Is writing a struggle for your child?

Is your child struggling with writing? The words are hard to read or your child struggles to form each and every letter? Or has your child been diagnosed with dysgraphia?

“Dysgraphia is a specific learning disability that affects how easily children acquire written language and use it to express their thoughts.” From Wrightslaw

My son had an issue with his writing. His fine motor skills are less refined than his gross motor skills and not something he wants to practise. He is fine jumping around the room but when it comes to small hand movements like writing, putting beads on a thread, shuffling cards he is all thumbs.

When his sensory issues came up and we went to an OT (occupational therapist) he also began helping us with the fine motor issues. Would you like to know what we have done to help our son write better? Okay so here you go…

-We started cursive writing with Handwriting without Tears, cursive.

-He used OT putty, which comes in different strengths, to build up his finger muscles. The OT would hide beads in the putty and make Gabe find them with only his finger tips.

-We tried several pencil grips until we found one that helped Gabe. It reduced the amount of pressure he was able to put down on the point of the pencil.

MAJOR tip to look for…Is your child holing the pencil correctly? If not they are losing strength, grip, and the letters will take more effort to form correctly.

-Later when Gabe no longer wanted to use the pencil grip I got him a mechanical pencil. It has a built-in grip and the wide soft lead encouraged him to ease his pressure up.

-We found on of the his main problems was he would press so hard down on the pencil that his hands would get tired then he got frustrated at the worsening handwriting.We acted like this was any other exercise. You built up your endurance a little at a time.

-In order to accommodate middle school fast approaching and the up swing in more detailed longer work we have started him on the computer learning keyboarding skills.

-Raised line paper

MAJOR tip  Make sure your child writing from the top down and from the left to the right.

-Using big motions to reinforce the motion for a letter before trying it on paper. What you do is have your child “write” the letter A in the air, keeping an eye are making sure they writing it from the top down, left to right. Then after they can do that have them do it smaller on the table with their finger. Finally have them write out the letter on paper.

-Let your child use whatever writing utensil that works, I have a couple of years of math books written in crayon.

-Don’t try to focus and correct everything at once. Work on letter formation. Then word-formation. Finally grammar and spelling.

MAJOR tip what looks like dysgraphia maybe a visual problem so be sure to get the eyes checked!

Gabe has come along way from the child that hated to color, write, or work with his hands. He is better but there are continuing problems even after therapy and accommodations. He will need to learn how to adjust his writing load so it is spread over a long time. He will need to learn how to use the many tech devices available today to assist him.

Gabe’s persistent work on his handwriting and fine motor skills has made handwriting much better. He knows it and is proud of his hard work. What a great accomplishment!

Here are some of the items I talked about: