mom2one, a lot of what you wrote sounds like my ds who has a diagnosis of Developmental Coordination Disorder and fine motor dysgraphia.
he has a terribly hard time with 9's and P's. I am suspecting dysgraphia (not just for the 9's and P's, but also for handwriting mechanics as spaces between words, capitalizing the first letter at the beginning of a sentence etc). His handwriting is legible (to me), but seems below average when compared to some of the kids in his class. I do make him practice every day for 15 minutes.
The description of his handwriting fits dysgraphia, although I'm also not sure how old he is (?). You noted you're having him practice for 15 minutes every day - if there wasn't a challenge, I would expect you'd see improvements from that practice (unless he's still not quite developmentally ready for handwriting, in a totally neurotypical age-appropriate way :)).
I've taught him to proofread, before submitting the work to me/his teachers. He is an excellent reader, however, he sometimes does not catch the backward Ps (he always catches the backward 9s though). Is this par for the course ?
I don't know that there are any standard commonalities in this among dysgraphics, but I have noticed with my ds (he's 13), that proofreading handwriting doesn't work all that well - he doesn't have any challenges with reading, but he misses some things when he proofreads what he's handwritten. Proofreading works much better for him when he's typing
For my ds, the reversals lessened over time - a *lot* of time lol, he still does them every now and then. The other thing he tells me is that he is often surprised when he looks back at things he has handwritten (notes, for example), because he "knows he told his brain to do it a certain way" and then when he sees it on the paper "it's like I wrote something entirely different than what I was telling my brain to write".
The other thing that worries me a lot is that he routinely gets his right and left mixed up. He knows it when he has time, but in a gym-like setting, he says he cannot think !
Same for my ds! It still takes him obvious thought to get his directions correct, very out -of-sync with what I had expected compared to his other obvious thinking abilities when he was young
We moved a couple of months back, and I am wondering whether it makes sense for an OT eval or a neuro-psych eval. Irena, sorry for adding questions to your thread -- this has been worrying me a lot, and I never seem to find the time these days to log in and post.
You're seeing symptoms and it's worrying you, so yes, it makes sense to get an eval. The worst thing that can happen is you might find out everything is a-ok, and really, that would be nice, wouldn't it? And if there is a challenge, it's better to find out now rather than hesitating only to find out for sure in a few years. Time is so valuable in terms of remediating and learning how to accommodate and live with a challenge for a young child. Don't hesitate to act on what your mom's instinct is telling you.
Best wishes,
polarbear
