My son has problems writing.

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I should have added when the teacher was not looking, the school did have rules againsted everything however the teachers were lazy in enforceing them and tended to look the other way, I used to bring an mp3 player just to drown out the others who had them and used cheap noice bleeding headphones, not that I minded listening to my better music, it helped me consintrate.

I will add also I think their are 2 types of pen/pencel grips 1:kind that corrects your grip if its improper, 2:soft kind that molds to it your hand no matter how you hold it. I'm not sure if I do it right or not however I doubt I do, I liked the big soft ones that did not try to correct anything best although I did not know then what the corrector ones were suppost to do so it would have been little help. I don't know your nation's school system however hopefully High School will be better as far is tech savyness is concerned, then again I had to practice typing alot more then everyone else to get decently fast at it and not get frusterated as I actually can write faster(though illedgable), one day it just clicked for some reason as far is using all the fingers instaid of just 2. I also had an OT intervention for general cordination/motor skills issues when I was maybe 7-8, pre AS Dx, thats when the special pens/pencels idea started.

I always did all my homework to some degree of quality, I hated doing it, more so when something that was advertised is taking 30min would take an hour or more. Throw a few more subjects in and I got 2-3 hours worth of homework. I was a bad kid sometimes and took shortcuts in getting homework done like doing 1/2 the math questions right and filling random numbers in the rest, only if I was close to the point of a meltdown though. I also discovered a page written = 1/2 a page typed so I would play with the charicter spacing to make it a full page. I had a few good teachers set time limits for the whole class at 30 or 45mins or so, all you had to was bring in a note from home and all was good.

Intresting you say he says nothing about his day, my parents always complained about the same, perhaps its becouse like me nothing good happend or happens at school and therefore I prefered to keep the day to myself, so that leaves small talk/struching the truth and us aspies tend to be bad at that. School was not a proud time of my life so I had little I wanted to say and i'm not sure how to fix that either. Good luck on your pen quest!

I'm the opposite. I write really well (best stuff comes out when I write long hand), but I'm not much of a speaker unless I have to be...

I can't write but I am described as a great speaker so in classes when I present or read out loud I am considered a relief from all the quiet/slow/terrible speakers for the teachers.

As to help I just had to practice repeatedly, but if the topic is concerned with personal preference or personal stories then I would refuse to write even if my grade takes a dump.

I'm on par with regular students when it comes to presenting. I really don't like being the center of attention for longer than I have to be, though.

Thank you all for your replies.

Something that always puzzles me is that my son is a really good artist, he can't write a sentence, can barely keep on the line and its hardly legible, but he can draw a still life, with fruit and bottles and whatever else perfectly, it's all in the right place and just looks really good. Is this unusual I wonder?

Whatever the issue it is, it is a seperate, although possibly comorbid, condition to Asperger's. There are people on the spectrum who can write normally or even extremely well. While I'm not officially diagnosed or anything, my writing is typically regarded as some of the best in my class and some of it was shown to the years above me because my teacher thought it was better than theirs. I have far more of a talent for English than I do for, say, Maths.

With the addition that he has artistic skill, I would be thinking more along the lines of dyslexia than something like dyspraxia. He can't possibly have fine motor control issues if he's a natural artist, so I would imagine he has actual issues with understanding written words.

If you think about it, writing normally involves trying to do more than one thing at once -- drawing the letters on the page and thinking of what to write are quite different kinds of activities, even though we normally do them together and one lends purpose and direction to the other. It might be that he's perfectly capable of writing neatly IF he's focused solely on drawing the letters on the page, but trying to think about what to write at the same time causes issues. I wonder if his writing is any neater when he's copying something already written...

Unfortunately his writing is bad even when copying. Trouble is he dislikes writing so much he never focusses on what he's doing so it's difficult to know.

It sounds like it's a combination of handwriting/communication difficulties. I have had (and still have) similar problems; I can't really write essays, and any sort of writing usually requires much perseverance to get it done. My handwriting is a complete mess. I'm good at drawing too (though not nearly as good as it sounds like your son is, and I've only gotten any good at it in recent years). Typing is certainly much easier, and so are more closed questions, as opposed to drawn-out essays (every time we have to write one for English, to me it always sounds like the assignment is "What color is the main character's hair? Answer this question in three paragraphs" How do you make that into three paragraphs?). It's sort of like perpetual writers block. Over the years I've found that the best strategy is to make an outline, with just random words, sort of a skeleton of the thing, and then beef it up with fancy sentences later. That way, you don't have to concentrate on making nice sentences and getting your ideas across and doing it all in the right order with good paragraph structure or whatever the teacher's trying to get you to do all at the same time, which makes things much, much simpler. And the hardest part is actually starting the essay (or whatever), once you've gotten about halfway through things get a bit easier.

Same here, in Senior kindergarden (age 5) they thought I was gifted partly becouse of my art. The overall aspie demeanior made me look board and over mature aswell I think eventhough in reallity I could just not make friends and reciprocate so I just drew all day all alone. Anyway they tryed to move me into grade 1 a year early! As it turns out a few years later I was actually littered with learning disabillites, cordination issues as well is later autism so what a mistake that would have been! Its funny how a developmental disabillity can manifest itself and be viewed.

I'm not sure why that is however I can draw, do good fine wood working and play guitar with some success. I can't draw a long stright line on my own though with out a ruler and when I have to lift my forehand off the paper everything gets shakey and all over the place, thats why I don't paint. I think the more joints needed to move the pencel the less accurate I get.

As for fine motor skills I learned to cut my dinner with a knife from an OT for example, yes you can be good at art and be bad at most other fine/gross motor things, I sure was. I will add my fav and only type of drawing style is realism!, my fav subjects are airplanes, cars and landscapes and I always scored A-A+ in art at school, meny students would have me draw for their projects and have me teach then how to draw.

physicsnut, Id find it difficult to write three paragraphs about the colour of someones hair too. I think you're right about the communication and handwriting difficulties, when he's drawing he doesn't have to worry about actual words etc.

Rapidroy it sounds like you and my son have a lot in common. Your drawing skills sound wonderful. My son is good at woodwork too, and he's good at carving, he can carve the most amazingly detailed guns out of matchsticks! I don't know how he does it!

Ok, so I suppose I must admit that was a bit of an exaggeration... but that's what the question might as well have been, anyway, because if felt that hard.

Verinda! Did your son ever crawl when he was a baby? Someone had told me that if you don't crawl when you are a baby that you don't develop the motor skills in your fingers that you need for good penmanship skills. My mom told me that when I was a baby that I never crawled but rather I would skate on my head. My penmanship skills absolutely SUCK! and no amount of practice seem to help. There is a handwriting technique called the "Draftsman's stoke" which involves writing characters using only a down stroke technique. I can write with perfect penmanship using this technique. The only problem with doing it this way is that It takes about 2 to 8 seconds to write just one character.

Thats what I was thinking a couple posts ago, When I read stories I can really relate too, I figure if I can spend a 1/2 hour writing to save someone like myself some trouble and avoid some of the horrible issues I had to deal with in life its always worth it as I have already been there and done that.

Except for the fact that my son is 11 and not 13, we could have written the identical thing.

I think part of it for my son is that writing is laboriously hard, so he minimizes it to the extent that he can.

Lupaluna, thats interesting because my son did not crawl he just couldn't wait to get up on his feet and start charging about as fast as his legs would carry him! He was really strong from the word go.

Thank you for all your help Rapidroy it really is appreciated x