Who can evaluate for dysgraphia?

[Anonymous]

I believe my daughter with ASD and ADHD has dysgraphia. Who evaluates that? We don't need a full battery of tests. She does well with everything other than writing, and we had a neuropsych a few years ago. And I can't afford a full battery. Who would we see? And then if she does, how do I help her? She's 8. Does an OT help with this?

[Anonymous]

This is OP. I just found a website that says the OG method is best for dysgraphia. This child does not also have dyslexia. Any insight you have into whether we need an OG tutor or something else?

[Anonymous]

What is she struggling with, OP? Handwriting? Or also putting together sentences? How is her spelling?

OG works on dysgraphia because it often goes hand in hand with dyslexia. I am a CALT and we teach cursive as part of therapy, and work on all elements of writing.

[Anonymous]

Dysgraphia is kind of a garbage diagnosis - sometimes people just mean terrible handwriting and sometimes an actual learning disorder.

[Anonymous]

What symptoms are you seeing?

[Anonymous]

The things that helped my DC were learning to type, word prediction software, and graphic organizers. OT did nothing. DC dictated quite a bit at school and at home until he was able to fully type. It took until sophomore/junior year of high school for him to be able to type fast enough for him to record his thoughts. He tried dictation software but that didn’t work until recently - software has come along way.

As far as organizing thoughts, graphic organizers are free if you google and there seems to be several for every level and writing project. Your DC can find the ones that work for them.

In ES, we did the typing practice in the summer. about twenty minutes each morning. It was too much to add during the school year. He picked a program he liked and I usually had to take the timed tests for him to progress to the next level. He is still a slow typist, but now he says he types fast enough for his brain. Slow and steady progress seemed to be what worked and wa hat lasted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The things that helped my DC were learning to type, word prediction software, and graphic organizers. OT did nothing. DC dictated quite a bit at school and at home until he was able to fully type. It took until sophomore/junior year of high school for him to be able to type fast enough for him to record his thoughts. He tried dictation software but that didn’t work until recently - software has come along way.

As far as organizing thoughts, graphic organizers are free if you google and there seems to be several for every level and writing project. Your DC can find the ones that work for them.

In ES, we did the typing practice in the summer. about twenty minutes each morning. It was too much to add during the school year. He picked a program he liked and I usually had to take the timed tests for him to progress to the next level. He is still a slow typist, but now he says he types fast enough for his brain. Slow and steady progress seemed to be what worked and wa hat lasted.

This VERY helpful. Thank you. I've been looking at typing software. I will go ahead and buy one of the programs and see if she can start learning. I don't know what a graphic organizer is, but I'm going to google it now. Thank you for your help!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is she struggling with, OP? Handwriting? Or also putting together sentences? How is her spelling?

OG works on dysgraphia because it often goes hand in hand with dyslexia. I am a CALT and we teach cursive as part of therapy, and work on all elements of writing.

Thank you for this. So if the child does not also have dyslexia, is OG not the way to go? She doesn't have dyslexia (I don't think). She enjoys reading and does it pretty well. Her handwriting is illegible, not on the lines, and she HATES doing it. She has since kindergarten. We did OT for a while to work on fine motor, and she can form the letters if she goes really slowly and with 1;1 support from the OT, so they graduated us. But at school, her writing is illegible. She also has trouble organizing her thoughts to create the sentences. (She has ADHD and autism as well.) Spelling is also hard for her. She understands phonics, and I ask her to sound out a word when she's trying to spell it, and even if the word is spelled completely phonetically, she gets it wrong most of the time. It's been a mystery to me, because she's super smart -- gifted IQ. Dysgraphia makes all of this make more sense.

[Anonymous]

Our daughter has dysgraphia and the diagnosing doctor said that it wasn’t worth working on handwriting because so many things could be typed and spell checked at this point and it is very hard to make appreciable progress on those elements of dysgraphia. She also had other issues that required more attention.

By HS she has become better at not reversing letters and the like, but writing remains painful and very difficult to read. She writes when necessary, like for science labs or math, but types otherwise.

