Sorry I'm replying a bit backwards to your post - the thing with the tracing on your back just sorta jumped out at me lol!
I'm still wondering about dysgraphia for DD. I took her to an OT who gave her the BOT for fine motor (which tests coordination as well as visual-motor ability, copying patterns, etc). And she did fine.
Can you define "fine"? Does BOT stand for something like Burtenesky? I'm sorry I don't have time to look it up right now, but fwiw when my ds was assessed using the Burtenesky (sp?) his fine motor skills were all above average (if I remember correctly) - but the Burtenesky isn't assessing dysgraphia, it is assessing fine motor skills and the ability to use fine motor. I know that *sounds* like dysgraphia but it isn't the same thing. Many dysgraphic individuals are able to draw amazingly well (my ds included) and have the ability to do other fine motor tasks well, but the act of handwriting falls apart because of the complexity of the task and the need to develop automaticity. So what you learn from the Burtenesky is the potential for the dysgraphic person (if they *have* fine motor dysgraphia) to benefit from handwriting OT. If a person scores average or above, then there is a chance that handwriting OT will be successful - it won't take away the dysgraphia (which is a whole 'nother post re why it's important to keep that in mind), but it can help with developing legible handwriting, good posture, reduce wrist pain etc. If a person scores very low on the Burtenesky, I think that is most likely an indication that they don't have the fine motor skills potential to benefit from handwriting OT.
It's also a good idea to look at the scores on the Burtenesky to see if there are discrepancies. My ds had large discrepancies on it - so while his scores were all technically above average, there were some that were high and some that were hovering right at average.
But when you look at her writing, like copying spelling words, she makes tons of errors. She catches them though, and writes over the errors. She doesn't like to erase. So it looks like a mess. There are some letters or words that she writes over about 5 times.
I wouldn't take this alone as a sign of dysgraphia - and this is one reason that sometimes dysgraphia is tough to identify. Lots of kids your dd's age (at least a lot of the kids in my kids' classes) have sloppy handwriting, make mistakes when writing, and don't like to erase. It looks messy, but it doesn't necessarily look different than many other neurotypical students' handwriting if the dysgraphia isn't hugely severe. One thing you might want to do though, is to look back at your dd's early early elementary writing samples if you still have any and look for signs of dysgraphia there... as well as look at how your dd's handwriting has improved over the years - do you think it's steadily improved or stagnated?
I was talking about this to the OT so she told her to write the alphabet. With some letters she hesitated a few seconds like she was trying to figure out how to write them. Or she would start writing them, do it wrong, stop, and write over them.
My suggestion to add some info to what you were trying to look at here is to:
1) Have your dd print the full alphabet out, upper and lower case, in order, and time her. Calculate her letters/minute and compare that to other students her age and grade (you can find that info by googling things like "letters per minute + 5th grade"). My dysgraphic ds comes in significantly below grade level on this task.
2) Ask your dd if she has to think about how to form letters when she writes. My ds will tell you he has to remember things like where to start his letters etc, and that he likes numbers better than letters because there are only 10 of them to remember. Neurotypical kids don't make comments like that!
Her handwriting does look very neat when she is trying, so it is very inconsistent.
My ds' handwriting also looks neat when he's not stressed or hurried. What's important to look at though isn't the legibility of the handwriting as much as the *content*. Is she still making punctuation or spelling errors? Reversing letters? Mistakes when copying? Is the written content comparable to the output she'd produce if talking or recording or typing? *THOSE* are all signs of dysgraphia - when a child doesn't have automaticity of handwriting and has to consciously rethink how to form letters as they write, they run out of working memory that is used by nt folks to take care of all those other tasks.
Her coding score on the WISC was an 8 so there was something like a 60 point gap between processing speed and GAI.
IMO, this is the biggest red flag for dysgraphia you've mentioned. You will no doubt read or hear that a discrepancy between processing speed and VCI/PRI etc is not uncommon, especially in gifted children, but the magnitude of the gap combined with the issues you listed above all suggest, jmo, that it would be worthwhile to have follow-up testing specifically looking at dysgraphia. The tests I'm thinking of are tests a neuropsych would typically offer as part of their eval, with the goal of understanding why the coding speed was so much lower than other subtest scores. The Beery VMI is one of the tests that is typically given, as well as finger-tapping and other executive functioning tests. Has your dd had any of those through her previous testing?
polarbear
The 504 coordinator for the building wants to write a 504 for processing speed, but just have modifications like increased time to do work. I don't know if this is sufficient if the problem is dysgraphia.
One of the other OTs told me that if you trace a number or letter on the back of a child and ask them what you wrote (with your finger) a child with dysgraphia would have trouble figuring it out. DD didn't have trouble. Not sure how "accurate" that test is. [/quote]
