Talk to me about dysgraphia--how it was diagnosed, when, and progress?
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Anonymous
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I have a feeling my DD, age 7 in 2nd grade, has dysgraphia.
She is an excellent and voracious reader with an impressive vocabulary. But her handwriting doesn't seem to have improved since preschool. She can pass spelling tests of easy words when she's studied them, and they're dictated to her in a word list, but when it comes to writing a sentence it ALL goes out the window, even words like "he" and "so." She can do handwriting exercises "ok" when it's just about the handwriting--but again, when she has to write on her own, it all goes to pot. She doesn't capitalize the beginning of a sentence, doesn't put spaces between words, writes painfully phonetically, and punctuation is far behind her peers in 2nd grade. Her writing assignments are very poor--again, despite being a very avid and accomplished reader. How was your child diagnosed with dysgraphia? Do you know exactly what assessments were conducted, by whom, and at what age/grade? How is the child's school responding with accommodations? How did you get the diagnostician (I'm assuming a PhD neuropsych does this) and the educators to agree on best approaches? Thank you! |
Anonymous
| Many second graders have poor handwriting. Many kids much older than that--think middle school-- fail to capitalize first words or properly punctuate. I think she sounds a little young for "accomodations"--it's not like she'd be any better at typing in the second grade. Maybe you could find a good OT to work with her. Even if it seems painful, additional practice is still the best thing she can be doing. |
Anonymous
May I ask if you're coming from a position of professional expertise, and, if so, what that professional expertise is? |
Anonymous
How do you know she has dysgraphia if she has not been tested? Dysgraphia is not just bad handwriting as that can be ameliorated by practice and with OT. It is an issue with motor coordination and organization of thoughts to be able to write in coherent sentences, then paragraphs then essays. My DC was diagnosed as part of his comprehensive psychological-educational evaluation. I don't know which tests she used specifically for dysgraphia as he also has other LDs and diagnoses. You can request an evaluation from the school. I would consult wrightslaw.com for background information about how to do that. DC was in 3rd grade when he was diagnosed with dysgraphia, it was an additional diagnoses at the time. Children do not respond to accommodations. Accommodations are what a child receives when they do not respond to intervention. You are asking for remediation and intervention. DC had OT services for a few years but his issues were not muscle oriented and no amount of practice helped. He started out with an alpha smart and progressed to a laptop. All keyboarding practice was done at home. He has word prediction software on his laptop. He also dictated to us and to school personnel. In the first few years he used a graphic organizer for writing. He was given more detailed instruction in learning who to write a sentence, paragraph, essay. He is now in HS and has all of his tests are scribed and read to him. He will get the same accommodations when he takes the SAT. He does only dictates homework on an occasional basis and uses his technology instead. We do help him edit his writing., but that is more the dyslexia than the dysgraphia. If your child does not have dysgraphia and you want to help her, you can scribe her homework for her and then have her copy it for practice. That is what we did for our older son from 3rd through 5th grade. It got him over the hump, his handwriting will never win awards but it matured and is legible. Plus, it is never too early to learn keyboarding. |
Anonymous
Thank you, this was helpful. I'll respond in part---
I do not know if she has dysgraphia. I suspect that she does. My question pertaining to this was, and I quote: "How was your child diagnosed with dysgraphia? Do you know exactly what assessments were conducted, by whom, and at what age/grade?" You respond to this below.
Regarding the "responding to accommodations," what I meant and expressed badly was how did the SCHOOL respond to the issue of accommodations and--as you point out--remediation and intervention. Did they willingly and expertly supply it? Did they put up a stink? On what basis? Etc. You talk about this below, and that's helpful. Thank you.
If my child does not have dysgraphia--and she may not, I'm just not in a position to say, I can only see that there is a massive discrepancy between what she is capable of in reading, writing, etc. and what she can produce on paper, as well as what her other 2nd (and even kindergarten, hey, even preschool sister!) can do. Therefore, a desire to identify needs accurately and ACT NOW rather than wait any longer. At any rate, if she does not have dysgraphia, the suggestion below is helpful, thank you. We also have Handwriting Without Tears and I'm pointing out some basic strategies such as using a finger to space out words, look for a word that's already spelled correctly somewhere else on the paper, drilling sight words, and so on. Scribing for her and asking her to copy it might also be helpful, as you pointed out below. Thanks.
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Anonymous
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Here are the tests that contributed to my son's dysgraphia diagnosis.