I have never regretted just letting this issue go and, like the PP, focusing on typing or speech to text along with basic accommodations for school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is she struggling with, OP? Handwriting? Or also putting together sentences? How is her spelling?

OG works on dysgraphia because it often goes hand in hand with dyslexia. I am a CALT and we teach cursive as part of therapy, and work on all elements of writing.

Thank you for this. So if the child does not also have dyslexia, is OG not the way to go? She doesn't have dyslexia (I don't think). She enjoys reading and does it pretty well. Her handwriting is illegible, not on the lines, and she HATES doing it. She has since kindergarten. We did OT for a while to work on fine motor, and she can form the letters if she goes really slowly and with 1;1 support from the OT, so they graduated us. But at school, her writing is illegible. She also has trouble organizing her thoughts to create the sentences. (She has ADHD and autism as well.) Spelling is also hard for her. She understands phonics, and I ask her to sound out a word when she's trying to spell it, and even if the word is spelled completely phonetically, she gets it wrong most of the time. It's been a mystery to me, because she's super smart -- gifted IQ. Dysgraphia makes all of this make more sense.

Ah. She probably is mildly dyslexic. Not being able to spell even phonetically means she hasn’t learned to separate individual speech sounds and map them to letters. She probably knows it intellectually (sounds and letters match up) but the brain pathways haven’t been solidified. She is probably reading by rote memorization, which isn’t sustainable.

I’d get a dyslexia screen, and contact ASDEC. The great news is that she’s reading and has lots of cognitive resources! She probably just needs the right support.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our daughter has dysgraphia and the diagnosing doctor said that it wasn’t worth working on handwriting because so many things could be typed and spell checked at this point and it is very hard to make appreciable progress on those elements of dysgraphia. She also had other issues that required more attention.

By HS she has become better at not reversing letters and the like, but writing remains painful and very difficult to read. She writes when necessary, like for science labs or math, but types otherwise.

I have never regretted just letting this issue go and, like the PP, focusing on typing or speech to text along with basic accommodations for school.

?? The doctor said not to get OT? I find that pretty shocking. Yes typing is a necessity but I’m really surprised. Plus if a kid’s handwriting is that bad they almost certainly have dyspraxia/motor planning/motor skills issues that impact far more than handwriting. My DS with dyspraxia has terrible handwriting and of course I advocate for him to type in school or to be able to redo illegible written assignments. And I don’t spend our time/money on OT for handwriting at this point. But he needs a lot of support in fine motor/motor planning learning - or he would literally never learn daily living skills like cooking, cleaning, hygiene.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our daughter has dysgraphia and the diagnosing doctor said that it wasn’t worth working on handwriting because so many things could be typed and spell checked at this point and it is very hard to make appreciable progress on those elements of dysgraphia. She also had other issues that required more attention.

By HS she has become better at not reversing letters and the like, but writing remains painful and very difficult to read. She writes when necessary, like for science labs or math, but types otherwise.

I have never regretted just letting this issue go and, like the PP, focusing on typing or speech to text along with basic accommodations for school.

?? The doctor said not to get OT? I find that pretty shocking. Yes typing is a necessity but I’m really surprised. Plus if a kid’s handwriting is that bad they almost certainly have dyspraxia/motor planning/motor skills issues that impact far more than handwriting. My DS with dyspraxia has terrible handwriting and of course I advocate for him to type in school or to be able to redo illegible written assignments. And I don’t spend our time/money on OT for handwriting at this point. But he needs a lot of support in fine motor/motor planning learning - or he would literally never learn daily living skills like cooking, cleaning, hygiene.

I think it depends on whether the cause of OP’s daughter’s handwriting trouble is fine motor or dyslexia. For some reason most dyslexic children have atrocious handwriting, but it can improve as they learn to read. I’m dyslexic and my handwriting was illegible into high school. I never had remediation, though. I have no fine motor issues, it was the dyslexia manifesting in lack of attention to/understanding of letters and sounds.

I think it would really help OP to focus on finding out why her daughter struggles - is is motor issues, like PP’s kid? Or phonemic issues, and dyslexia?