Reply to Talk to me about dysgraphia--how it was diagnosed, when, and progress?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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![/quote]

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. [/quote]

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