First -- very high verbal WISC, IQ scores. This isn't necessary for a dysgraphia diagnosis; of course, kids with average IQs have dysgraphia too, but I mention it because my DS was diagnosed by the "significant discrepancy" method, where there is a discrepancy of more than 1 1/2 standard deviations (22 points on scale where 100 points is the median) between IQ and achievement testing. In my DS' case, his "significant discrepancy was sometimes as large as 3+ deviations. If a child has an average IQ, then the achievement testing has to be below average or worse (below the bottom 25%ile for sure). Other tests -- Processing Speed Index of the WISC -- indicating very slow in all these categories, but most relevant to dysgraphia was the symbol copying which is sensitive to graphomotor speed. Beery Visual Motor Integration -- very high (97th %ile) visual perception scores, very low (12th %) motor coordination. WIAT--III (achievement testing) Subtests - Alphabet Writing -- 9th percentile Spelling -- 70th percentile Sentence Composition -- 70%ile Writing Fluency (composite) -- 24th % Math fluency -- 99%ile math problem solving score vs. math fluency in the 61st percentile with indications that pencil work was a problem The basis of dysgraphia can be different for different kids. For some it is an issue related to muscle strength for writing, attention issues, executive dysfunction, motor planning issues, auditory processing, or language acquisition issues. My son had all of these except muscle strength problems. So other tests that were relevant were: Attention and executive dysfunction -- TEA-CH, IVA and Tower of London scores that were in the single digits, which all indicated ADD-Inattentive and executive dysfunction. Language Assessment scores -- Auditory Processing -- Test of Auditory Processing Skills - showed particular difficulty with word discrimination and phonological segmentation, which made it difficult to hear words and then break them up to translate them into the written code (aka spelling). My DS had both a full neuropsych and a full speech/language assessment. The totality of the Speech assessment showed that DS had Mixed Expressive Receptive Language Disorder even though he had very strong verbal skills in many areas. He was also diagnosed with reading disorder (aka dyslexia), which the school disagreed with because they did not consider him to be below grade level, even though his standardized testing showed significantly discrepant strengths and weaknesses in language and reading. FWIW, our MCPS west-county elementary was basically worthless. In retrospect, I don't think anyone (gen ed teachers, sped teachers and administrators) had the training to recognize the learning disability nor the training to know how to remediate it. The school basically responded by stone-walling and denying until we hired a professional advocate. Then we got an IEP, but the specialized instruction was worthless; it just consisted of a lot of extra prompts and lowered expectations. The school did, however, offer "accommodations" such as extra time, Franklin spell checker, access to the computer for writing along with spell and grammar check and read aloud accommodations and scribe. Language problems were obvious in K, when I first asked for an IEP. DS did not get it until 3rd grade. We finally pulled DS and sent him to private SN school, where he learned to write. In retrospect, I wish we had just paid for private tutoring -- handwriting and a tutor who specialized in OG/Wilson reading methods which really helped with spelling and someone who could explicitly teach the organization of writing. There is something acquiring these skills early -- kids can become more fluent. IME, if you wait until they are older, the skill can still be acquired, but it requires more effort and even when learned the effort is still required, i.e. the skill doesn't necessarily develop to the stage where a student can do it fluently or automatically without thinking. |
Anonymous
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NP here -- thank you to the last poster. I'm interested in more experiences. I have a K -- we did the full neuro-psych, and his fine motor skills were at the 9% range. He also had ADHD
The school basically blew us off when I said dysgraphia, and said they wouldn't provide an OT unless it was a "related service" to another diagnosis (so I guess dyslexia?). The teacher did have someone working with him once in a while, but that has stopped now. I'm very curious about other people's experiences with this. At the moment, I think I'm okay biding my time because he does seem to be making some progress, but may want to revisit this in 1st grade and want to know how best to go about it. Thanks. |
Anonymous
OP here. Thank you PP, for all the info about diagnosis! SUPER helpful! I'm already gearing up for nonsense from the school, though they have yet to prove themselves competent or incompetent, either way, yet. Still, the stories of peoples' experiences are usually quite disheartening. 
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Anonymous
Dysgraphia and Dyslexia are now part of the DSM under "Disorder of Written Expression." If you did a private neuropsych eval recently, maybe they will update with the latest coding. Put it in writing to the school that you want him assessed. MCPS sucks and squeaky wheel gets the grease. |
Anonymous
| You need the cognitive test first and then the WJ-III or WIAT and then maybe the test of written language to really tease out the writing issues. Submit a parent referral to special education or ask to have a student support meeting. You can request it and they have to follow the legal timeline. Bring your own work samples and note how long it takes your child to write at home. Good luck!!! |
Anonymous
| I should also add that an OT Eval may help as well to rule out other issues. |
Anonymous
I would also ask for testing that evaluates oral language. Oral expression is the basis of written expression. My DS has very high verbal IQ and can talk up a storm, but testing of oral expression made it clear how disorganized his oral speech was. It was no wonder writing was tough. |