Hi, my son is 6 1/2. We had an assessment done about a month ago.
He does not like to write but I don't know if he has physical difficulties with it. I only thought of it after reading the threads about dysgraphia and fine motor skills. When do I know if I should see an OT? He also has a very curved back and poorly developed abdominals. His doctor said it is because he has grown so fast his body can't keep up with it. He was given toe touches and ab exercises but I can't get him to do them.
Any ideas on schooling? We don't want to skip 2nd grade as he is a very young 6 (July) and a little emotionally immature and skipping to 3rd would dump him right into TAKS (the Texas testing). We've thought about homeschooling but he and I butt head quite a bit.
His behavior is different when he hasn't been in school (like during Spring Break, he was helpul, amiable, did his chores, and we enjoyed our time together). Is he bored at school? I have a hard time getting him to get ready to go in the morning. He says "I want to go to school but I don't want to get ready". He also has said, in response to my question "Are you happy at school?", "well, I'm not very sad".
I can post his subtest scores if anyone is interested. He is in the Gifted program at school (but just "barely" and "with much discussion"); it is only 1 1/2 hours a week (when the GT teacher hasn't been pulled off to help the special ed teacher or something else.
I hope I didn't post in the wrong place and I guess I ended up venting my frustations more than asking questions. I apologize for that. I'd appreciate any advice or suggestions.
Hi Squirt.
About abdominals and such: no 6 year old wants to exercise. Have him do more outside - riding a bike, swinging, climbing, lots of "heavy work" pushing and pulling things. That's how a child develops core strength. If he actually has enough core weakness to be assessed as having hypotonia (not as uncommon as most people think) then low muscle tone could be influencing his willingness and ability to write. Good postural stability is needed to have good distal control of the arms/hands/fingers in order to write. This is what gets addressed in OT - developing the core foundation for stability in order to allow for ease of arm and hand control.
I couldn't agree more with Kriston about the balance between what he needs to work on and what he's already good at and loves. Somewhere I had read a little story about a group of animals that went to school and how the rabbit was forced to learn to swim and never got to hop, how the eagle had to learn to climb and never got to fly, how the cheetah had to learn to fly and never got to run, etc all because of the idea of "one needs to practice what you aren't good at". I'm sure you get the moral of the story. I can't remember where I read it, but the story was intended to be a commentary on our public school system and how we force our children to work all the time on what they are NOT good at and never give them a chance to develop their natural talents.
There's a lot involved in the why your son doesn't like to write. It could something like his level of perfectionism or it could be due to some delays or disorder. It could resolve in time and all even out or it might need a little help (aka: intervention). I'd work on getting the academic needs settled and then take another look at the writing if it doesn't start developing.
About behaviors, I'd say that some of the immaturity or problems you are seeing in school in terms of social/emotional stuff might just be linked to boredom. You describe a different kid at home. My son was awful about going to school and much of it resolved when we bumped him up another grade for math. He still is bored with the pace of the class, but things are a lot better!
