High schooler Asperger with dysgraphia

[Anonymous]

Years of OT achieved zero. If anything his handwriting is getting worse. It is literally barely legible. I know they do almost everything on computers now but still it is concerning to me. Anyone had a child with this and how to improve it? I am worried it has some deeper meaning in brain significance. Past Dr’s have shrugged it off. He had to sign his name in cursive on a document recently and it took minutes of painstaking effort.

[Anonymous]

Same with my child. She types or uses voice to text for everything. Her signature is a quick scribble. School is hard enough because of autism -- handwriting is one thing we can let technology handle and focus on more important skills (including the act of composition).

[Anonymous]

I am just worried that it hasn’t improved whatsoever over the years, and if anything seems to be getting worse , and what that means neurologically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Years of OT achieved zero. If anything his handwriting is getting worse. It is literally barely legible. I know they do almost everything on computers now but still it is concerning to me. Anyone had a child with this and how to improve it? I am worried it has some deeper meaning in brain significance. Past Dr’s have shrugged it off. He had to sign his name in cursive on a document recently and it took minutes of painstaking effort.

Some autistic people just have poor handwriting, which never improves, even with OT. You can’t fix that, and if their support/medical team is unconcerned, I would drop the issue.

Cursive is beyond obsolete. It’s more an art form now than a useful means of communication. Many documents can be electronically signed these days, and those that can’t can be signed with an X if a full signature is too much effort for your child. As for writing longer documents, they can be typed. You can even buy them an old-style electronic typewriter if they need assistance filling out forms that can’t be easily converted to an electronic format.

Just accommodate and move on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am just worried that it hasn’t improved whatsoever over the years, and if anything seems to be getting worse , and what that means neurologically.

It means he has dysgraphia. Which you know already.

[Anonymous]

Every summer for all of preschool, elementary school, and a bit of middle school, I made my ADHD/ASD/dysgraphic son do French cursive. We're French, and in my country cursive is often taught before block writing. There are really nice color workbooks for it. He would work on it every day of summer vacation.

This is how he was able to handwrite one of his AP history exams, one year when his proctor wrongly insisted that he was not entitled to his typing accommodation.

We still need to work on the self-advocating, because my son did not fight him on this assertion, despite having used his typing accommodation for every previous AP exam...

[Anonymous]

OP, my son has severe dysgraphia and his handwriting got worse progressively throughout elementary school. This seemed very logical to me: it took all his attention and effort to even get the letters/spacing to look legible... if he dedicates any amount of attention to spelling or the actual idea he is trying to express, there's nothing left for the handwriting.

Your post resonates with me because we, too, have had to work on the signature! My son noticed that his parents's signatures look very little like actually writing, haha, and has settled on his own version.

Like PP, we also practiced cursive for years and my son could do lovely cursive in workbooks but without the model on a page, he would lose the muscle memory altogether. We continued practicing for YEARS after we were told by every expert to forget it. None of this is surprising in the context of a kid with severe dysgraphia but it is still so hard to watch or even understand. Handwriting just is not and will never be a practical option. Period. We have moved on. The last time my son was tested (in tenth grade), he scored at under .5th percentile (yes point five) for fine motor related skills.

In sum, as others improve, my kid got relatively worse. And more relevantly, as the rest of his skills progressed (I mean the REAL writing skills, forming logical arguments, cohesive essays, developing a writing style), his handwriting has literally gotten worse.

For my son, in high school, the only issue is math. He uses a keyboard for absolutely everything but there aren't great programs in math.

Anyway, just sharing my story to say that I think what you are seeing is predictable in the context of someone with a more severe case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, my son has severe dysgraphia and his handwriting got worse progressively throughout elementary school. This seemed very logical to me: it took all his attention and effort to even get the letters/spacing to look legible... if he dedicates any amount of attention to spelling or the actual idea he is trying to express, there's nothing left for the handwriting.

Your post resonates with me because we, too, have had to work on the signature! My son noticed that his parents's signatures look very little like actually writing, haha, and has settled on his own version.

Like PP, we also practiced cursive for years and my son could do lovely cursive in workbooks but without the model on a page, he would lose the muscle memory altogether. We continued practicing for YEARS after we were told by every expert to forget it. None of this is surprising in the context of a kid with severe dysgraphia but it is still so hard to watch or even understand. Handwriting just is not and will never be a practical option. Period. We have moved on. The last time my son was tested (in tenth grade), he scored at under .5th percentile (yes point five) for fine motor related skills.

In sum, as others improve, my kid got relatively worse. And more relevantly, as the rest of his skills progressed (I mean the REAL writing skills, forming logical arguments, cohesive essays, developing a writing style), his handwriting has literally gotten worse.

For my son, in high school, the only issue is math. He uses a keyboard for absolutely everything but there aren't great programs in math.

Anyway, just sharing my story to say that I think what you are seeing is predictable in the context of someone with a more severe case.

OP here, thanks, this was helpful to me. I really wonder what is going on in their brains where the writing part just withers away.

[Anonymous]

PP here. I don't think it withers away, I think it's too much effort to sustain when they are thinking on a higher level. Attention is too divided and strained.

That said, I wonder, too, why there is such a disconnect between the brain and the hand. It is not a lack of understanding or effort. My son literally cannot draw (or even trace!) a straight line.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP here. I don't think it withers away, I think it's too much effort to sustain when they are thinking on a higher level. Attention is too divided and strained.

That said, I wonder, too, why there is such a disconnect between the brain and the hand. It is not a lack of understanding or effort. My son literally cannot draw (or even trace!) a straight line.

Another PP with a bright son who wrote better in K! We did a ton of OT from 4-5 where things like copying lines was emphasized. I wonder if the key is different kinds of OT exercises that focus on connecting the brain and the hand, rather than on producing words.

[Anonymous]

I'm an old person with dysgraphia. It got worse as I aged . But when I started "holding the pen or pencil too hard" in 3d and 4th grade there was no such thing as OT for it - at least not in my social class. I passed that on to my son and DD so had both take summer "keyboarding" classes at Landon (I don't know if they exist anymore) so they wouldn't have to rely on handwriting. Both have done very well. I did hire someone recommended by our schools for "Handwriitng without tears" but DS wouldn't practice Had my parents even been aware that this was a "thing" back in the 60s a lot of grief might have been avoided but we didn't even have ADHD and other diagnoses then. It is what it is. I have terrible handwriting . DH has to do Christmas cards.