Do you help your kids with their homework?

[Anonymous]

Try searching for dysgraphia - I posted questions on this about 3 months ago for my now 3d grade DS.

The first step is to have a full battery of testing by a psychologist that specializes in this kind of thing (I got mine off a list recommended in a response to my earlier email) and it turns out that the same practice is working with a friend's child as well. Work the network! The Lab School in DC does great work, but they're not cheap.

For us the results were revealing. DS is very smart (off the top of the scale in math for example), but has slow processing speeds and on "Motor Coordination" scored BELOW the first percentile. I didn't know that was possible. Diagnosis: Dysgraphia.

Today I talked to a former educational disability rights lawyer about how to package my request to FFX county schools before meeting with school and requesting any accomodations.

In the meantime, I'm informing his teachers of his difficulties, and occasionally taking dictation on written homework. (He spells the answer, I write, misspellings and all.)

We're also spending 15 minutes a night learning to type using Mavis Beacon for Kids, which seemed to be the best program when I was looking around during the summer.

Good luck - the testing thing is really worth doing, even if you don't find dysgraphia specifically.

[Anonymous]

PP with one more thought: any psychologist with experience in dyslexia would be appropriate. They're often linked, though not in our case.