Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Dysgraphia...keyboard or no?

I recently had my 9-year old tested using the extended batteries of the Woodcock Johnson Test of Cognitive Abilities and Test of Achievement. Her scores were pretty amazing....

Gf-Gc (which is the score to use based on scatter): >160 (99.9)
Knowledge Comprehension: >160 (99.9)
Visual Processing: 158 (99.9)
Fluid Reasoning: 138 (99)
Quantitative Reasoning: 128 (97)

However, her phonological processing, visual-motor, and written expression are poor. Consequently, the testing psychologist declared her "brilliant, but dysgraphic." She also added that she has performance anxiety, a lack of persistence for tasks that require effort, and an unwillingness to tolerate boredom.

To provide a bit more information...her working memory and long term retrieval were both in the average range (the psychologist feels her anxiety is bringing that score down) and her cognitive processing speed and cognitive efficiency composites were both in the high average range. The Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration (VMI) yielded very low scores with regard to visual motor integration and motor coordination. However, her visual perception was in the high average range. So clearly the issue is the motor. They also did the CTOPP-2 for phonological processing and they found below average scores in rapid letter naming and rapid symbolic naming suggesting issues with automaticity.

The psychologist feels that I need to keep pressuring her to write by hand. She feels that I should not give up on it yet because she is too young to move to a keyboard. I am conflicted because she is pretty non-compliant when it comes to handwriting and appears to be tortured by it. I understand what the psychologist is saying in terms of pushing her through it, but I am worried it will come at a price. The psychologist feels like it will come, but will take years. Do I really want to do that to her?

She has the most amazing stories that she can produce when I type them for her. When she is left writing herself, she pretty much refuses to write anything. It has been suggested that her written work is of a kindergarten/first grade level. Meanwhile, the work I type for her is pretty freaking amazing.

Does anyone have any suggestions or experience with this?

If she is dysgraphic, no amount of practice will make handwriting effortless and automatic. Disabilities are real; they can't just be eliminated with enough willpower. I'm appalled that the psychologist thinks that's the way to approach learning disabilities.

I don't understand why the psychologist thinks she's too young to learn to type. My partner and I could both touch-type by that age, and it hasn't done either of us any harm.

Welcome!

There are a few families with relatable experiences here. I expect you'll hear from them shortly. My position generally as that, when skills are this diverse, one should decouple the skills, and work on strength and vulnerability areas separately from each other (even when they appear closely related, such as in written expression). In this case, the value of continuing to work on handwriting depends on many factors, including the severity of the visual motor impairment, and the true underlying deficit.

A few more questions come to mind: deficits in both phonological processing and fine motor skill suggest that this is not just about hand skills. Does she also have a history of articulation/speech issues? How are her other fine and gross motor skills (ball skills, early milestones, swimming/bicycling, etc.)? Is there a history of other discrepant or asynchronous automatic skills, such as delays in learning math facts/math minutes (even orally), or achieving reading fluency?

I'm asking these questions because they can help fill out the picture of whether intensive, repeated practice generally pays off for her, or whether there are underlying deficits in automaticity that suggest that her time might be better spent learning to become a fluent typist (especially since, if automaticity is an issue, that make take longer than expected, too). (And, FWIW, my mother moved my sib to typing at eight, because handwriting was such a hindrance to otherwise extremely rapid academic progress. So I don't think nine is too young.)

My personal practice wrt written expression, as I mentioned above, is to teach and assess the skills separately. So there might be a little time devoted to handwriting per se, but then the remaining written expression tasks would be scribed or speech-to-text. The criterion I use is: what is the key learning objective of this task? Is it handwriting (then handwrite), or is it language expression (whether it is grammar, ideas, organization, etc)? If mandating a basic skill turns your exercise into a measure of something other than the alleged key learning objective, than scaffold the basic skills until the learning focus is truly the focus. You can always work on the lagging skills in isolation.

BTW, I would be cautious about this phrase, "a lack of persistence for tasks that require effort." If her verbal cognition is above the 99.9th %ile, but her handwriting is two to four years below her age level, then forcing her to write by hand is not just making her do a task that requires effort, but an absurd difference of something like six or seven grade levels between her oral expressive language and her handwriting ability. Learners at the K/1 level are still thinking about letter formation and spacing, let alone spelling and grammar. Put yourself in her place: try writing a five paragraph essay from scratch (no pre-planning), using your nondominant hand (and maybe using only the mirror reflection of your writing, if you happen to be a person who has practiced writing with your nondominant hand). Then decide if refusing to write what she can think is truly a lack of persistence.

I have an 11 year old boy with dysgraphia. I don’t think 9 is too young for a keyboard. He was using a keyboard at 9. I’d let her try it out and maybe also some dictation with speech to text.

