Fine Motor Skills

[Anonymous]

My 9 year old ds struggles with handwriting to the point where his teacher has suggested moving on to a keyboard because his difficulty with writing is inhibiting his written work in writing and math. His teacher has also said that by age 9 there is little that can be done to improve handwriting and I have heard this elsewhere too.

I am fine with moving to keyboarding but is there anything my ds is losing by not handwriting or not trying to improve his fine motor skills? Can his fine motor skills be improved. I don't want to torture him if it's pointless but by the same token I don't want to give up if it's not a completely lost cause. Fwiw his cursive is better than his print. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Has he ever been evaluated for dysgraphia? (Now called disorder of written expression in the current DSM.) Presumably he's had his eyes checked.

I would stick with cursive and begin to learn typing. There are classes in the summer. Does he have an IEP.

[Anonymous]

You are already working with an OT, right? That would be your first step.

[Anonymous]

Thank you -- I will look into dsygraphia and ds does not have an IEP. We do not have an OT yet; I will be meeting with his teacher next week to determine next steps. I think my question is do fine motor skills really matter and is it true that improvement is not likely at this age? If true that will affect how much we focus on it at the expense of other things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you -- I will look into dsygraphia and ds does not have an IEP. We do not have an OT yet; I will be meeting with his teacher next week to determine next steps. I think my question is do fine motor skills really matter and is it true that improvement is not likely at this age? If true that will affect how much we focus on it at the expense of other things.

Some things, like if he has low tone, won't change. But an OT can help with proper pencil grip and posture. We've been doing OT for 6 years and my kid is 10. Progress is slow and steady.

[Anonymous]

Our school OT no longer works on handwriting but on keyboarding per our IEP and recommendation of the neuropsych. DS is in 2nd grade. The choice was between learning to use dictation software or keyboard and DS chose typing.

DS has been in OT since 4 and his handwriting is legible and pretty good at this point but we want him to focus on composition and content of writing at this point and putting the emphasis on the mechanics will hinder that according to his learning profile.