Happilymom - I've been out of town so I'm chiming in a bit late - sorry about that. My ds13 has fine motor dysgraphia and dyspraxia - I consider the dysgraphia to be rooted in his dyspraxia. When he was first diagnosed with dyspraxia (referred to as "Developmental Coordination Disorder" in the DSM-IV)... I was honestly quite surprised - I hadn't recognized anything about him as "uncoordinated" enough to be diagnosable - but once I learned about dyspraxia and correlated his early milestones and current behaviors, I saw that it was clearly there. The confusing thing about dyspraxia (and apraxia of speech, which can be related) - is that there are so many different ways it manifests in people - some folks are only mildly affected in one or a few areas, other have significant impacts in many areas. From what I've heard from other people and what I've read, I'd guess that the reality is dyspraxia is a individual in how it impacts any one person. My ds doesn't have speech challenges (pronunciation etc) but does have expressive language challenges (getting his thoughts out). He is an amazing artist (loves to draw and draws *really* well) but he is definitely pronouncedly dysgraphic, and it took him years to learn how to tie his shoes. Buttoning and zippering are still difficult for him, and in general, he just seems to move very slowly.
Re dysgraphia specifically, my ds definitely has the organizational challenges outlined on the graph fromupnorth linked (they are great visuals btw, fromupnorth, thanks!)... but those organizational challenges didn't really impact him in school until 2nd grade and they kicked in as large challenges later on in elementary.
Re the Beery VMI, my ds also had very low scores on the fine motor part of the VMI, and those scores were considered part of his fine motor dysgraphia diagnosis. I don't know if they might also be impacted by vision challenges, because that wasn't an issue for my ds. My dd who had vision challenges scored very low on the vision perception portion of the test (lower than 10th percentile), but had (if I remember correctly) average or above average scores on fine motor. She is not dysgraphic, but prior to correcting her vision issues she had handwriting that *looked* very dysgraphic. Re the fine motor dysgraphia, my ds was given the NEPSY as part of his neuropsych eval, and had very low scores on some of the fingertapping subtests, which (from what I understand) is another indication of fine motor dysgraphia.
Re further neuropsych evals and private testing, we didn't have access to neuropsychs who had experience with HG+ kids, but having the neuropsych eval has been beyond helpful (invaluable actually) anyway. Having a local neuropsych known by the schools has been very helpful in advocating for accommodations, and having the advice of the neuropsych (rather than relying on the schools) has been extremely extremely helpful to me in knowing how to proceed with accommodations and remediations/therapies etc over the years.
Best wishes, and let us know how your school meeting goes!
polarbear
