Dysgraphia, chromosomal deletions, and wondering what's next

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Eldest just got back from an appointment with the developmental pediatrician, and things are...interesting.

He's got "significant deletions" on the 2nd chromosome, and I have no idea what this actually means in any kind of practical sense, other than all of us needing to get tested as well, to find out if it's hereditary. Is this something that we need to be actively worried about, or just who he is? Answers will, hopefully, be forthcoming.

And in her opinion, he's "outgrown" the autism diagnosis, which is a mixed bag. Makes getting services harder, which is already something of a struggle.

And the meat of things: we have a formal dysgraphia diagnosis, which is a huge relief. Handwriting is incredibly stressful for Eldest, and the source of a lot of homework and class related meltdowns. She wants him getting occupational therapy, focusing on keyboarding, every week, and for him to be able to dictate his answers whenever possible. So we need to arrange for a new IEP, as soon as possible.

(This is what his absolutely wonderful 3rd grade teacher has already been doing with him; she knows that he understands the work, even if he can't write his answers properly, and just has him read her his homework answers. He is, in fact, at the top of the class.)

His handwriting is awful, looking like the work of a kindergartner. Reversed letters and numbers, and virtually impossible to read. Weirdly, his cursive is beautiful...but it's still a very slow, painful process for him to write.

We want to look into getting him a keyboard that he can carry around, if I can remember the name of the damned thing. Or maybe one of those new Google Chromebooks. Durability is the main concern, frankly.

Making use of Dragon Dictation for the iPad could come in handy as well, come to think of it.

I know that we have people here whose kids have dealt with dysgraphia, and I'm wondering what their experiences were in school. Did you use any devices? Did they also find cursive...well, easier, at least? How did you, and they, learn to cope? Any advice to offer?

My son started using an Alphasmart in middle school, and takes a netbook to school in High School.

The OT's and other specialists that worked with my son did not feel he was really ready to keyboard until 6th grade, and then he took off with it fast. There are some developmental milestones that need to be met, apparently. Universally I'm hearing that 3rd grade is just too young, so there isn't much point, but an OT should know all the markers and be able to tell you when your son is ready.

Even though you can introduce keyboarding anytime, you don't want to push it too hard until your child's hands are ready for it, or they will just get frustrated.

To keyboard, they need a real keyboard, btw. The pad on a touch screen is not the same; you cannot learn to type on it.

For third through fifth grade, I think scribing is the preferred approach. The person scribbing can have your son take turns with sentences so that he ends up encouraged to do as much as he can without having the stress of it block his learning how to compose, etc. Voice software is available, but I was afraid my son would become overly reliant on it; this is a "know your child" question, really, so it could be different for your son.

I've heard some kids do great with cursive, but my son was not one of them. If your son is, I would consider running with that to the extent you can. While accomodations are great and necessary in many ways, long run your son will appreciate being able to write by hand when he has to. My son really cannot, and it is road block on occassion. Not too often because we are in an electronic world, but somethings still MUST be done by hand, and my son does wish he could do them. My son gets by fine for the most part, but he does miss having that one skill, I can't sugar coat that. So I'd use that open door to see how far you can get. I'd probably separate the skills for now, ie do the writing practice separately from composing, etc, but I would definitely spend time with it.

My son's cursive is visually pleasing, though sometimes not accurate (doesn't always form letters properly) and laboriously slow. His printing is nightmarish. Even he can't read it. He's 11 and in 6th grade.

My son is hyperlexic and he taught himself cursive. (I had to start teaching it so that he would form the letter correctly, and link them, right, but he taught himself the basic forms) He was using it in K and I do think it was easier for him. He switched to print for some reason, but he is still using a shovel grip no matter what he writes and he is stubbornly insisting it looks better that way than with a pincer grip. His cursive is nicer but his print is really bad unless he spends a lot of effort which these days he is not apt to do.

My older guy also has dysgraphia and our experience with school has been similar to DW_a_mom's - scribing and answering orally were our primary accommodations through elementary school. They didn't even offer an AT evaluation to us until middle school.

And unfortunately, some of our elementary teachers didn't know how to deal with dysgraphia, still putting a lot of pressure on Julian to produce written work, even after a functional behavior analysis linked his self injurious behavior to writing and we set up accommodations to address dysgraphia in our IEP. Which resulted in even more self injurious behavior and meltdowns. Even with 5 accommodations that addressed the underlying problem (alternatives to writing) we had a few teachers that were convinced that if he just tried harder and practiced more, he would be able to write and they would let him sit in class and hit his head, rather than understand this learning disability for what it was.

He just started middle school (6th grade) and he now has a NEO 2 - a dedicated word processor that he can type on. We actually started him with typing (google Dance Mat Typing) in probably 4th grade, but it didn't really click for him. He knows the keys, has proper hand placement, but is still very slow. We were warned by his Assistive Tech coordinator not to push him too hard - only practicing 5-10 minutes a day, unless he wants to practice more on his own. Our flavor of dysgraphia doesn't have a fine motor component.

