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So dd6 is seemingly doing great in school. Straight 1's (yay!) except for handwriting where she got the worst possible score. I agree with the teacher. Her handwriting is terrible! I've tried HWT, daily handwriting practice.... Neither has helped. Any suggestions? She seems to just not have the best fine motor skills.

Yes, it could be a visual processing issue. What did you do for vision therapy? Are there books that you would recommend? Did you go to a therapist, or is this something you can do at home?

This might be a silly question - but is her handwriting always bad? I mean, for my DS (granted he has super strong fine motor, so this doesn't exactly apply), while he CAN write beautifully... a lot of time (or if he is writing more than a few sentences), he will just get really sloppy. I think it's mostly laziness/rushing on his part. Again, this might be silly because you already ruled this out, but just in case she is rushing or something like that, I thought I would mention - maybe it's just a matter or taking her time. Or some combo of that and visual processing. Or just the latter. Or something else entirely. lol, super useful, I know! Best of luck, hope you figure it out.

Thanks for the questions Marnie - yes, just trying to figure it out. She *can* write neatly if she really slows down a lot and spends a ton of effort on it.

There's a big difference between "cannot" write neatly and "chooses not to." It sounds like your DD is in the second camp. It does take more time and effort to write neatly, and when your brain is working at 1,000 wpm, that's torture.

My DD9 had the same issue at your DD's age. She had been writing beautifully at 3-4 (better than I ever did), and then started turning in slop at school. We intervened by telling her that she didn't have to write perfectly, and we understood the desire for speed... but "good enough" is only good enough if someone else can read it. Thereafter, if she did a homework assignment and we couldn't read it, we'd make her rewrite it. That taught her to put in enough effort to get it past us the first time.

She was having similar issues with rushing through her work, too (not reading instructions fully, sloppy mistakes in math, etc.), so we instituted an incentive where she can earn a few additional dollars when she brings home papers with As and Bs on them. It's got her paying a lot more attention to the quality of her work, and has been very effective.

Really confused on our end about printing. Gifted son printed beautifully for cyber schooling. In public school setting, time is always tight, the lines to write on are narrow and our child seems to think speed is necessary, so neatness is compromised. Wondering if standardized testing at the state level might require a computer for essay writing. This seems to be a common concern for gifted boys. I do not have info. about gifted girls and handwriting. Hope it helps.

Sometimes it's more complex than that. Kids with handwriting disabilities sometimes "draw" their letters rather than "writing" them if they have to be neat-- engaging the "wrong" part of the brain, and making it really hard to focus on content and the actual production of writing at the same time.

One of my kids can either write legibly or keep track of his thoughts, but not both at the same time. Thanks to serious motor planning issues, the writing takes up most of his available brainpower. Typing is improving things somewhat.

If neat handwriting is better only with a lot of effort and attention, that is substantially different than being lazy. When handwriting is automatic, letters come out fairly consistently with little attention. Whether diagnosable or tolerated by a school, I personally think it is a real and important distinction. Either way, early keyboarding may help from becoming disgruntled with all of writing due to being penalized or stressed over a lack of automaticity.

I can write neat, if it is the only thing I am doing. It isn't really writing, it is more like drafting or drawing. There is no fine control automaticity in it. While writing neat, I can't be very creative or think deeply or even pay attention to what someone else is saying.

ITA with DeeDee and ZenScanner. FWIW, I don't think it's necessarily easy to recognize what's up if there is a challenge with motor planning and handwriting when a child is still in K-1st grade. My dysgraphic's handwriting was incredibly sloppy at that age, but it wasn't the sloppiest handwriting in the class.

Some things I'd look for if you suspect a potential issue with handwriting:

1) (and I think you've noticed this) Are the challenges with handwriting way out of step with other academics?

2) Is your dd refusing to do work in class or at home that involves handwriting, but otherwise seems to be work that would be easy for her? (We saw this with math worksheets - we knew ds understood the concepts and the applications, but he would sit and stare and do nothing when he had a worksheet in front of him - and if we encouraged him by showing him verbally that he knew what to do, then encouraged him to write down answers, he threw tantrums instead of writing)

3) Try to observe how slow and labored the handwriting is compared to peers in her classroom

4) Does she seem to be slow to do other fine-motor related tasks - things like tying shoes, manipulating buttons, zipping zippers, putting on a coat etc. (note - I would not assume that because a child can draw well or make tiny clay figures easily that they aren't challenged with motor planning and handwriting - these are two very different types of activities).

5) Does she seem to consistently form her letters (however she's been taught), or does she seem to make them randomly each time, or stop to think about how to draw them?

Visual processing was mentioned above - and I have a dd who has had visual processing issues - her handwriting was very sloppy when she was in early elementary prior to vision therapy. I wouldn't immediately run off to find a vision therapists on that alone though. For instance, our dd also struggled with learning to read, and she appeared to be extremely klutzy, plus she didn't sit on chairs, she was always sliding off or wanting to stand up etc. She held her head in a very odd way when she was doing her schoolwork.

The thing is there are all kinds of things that could be going on, and for kids who have either visual processing or motor planning issues, there is a wide spectrum of how each child is individually impacted. I've offered up a few observations from my family's experience, but really I could never have figured out independently with either of my kids who had sloppy handwriting in early elementary without the help of a thorough eval by a professional that looked at a broad range of functioning. I was, quite honestly, caught off-guard by both of their diagnoses, even though I thought I knew what was going on with each.

Best wishes,

polarbear

It's probably too early to expect automaticity in a K-1st grader, though. Automaticity is established via muscle memory, due to repetition.

The finer control you exercise up front, the finer tuned your muscle memory will be.