I had a pretty visceral reaction to the psych's advice. Let's just say I quite disagree not just with the specifics, but also with the attitudes and assumptions underlying it. So apologies while I go on a bit of a soapbox here

Kids with LDs - and even more so, 2E kids - tend to be identifiable by their anxiety many years before they are identifiable for failing to meet grade-level standards. And a major cause of that anxiety is constantly being told to "try harder", when they are already trying so many times harder than anyone else in the class just to keep their head above the water.

No amount of trying can ever substitute for appropriate remediation and accommodations. A child with LDs is usually not developing automaticity in specific areas, which means all their brain power is required just to do the basics, and none is available for the more complex stuff. The kid with LD is still trying to figure out how to read each individual word, but their classmates can do it increasingly automatically, and so they can start thinking more and more about what the whole sentence says, what the paragraph means, how it connects to the rest of the text, to other texts, to the child and to the larger world. The child with LD is using all their brain power to try to remember "Does the circle on the b go to the left or the right? (and darn it, which is my left, again?) Now, does that line on the p go up or down? So now that I've written the s, what letter comes next?" But their classmates, again, are doing this with increasing automaticity, and over time they stop thinking about how to form the letters and what letters go into the words and in what order, and instead their brain is free to think more about what words they want to use, what sentences they will construct, what ideas they will convey.

Around grade 3-4, school tasks tend to rapidly escalate in complexity, based on the assumption that children have automated the basic mechanics and now have free brain power available to move on. The anxiety of kids with LDs comes from the clash of them trying to take on all those increasingly complex tasks - but still needing all their time and thought and energy just to perform the basics at the same time. And then instead of getting the needed LD supports, just being told every day you're just not trying hard enough.

Sorry - really long-winded way of saying I really object to the "try harder" assumption. It's like having your optometrist say "She needs glasses, but we don't want to give up on her eyes, so I think you should withhold the glasses and just make her try harder until she figures out how to see properly - then she can have the glasses."

Just no. As the ever-wise aeh suggests, for goodness sake give her the glasses and let her see her world. And by all means take them off for ten minutes a day to do special eye-strengthening exercises - IFF you know exactly what is wrong with her eyes and have evidence that such exercise will help that particular problem. It is worth noting that actual dysgraphia is a cognitive deficit (rather than a fine motor one), and I have not seen much evidence, nor people's experience, that suggests it is particularly amenable to fixing over the long term (a ton of intense practice can get short-term improvements, but often not enough increase in automaticity to last much beyond the intense training period).

I would also be cautious about assumptions about "perfectionism". Gifted and perfectionism are linked to the point of cliche, and it's common to assume that resistance = perfection. It's also often wrong. With 2E kids, resistance often occurs when the child is being asked to do something they simply can't, as opposed to the assumed 'can't do perfectly'. Give them the skills, the remediation and the accommodations they need, stop asking them to do stuff they can't, and it's amazing how the "not trying hard enough" and the resistance and the fear and the misery go away.

Finally, I've learned that 2E kids can have incredible powers of compensation. They look like like their doing fine, they're holding their heads above the water - but we can't see just how insanely hard they are struggling underneath to stay there, and when they get overwhelmed, it can often seem like it happened very suddenly, even though it's been building for years.

Anxiety indeed.

Your gut is telling you the psych's advice is not right for your daughter. Trust yourself, and trust your understanding of your own child. It's good to seek expert advice, but it's also important to know that few specialists out there have much experience with 2E - while you are an expert in this child. And for what it's worth, there is pretty clear consensus in the 2E research lit that these children should be intellectually challenged to the maximum of their gifted needs, while supported and accommodated as much as needed on the LD side to enable them to do keep up. In other words, you got this. You are doing this totally right. Type for her, record her, teach her to keyboard and use word recognition and voice-to-text and anything else that helps her get her words out. You have a child who is lucky enough to have been born with language wings. Don't let anyone convince you that you should stake her to the ground. Let her fly.

OK, definitely getting carried away on my soapbox - apologies! But two such major buttons for me - trusting yourself as a parent, and believing that your child is trying so, SO hard already, and what she needs is proper LD support, not to be told that working ten times harder than everyone else still isn't good enough.

What posters above said.
I wish my now 2E (3E? ADD/dysgraphia) high school freshman had learned to keyboard much much earlier. We did not figure out the ADD until last summer. We suspected dysgraphia before that but I was sucked into the "he's just not trying" nonsense the teachers spouted.
I think it's a gift that's your DD's issue has been identified now.
Agree with Platypus that the "language wings" need to take her wherever she wants to go via keyboard, dictation, or whatever works!

And I LOVE that spaghetti's kid started a 2E support club!

Good luck!

Thank you so much for your replies! I have struggled to find anyone who knows anything about giftedness! Your support and advice is invaluable.

To provide a bit more information...her working memory and long term retrieval were both in the average range (the psychologist feels her anxiety is bringing that score down) and her cognitive processing speed and cognitive efficiency composites were both in the high average range. The Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration (VMI) yielded very low scores with regard to visual motor integration and motor coordination. However, her visual perception was in the high average range. So clearly the issue is the motor. They also did the CTOPP-2 for phonological processing and they found below average scores in rapid letter naming and rapid symbolic naming suggesting issues with automaticity.

