Your DD sounds very similar to my DS7. Cognitively very bright, voracious reader... but writing very difficult and perfectionistic which causes him to avoid tasks that are hard. He doesn't like when I correct him as I am being too hard and expecting perfection (according to him). He was seeing a private OT for core strength and motor planning, and I wasn't really seeing a difference. We switched him to a group handwriting session at the same OT clinic, and it helped quite a bit with him forming his letters. Still not great writing, but there was improvement.
What made the biggest difference for him was this summer he started working one-on-one with a learning specialist on writing - not handwriting in forming letters better, but in just writing. Getting his ideas down on paper. We saw a lot of progress in a short time with her, and yesterday on the way to school he said they are doing more writing in school this year and it is easier for him. I asked why, and he said all the work over the summer. I did a little dance of joy in my head! He still has a long way to go, but there is definite progress. I think the key to this was a person who really got to know him, and she was able (and willing) to modify her approach to meet what he needs. For instance, she saw that his visual-motor integration was causing difficulties for him so she added in games/mazes each week to work on that. She worked on EF skills by creating a list of what they were going to do and giving it to him before they started so he had time to process what the session would be like. She also really pushed him, and during one session he came out crying saying he wasn't going to do it anymore. I think he needed a "push" to see we were really going to hold him to this and he had to do it himself. The next week he protested a little, and the following session it was no problem at all. He went from at the beginning of the summer not being able to write an entire word without stopping and looking around to writing an entire sentence without stopping. He is also more confident about his ability to write, and we will continue to build on this as I think it is also a big stumbling block for him.
I know he needs to work on core strength as well to help with the writing, but we had to prioritize it a bit lower for the time because these other therapies are making a much larger difference for him.
