Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our daughter has dysgraphia and the diagnosing doctor said that it wasn’t worth working on handwriting because so many things could be typed and spell checked at this point and it is very hard to make appreciable progress on those elements of dysgraphia. She also had other issues that required more attention.

By HS she has become better at not reversing letters and the like, but writing remains painful and very difficult to read. She writes when necessary, like for science labs or math, but types otherwise.

I have never regretted just letting this issue go and, like the PP, focusing on typing or speech to text along with basic accommodations for school.

?? The doctor said not to get OT? I find that pretty shocking. Yes typing is a necessity but I’m really surprised. Plus if a kid’s handwriting is that bad they almost certainly have dyspraxia/motor planning/motor skills issues that impact far more than handwriting. My DS with dyspraxia has terrible handwriting and of course I advocate for him to type in school or to be able to redo illegible written assignments. And I don’t spend our time/money on OT for handwriting at this point. But he needs a lot of support in fine motor/motor planning learning - or he would literally never learn daily living skills like cooking, cleaning, hygiene.

Anonymous wrote:Our daughter has dysgraphia and the diagnosing doctor said that it wasn’t worth working on handwriting because so many things could be typed and spell checked at this point and it is very hard to make appreciable progress on those elements of dysgraphia. She also had other issues that required more attention.

By HS she has become better at not reversing letters and the like, but writing remains painful and very difficult to read. She writes when necessary, like for science labs or math, but types otherwise.

I have never regretted just letting this issue go and, like the PP, focusing on typing or speech to text along with basic accommodations for school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is she struggling with, OP? Handwriting? Or also putting together sentences? How is her spelling?

OG works on dysgraphia because it often goes hand in hand with dyslexia. I am a CALT and we teach cursive as part of therapy, and work on all elements of writing.

Thank you for this. So if the child does not also have dyslexia, is OG not the way to go? She doesn't have dyslexia (I don't think). She enjoys reading and does it pretty well. Her handwriting is illegible, not on the lines, and she HATES doing it. She has since kindergarten. We did OT for a while to work on fine motor, and she can form the letters if she goes really slowly and with 1;1 support from the OT, so they graduated us. But at school, her writing is illegible. She also has trouble organizing her thoughts to create the sentences. (She has ADHD and autism as well.) Spelling is also hard for her. She understands phonics, and I ask her to sound out a word when she's trying to spell it, and even if the word is spelled completely phonetically, she gets it wrong most of the time. It's been a mystery to me, because she's super smart -- gifted IQ. Dysgraphia makes all of this make more sense.

Anonymous wrote:What is she struggling with, OP? Handwriting? Or also putting together sentences? How is her spelling?

OG works on dysgraphia because it often goes hand in hand with dyslexia. I am a CALT and we teach cursive as part of therapy, and work on all elements of writing.

Anonymous wrote:The things that helped my DC were learning to type, word prediction software, and graphic organizers. OT did nothing. DC dictated quite a bit at school and at home until he was able to fully type. It took until sophomore/junior year of high school for him to be able to type fast enough for him to record his thoughts. He tried dictation software but that didn’t work until recently - software has come along way.

As far as organizing thoughts, graphic organizers are free if you google and there seems to be several for every level and writing project. Your DC can find the ones that work for them.

In ES, we did the typing practice in the summer. about twenty minutes each morning. It was too much to add during the school year. He picked a program he liked and I usually had to take the timed tests for him to progress to the next level. He is still a slow typist, but now he says he types fast enough for his brain. Slow and steady progress seemed to be what worked and wa hat lasted.