veteran OT mom I did all the things you should do...golf pencils, tiny broken crayons, playdoh play for strength, corrected his grip constantly. Continued this weird grip into K and K teacher didn't care. First grade teacher did care and worked some sort of magic and in nine weeks had an appropriate grip. Letter formation was all over the place by then. Started HWT with him in first grade and worked on it first and second grade even introduced cursive HWT summer after 2nd thinking if he didn't have to pick up his pencil it would help. None of that transferred or generalized to any other setting other than our ten minutes a day.
Skipped third grade and 4th grade is the year the kids have to take a high stakes test in writing and at the beginning of the year his teacher said his mess of handwriting would be marked ungradable. So I requested an OT evaluation wondering if we were missing some sort of physical problem that wasn't as obvious as my older son's.
The OT finally got to evaluating him and in that time between the request for eval and now....he has moved from ungradable to gradable. It still doesn't look pretty but at least I can stop panicking that he won't be graded due to illegibility.
The OT still has to present her findings which I know (we spoke in the hall) won't be for direct handwriting instruction from the OT but will be for AT accommodations. She says that it is too difficult to change handwriting patterns after 3rd grade that they are too ingrained in the brain's motor memory.
I'll know more after our meeting but sometimes just getting the ball rolling and meeting about an issue moves it from horrible..... to making a bit of progress and we can accommodate the rest. If that could be the case for all of our kids.
In preschool he had a fist grip and then moved to a grip with all four fingers on one side of the pencil and his thumb on the opposite side. Being a veteran OT mom I did all the things you should do...golf pencils, tiny broken crayons, playdoh play for strength, corrected his grip constantly. Continued this weird grip into K and K teacher didn't care. First grade teacher did care and worked some sort of magic and in nine weeks had an appropriate grip. Letter formation was all over the place by then. Started HWT with him in first grade and worked on it first and second grade even introduced cursive HWT summer after 2nd thinking if he didn't have to pick up his pencil it would help. None of that transferred or generalized to any other setting other than our ten minutes a day.
Skipped third grade and 4th grade is the year the kids have to take a high stakes test in writing and at the beginning of the year his teacher said his mess of handwriting would be marked ungradable. So I requested an OT evaluation wondering if we were missing some sort of physical problem that wasn't as obvious as my older son's.
The OT finally got to evaluating him and in that time between the request for eval and now....he has moved from ungradable to gradable. It still doesn't look pretty but at least I can stop panicking that he won't be graded due to illegibility.
The OT still has to present her findings which I know (we spoke in the hall) won't be for direct handwriting instruction from the OT but will be for AT accommodations. She says that it is too difficult to change handwriting patterns after 3rd grade that they are too ingrained in the brain's motor memory.
I'll know more after our meeting but sometimes just getting the ball rolling and meeting about an issue moves it from horrible..... to making a bit of progress and we can accommodate the rest. If that could be the case for all of our kids.