I've taken writing samples to all of our recent IEP meetings - letter structure, spacing, size are all things that hadn't appreciably changed since Kindergarten, up until recently. The last two years Julian has spent a lot of time drawing or making very intricate patterns and has turned into quite an artist. The structure of his writing has improved (and he loved cursive, the short time they were working on it in school) but his limit is still about 10 written words, even when given 30-40 minutes. With a scribe, he would produce a few hundred words in the same time.

After a month of using the NEO2, he's still not independently producing the same volume of work that he can with a scribe but that's our eventual goal.

Hi. I am an adult who is dysgraphic (was diagnosed the same time as my AS years ago).

My life got better the moment I learned keyboarding. Strange as it seems, I did not really need my parents to push me to learn how to keyboard-- that was taken care of when the new Mac they brought home when I was 10 just happened to have Mario teaches typing on it (my sisters were competitive so we had fun trying to bust each others scores). I am sure there is something else tailored towards kids these days though. I didn't really start home row-- my style at first once I got away from seek and peck was more adaptive-- using thumbs, indexes and middles and not being centered on home row. I switched full homerow as a teen when I got on aol (think aol circa late 90's) and did everything possible in my power to keep up in the extremely chaotic environment of the backstreet boys fan chat on there (to date I have never in my life since seen any chat room hold a candle to the extreme posting speed of that one-- and by a long stretch too). To this day, when I type in a public place, I'm the person who turns all heads from being the loud "keyboard shredder". Lol

In terms of cursive, I am old enough that I learned it in the classroom and I switch on and off between print and cursive to combat fatigue when writing-- if printing made my hand tired, I switched to cursive and visa versa-- so it did help me to learn it. Still not as good as typing is for me though.

I still have the same messed up hooked pencil grip I have had all along. No amount of anyone remediating me has fixed it because I do not have the fine motor coordination to hold the pencil in the normal grip without it toppling in the floor every time.

Sometimes I noticed if I slowed down things got neater-- but for a reason-- because I was drawing my letters (which sounds like the op's kid and cursive). Drawing uses different parts of the brain and is not an automatic process like writing is (or should be). Drawing words and letters will not aid a kid when it comes time to take quick notes. This befuddled many teachers of mine who had no clue. On top of that, I am a talented artist and possess excellent drawing skills, despite being dysgraphic. This confuses people further it seems. Two separate processes in the brain-- they just don't get it.

I am typing this very post on an iPad screen, but, honestly, a kid will need to learn typing on a real keyboard for it to matter and to have the accuracy and speed they need (especially with having actual keys to feel and aim for). I currently contemplating which keyboard to get to use with my iPad actually (so if anyone has any recommendations, hint hint). Before I had my iPad I had an apple newton MessagePad years ago (the old PDA that apple made in the 90's) that I took notes on but that ended when I accidentally cracked the screen. Before then I just suffered through notes by hand in class.

I never had much patience with scribes past 2nd grade. They always moved too slow to capture my train of thought. That and my typing skill increased fast enough that it was just better to go ahead with typing. In fact, by 5th grade I was helping other kids from my class in the library by scribe-typing for them because they said that they wanted their book reports to "look nice" like mine and that i was the fastest typist in class lol

I still think typing skills trump dictation software. In the past I had tried it but I stumble on verbalizing my thoughts sometimes and that didn't help. That and typing you can do in more instances. Again, somebody else could be different in that regard.

I hope my post helped.

All of this has helped tremendously, thank you -- I'm really having a hard time figuring out what's best for him, and there's the added complication of figuring out what the Philadelphia school district and and will provide. We've requested a new IEP, and we're waiting to hear back for when that's going to be scheduled.

My Wife wants to emphasize the cursive. As mentioned, it's good and it's legible...but it's still slow, and painful, and occasions much tears.

I'm more inclined to go with the dictating his homework whenever possible, and working towards accommodations of some sort in school. He's probably too young for the keyboard, I know....but something

She's the one who's home with him, she's the one who helps with his homework, and she's the one who is far, far more stubborn and/or patient that I am when it comes to his meltdowns. I suspect that her methods are probably the betters one for him, at least in the long term, but he's just so miserable about writing...and it's been the source of conflicts in school, as well.

I'm just terrified by the thought of his getting a teacher next year who isn't as wonderful and understanding as the one that he has now.

My DS is 9 and in third grade. I started him with keyboarding over the summer (after 2nd), and is still learning, but is getting some speed. By fifth grade we plan to have him use a keyboard in the classroom (maybe even in forth). My school district is pushing keyboarding for all kids starting in 3rd grade (my son is ahead the curve with typing - most in his class are just being introduced to keyboarding). He has poor spelling and always forgets to capitalize and punctuate, using a computer corrects many of these mistakes for him. It a lot less frustrating when he types. This is the first year his handwriting is somewhat legible (but it takes effort to read, and there are many mistakes, and it looks awful). In middle school most work will be done on iPad (district policy), so that will be a plus for him. For homework, he is allowed to dictate, but for his worksheets he generally writes and I will correct to make legible (or at least attempt to make it legible).