Sorry for the slight derail (but it might help out the OP so I'll leave it for now).
I have wondered a bit about dysgraphia with my DS after reading posts here. I'm not sure if they were looking for it and ruled it out or if they didn't consider/missed it. Reading the signs and symptoms on Wikipedia he doesn't fit most of it. However I'm far from an expert and I have no idea if their list is a good one or not. I do see the following in DS on their list, but the rest doesn't apply.
- Poor legibility (although compared to most grade 2 boys, he isn't that bad...)
- Handwriting abilities that may interfere with spelling and written composition
- Having a hard time translating ideas to writing
We were told it was his processing speed and low working memory that were impacting his writing. If I recall correctly they explained that it takes him time to think of the sentence (and usually extra time to pare down his complex thought/vocabulary into something he could write in grade 1), remember how to make the letter and then time to physically write it. All of that extra time was extremely frustrating for him especially when most of the other kids were much faster (he figured out very young that he was smart and that for smart kids school was easy so this caused a lot of frustration for him and challenged his view of himself). He is not as bad when copying stuff that we write and last year we would often scribe his answers and then have him copy it so he'd get some writing practice while trying to limit the frustration. I think if he was truly dysgraphic the copying would have been more of an issue (but again, not an expert).
This year his writing has improved a lot. Looking at writing samples from his class a month ago his fit right in. He even was towards the top of the class in the amount of writing he produces which is light years ahead of last year when he hardly ever finished anything at school.
We'll likely end up testing again in the next year or two and I'm really curious if he will be as low as he was at 6.5. He didn't talk at all until 19 months and did speech therapy until age 3, you'd never know it now. Maybe writing will be the same, slow start and then catch up. Maybe he was speech delayed because he has low processing speed and writing will just be another thing he has learned to deal with well enough to blend in.
HTH Aren't these kids fun?
