Immature handwriting
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Anonymous
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My 5 year old has immature handwriting for his age. I really tried to get his teacher to include handwriting OT as part of his IEP with no luck. He is starting k in APS this fall and just got his neurological evaluation done by KKI and the report confirmed that he is behind in this area. So will this help me in geeting handwriting OT as part of his IEP? We will get our IEP transition meeting to APS from FCPS in Sep. If not, is it worth it to purse private OT? We also just found out that he is Farsighted and we got him glasses, he use them only for work activities in school. I can see his coloring inside lines improved a lot. But not the habwritting yet. Sigh
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Anonymous
| Definitely pursue private OT. Handwriting technique locks in early. Some schools are not good at teaching it. Do it ASAP. |
Anonymous
| Private OT for pencil grip, practice, practice, practice. We liked the Kumon books to start (they have lines and mazes). My son could not write at all at age five and we worked hard on it. OT is good for grip but then its practice. |
Anonymous
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You'd be surprised, but for many people writing incursive is easier than printing. For some people - mainly girls/women, they can print as fast and as neatly as a frigging copying machine.
Many boys and perhaps girls too struggle with fine motor skills. Some of if is eventually overcome by age and neurological maturation. Remember neurological maturation isn't complete until age twenty-five. One problem with the mechanics of printing is that you must lift your pen or pencil from the paper after each letter and then find the correct place to begin your next letter. Doing that hundreds of times in a paragraph for a kid who has a fine motor skills delay can be torturous, frustrating and exhausting. When we write in cursive we never remove the pen from the page so it's naturally easier to find the location to start the next letter. This is doubly so if the child is sounding out the spelling of the word as they are writing any given sentence. Also you can smudge a vowel or two if you ard kinda unsure of the spelling. Good luck - I know your child will be fine. Please don't be disappointed or dismayed by so many of these artificial learning benchmarks. Neurological maturation actually takes 25 friggen years. People have to work as hard as they can at any given moment in their youth to keep up. However, if that occurs by age 20 or so we are all pretty much intellectually about the same. The key however is if you have delays and you struggle more than other kids when you are young - well you can't quit and just give up trying. Good luck - don't give up - you'll be surprised how time and maturity is a great intellectual and academic equalizer in a young person's life. 
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Anonymous
I agree private OT. Don’t wait. But I would skip kumon books. I would use handwriting without tears. Most OTs use the program and it’s also available to purchase for home use. It will teach correct letter formation. Also, it could be a finger strength issue so I would do things like putty and lots of fine motor activities. We had my son pick up marshmallows and other small objects with tweezers and play with pegs, etc. Legos could be an option. In my son’s case they were too frustrating but they’re great for some kids. You can find lots of fun ideas on Pinterest. It’s not easy to get OT at school. My son couldn’t trace, cut or write his name legibly in K and they fought me on it. It took a year to get therapy rolling. Sadly, when he received it, the service was not sufficient. We always had to do both private and school. And my other son with apraxia/dyspraxia was denied even when I hired an advocate. |
Anonymous
| Np here, but how do you find a private OT for handwriting help? |
Anonymous
| Immature handwriting, even confirmed by a neurologist, will not qualify you for an IEP. Your child might be allowed to type pursuant to a 504 plan if you show he can't keep up with the class but the school has no duty to improve his handwriting. |
Anonymous
| I was in the same situation with a 5-year-old years ago. We did OT, Handwriting without Tears, etc. and nothing helped much. On his own our boy, through time and nature, developed passable but still not easy to read handwriting by the age of 18. |
Anonymous
| Keyboarding nowadays goes hand in hand with handwriting. Work on the handwriting but develop keyboard skills, too. |
Anonymous
Same here! My DD is a great reader but horrible writing. We just ended 3 weeks of Tomatis Therapy at kidsLanguage Arts and it’s the best thing ever!! She now comes home and grabs paper pencil and want to write and the improvement is very apparent. They are also working on her ADD and her concentration is already better. |
Anonymous
OP here, we did 1 and 2 for Tomatis and will be doing the third soon. It helped him a lot. But not writing. How did your Tomatis improved writing? Ours is in Fairfax. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
Your results really depend on the therapist and the kind of Tomatis they offer, but the therapist at KLA is really good and they work with her while she is in therapy. They also wrote her therapy based on her test results but hers is based on dyslexia and graphic language.I do like them because it comes from the Atlantis institute and ther are the core of it. My daughter really likes going and the most of all the exercises they do with her are very effective. I’m more than thrilled to see her progress so fast. |
Anonymous
What is the name if this place? And how much it cost? |
Anonymous
| APS discounted handwriting as a need and fought us on providing OT all through elementary. Which school is your son at? Some schools fight, others are ok. |