Belle,
How awful!
My son sounds very similar to yours, but he never got any handwriting help from his private OT or from the school OT.
I would request the Ass tech ass but in case that doesn't pan out, this is what I did.
At age 8 DS wanted a new game for his gameboy DS. I made 40 'scrolls' with 15 minutes tasks and but them in a small clear vase. Each curled up piece of paper had a 15 minute task that increased small motor strength/coordination. I sat with him for each task. Tasks included:
1) hand sewing bean bag pillows.
2) 15 minutes of Typing Instruction from Mavis Beacon CD-Rom
3) Drawing from Ed Emberly book
4) practicing making pretty letters from Handwriting without tears (did I mention how much I love their notebook paper?)
5) 15 minutes of Typing Instruction from Mavis Beacon CD-Rom
Yup - I stacked the deck with Mavis!
Here's what happened. by age 9 DS had learned to type properly with fingers in proper position on the keyboard. By age 10 he was able to type 100 wpm (with mistakes) with his head swiveling around like an owl to check out the goings on in the classroom. This turned out to be one of the major things that made him 'stand out' as special when the private school gave him his gradeskip. (I know!)
When he started at the private school I got them to agree to treat him 'as if' he had a writing disability and allow him to write everything longer than 1 paragraph with a laptop, which we provided. 2 years later I got the Handwriting without Tears's
'the print tool' and I told him I wanted to get a part time job helping other kids with their handwriting and would he be my beta tester. He got very interested in their tools and 'helped' me understand the intructions, and analyse his sample, and guess what? 6 months later there was an assignment in Science to learn to take notes, DS handwrote it and it was beautiful.
So it is possible to provide 'differentiated instruction' in handwriting to gived kids.
DS still mostly types, but at least now he as 'sloppy copy' handwriting and 'final copy' handwriting, something that the other kids had in 2nd grade, but not DS.
I hope that helps!
Grinity
