polarbear,
Thanks for the thoughts. I do think it could be a variety of things going on, like DCD or hypotonia and fatiguing after a certain amount of time (which wouldn't happen at home--it's not like I have him sit and do work for hours), just not wanting to write unless he's motivated by the topic or it makes sense to him, etc. I don't know about imaginary writing but he does do well with things like "If I lived 100 years ago I would..." Or "If I could go to space I would..." I haven't seen much come home from school that even involves creative writing at this point, they are mainly trying to get the kids to write topic sentences, details, etc. He is able to make up stories orally, and the more absurd/funny they are the better as far as he is concerned. He stood up and made up a story on the spot in front of everyone at a family reunion recently, complete with melodramatic voices, gestures, etc. I was really surprised by what I saw at school, I was like "What the...?" Teacher came over and said, see what I mean, he doesn't do anything. But when I had him write at home, he wrote about 80 words in 10 min. which doesn't seem bad for a first grader. I gave him a starter sentence and he made up the rest. We put him on a very low dose of ritalin just for the last few days of school (the doctor is monitoring all of this and prescribing before anyone here gets concerned...). I wanted to see if this teacher noticed any difference, and she said she did, and he looked the same as everyone else. She said his writing looked less awkward/messy as well. I've thought about whether we were just doing the college kid trick with him, and I thought that was mainly to keep college kids awake to study rather than dramatically improving speed or focus, but I really don't know. So the plan is to wait til the fall and hopefully the new teacher can help me figure this out. I'll probably start him out medicated and then take him off and see if the teacher sees a deterioration, and if there is one, how much of one. It would be interesting to not tell her when we take him off, then email her and ask "how is DS doing? Any changes?"