To aeh....Yes, she had some articulation issues which for the most part have resolved with the exception of a mild lisp. She refuses to ride a bike and didn't start swimming until the age of 8. Her gym teacher and tennis coach both agree that they don't see her as dyspraxic. They both feel that she has some upper body weakness but no red flags and she can hold her own in both gym class and tennis. I would say that her math reasoning is far superior to her basic math fluency. Silverman's description of visual spatial giftedness describes her perfectly. Though it is my understanding, that those children typically have lower verbal abilities which is not true for my daughter.

To everyone else, your advice is INVALUABLE! I will reframe my approach with her! And of course, please feel free to keep the guidance coming!

Ditto to everything Platypus said above. My own visceral reaction caused me to delay coming here to respond. So glad spaghetti and OCJD got here to respond with their experience before me too.

My DD was identified the summer between K and 1st with a multitude of LD issues including dysgraphia. I had noticed hand-eye coordination, visual perception and fine motor issues before her 18 month check up but it took me 3 1/2 years - until her 5 year check up - to convince the pediatrician to give me a referral to get it checked out. Even at that age she was "too smart" for anyone to take her issues seriously. During nursery school every day she would "write" a story or a play for the kids to act out. Obviously it was scribed but it was also obvious the intellect, creativity and love for getting her words out there were present from the age of 3. Finally at 5 OT started in a mad effort to get her ready for kindergarten (didn't work) and she was penalized daily for her disabilities. She was called lazy, was told she wasn't trying, accused of trying to get out of doing her work. It makes my blood boil to think that same kind of thing is still happening.

You definitely need to start her on keyboarding but that's not enough. You need an assistive technology evaluation. Done by a properly certified AT specialist not just an ordinary OT. One with experience with dysgraphia - and preferably with a 2e dysgraphic kid. In first grade I asked that keyboarding be introduced and the well intentioned but woefully uninformed OT blocked it because in her opinion it "would not be developmentally appropriate prior to 4th grade." Hogwash! My child needed it more than other kids and would take longer to develop the skill than NT kids.

Finally got an AT eval in second grade and had an ipad starting in 3rd grade. Her program was not implemented with fidelity, though, until 7th grade when I found an *amazing* AT specialist who works with my daughter two hours a week (at district expenses) and also trains her teachers.

It's not just keyboarding. There are apps for all sorts of things that make her education possible. You don't need to be figuring out what she needs and the best way to approach it - and you should not be put in the position of trying to. There are experts who will determine what works best for her and train her to use different apps and programs. Scribing is a great short term stopgap measure but she needs to be able to function independently. Voice to text and word prediction can work wonders for a smart dysgraphic kid. Shame on that psychologist for not knowing that and for preventing you from getting her the access to these supports.

The example I use whenever someone told my daughter to do as much as she could before providing help was a kid in a wheelchair. Would anyone really tell that child to pull themselves across the floor as far as they could before they asked for their chair? If so the rest of the class would be in the gym and halfway through their pe class before that child arrived. He would have missed most of the instruction and be physically too exhausted to even try to participate. Same with a dysgraphic kid being forced to write. So much energy and effort being put into their disability that there is nothing left for actually getting an education...

I would introduce the keyboard and see how your kid does. If it just becomes another source of stress and frustration, you may want to put it aside for a bit.

My DD is in high school now. She was diagnosed as dyslexic and dysgrahic in 2nd grade. Like everyone else here, it has been a crazy, bumpy ride. Now, she uses her computer for homework almost exclusively but she prefers to take notes and do in-class essays and tests by hand. Her handwriting is tiny. I know that some of her teachers have begged her to write bigger because it is so small that it is hard to read. I've tried to convince her to use her keyboard accomodation instead of writing by hand but she says it doesn't work for her.

We started trying her on keyboarding in 3rd grade. In the summer between 3rd and 4th grade, we sent her to a keyboarding class for kids with LDs that was recommended by the psychologist who diagnosed her as dyslexic and dysgraphic. She already played piano so we thought that the keyboarding class could be a game changer for her. The typing class was a big set back. In retrospect, they put too much emphasis on computer typing games that had a timed component. This is a kid who struggled with automaticity and keyboarding was no different than any other task that she needed to learn. We also tried the BBC typing program. That stressed her out too. I wonder if it was just too difficult for her to process the letters quickly enough to type them. Despite our best efforts, her computer did not become a successful tool for her until middle school.

Again, thank you for your advice. It�s invaluable. I�ve been having her do typing.com and she seems to be doing pretty good. I�m working hard to de-emphasize perfectionism and emphasize effort. I�ve taken your advice to heart and have been telling her how hard she�s working. Everyone seems a lot happier since I better understand her. I can honestly say that this is the most stressful time of my life. But I think I�m better off this week than I�ve been in months.

On another note, there is a huge delay in my posts because they need to be approved by the moderator. Is this always the case?