nine year old son

My son has suffered from severe dysgraphia. Now in the10th grade, school has been a painful struggle. Writing is fundamental to even getting by in school, much less being successful. What’s also been a challenge is that few teachers have heard of dysgraphia or know what it really means if they have heard of it.

I let my son dictate his assignments to me but for in-class tests he’s on his own. Sometime they will give him extra time. Keyboarding does not seem to help my son significantly and we’ve tried several times to install voice activation programs but they don’t seem to work well yet.

fortunately, over the years, it has gotten better but honesty forces me to say it’s been very hard. Homework takes us hours even with us working together. He often borrows notes from willing friends and that and a xerox machine has been helpful.

In his school is a young boy with cerebral palsy who cannot write and is appropriately granted many accomodations for that. My son, though, can write no better than that child and we’ve been given few accomodations because teachers simply don’t believe it’s a “real disability.”

Good luck to you and your son.

Our son has faced some of those issues to a much lesser degree. Just curious about why you rule out ADHD. Do you know that there is an ADHD-Inattentive type, meaning he’s not hyperactive, just very distractible? Our son has dyslexia and dysgraphia dx at age 8. For two years we struggled on with help for these problems (resource time and private tutoring), but he and I were still going through living hell at homework time. Math was a nightmare. He would do the ones column, then stop and sing a song. I would have to try pull his attention back to the tens column, then when he’d done that column he’d find a little speck of dust and flick it around the desk. I’d have to beg him to come back (mentally) and do the hundreds column. Then it would be another distraction before starting the next problem. And it would be like this through 20 problems and that was just the beginning of his homework. I would be nearly crawling out of my skin every night trying to keep from yelling at him. Then someone at the office brought in a book that has the ADHD diagnostic criteria in and I discovered that ADHD-Inattentive is also a recognized condition. We saw a specialist about it and our son is now on Ritalin. The turn around in school has been astounding! (Homework at night is still difficult because he doesn’t take Ritalin at night. Homework on weekends is better.)
I don’t want to sound like I’m pushing medication (we have another son who is diagnosed with ADHD who we do not medicate) but for some children it really can make a significant difference.
Dysgraphia is a bigger problem for us now. I wish I could give some better tips but it remains a big struggle for our son and the one that impacts his self-esteem the most. The Ritalin helped some with handwriting. We bought Dragon Naturally Speaking (we bought the most basic edition off Ebay for about $40) hoping that would help him but it really has trouble recognizing his speech because he doesn’t enunciate clearly. We use it sometimes but not when he’s in a mood (which is often). We bought a scanner so I could scan in a worksheet and type his answers right on it (hoping someday he could do this. Looks like that will be a ways off though.) OmniTouch Paperport (I think it’s called) has some nice features. Cost about $100. He doesn’t like to do this often because the other kids say why do you think you have to type everything. But it has a lot of other uses. Sometimes I use the Optical Character Recognition so the kids can scan something in from a book and then use the contents in a report (paraphrased, of course!). Also, if our son gets a worksheet in a tiny little font, I can scan it in a blow it up to a size that’s easier for him to read.
I hope something here is useful.

Karenanne,

Your son sounds a lot like mine. Our diagnosis on the physical aspect is developmental coordination disorder. My son also has inattentive ADHD (a high percentage of kids with DCD also have ADHD) and dysgraphia. Although years of OT have helped with handwriting, we have found typing to be the way to go, along with word prediction software and software that reads back what he types. He reads well, but, because of his LD, it is difficult for him to generate words and ideas in the writing process. Word prediction helps with this. He also has a hard time proofreading which we circumvent by using a program that reads back to him so he can hear the typos. My goal at the end of second grade was for him to type 5 words per minute. By working with an OT and using a program called Type to Learn he has increased his speed to 30 wpm with over 90% accuracy. That has made the writing process a lot easier for him. Medication for his ADHD has also helped with writing, both with respect to handwriting and with respect to generating ideas. It also helps him to persevere on writing tasks, even though he finds them very difficult. I assume that a diagnosis of ADHD has been ruled out in your son’s case, but if he has not been evaluated for it, you might want to consider the possibility, since it is closely associated with the kinds of motor difficulties you describe. My son did not present a typical case of ADHD, but close observation and thorough evaluation confirmed the diagnosis. Behaviors that everyone (me included) though were avoidance tactics disappeared with treatment for ADHD.

Andrea

Form pilot is another great product for scanning work sheets. It is shareware, so it is free (there is a registration fee of $35 if you like the program). My son uses it frequently at home and at school and we love it. You can find it at: http://4assistivetechnology.4anything.com/network-frame/0,1855,1524-24719,00.html. When you get to the site, click on the shareware choice. If you search for the program by name, you won’t find it, but it is listed under shareware.

Andrea

I’m a doctoral student (and have thus survived almost two decades of formal academics) and was diagnosed as a first grader with developmental coordination disorder and perceptual motor and perceptual spatial deficits. In my IEPs these tended to be identified as dyspraxia and dysgraphia.
I would second the observations of the other posters who emphasize the importance of access to computers and word processors - when I look back on my education, there is a marked difference in my grades, depending on whether or not I could type, or was forced to hand-write work. As a masters student, I harangued my university until they agreed to let me type my exams and I got straight ‘A’s for the first time in my life and was able to significantly reduce my reliance on extended time. I do think it would be profitable to pester your school as much as possible to allow him access to computers during the school day. I know full well how resistant schools are to this, but I am astonished, in retrospect, at what a difference it made to me, when I had the chance.
Also: many teachers seem to advocate the use of typing tutors, which as I recall, mostly try to teach touch-typing, something that I found incredibly frustrating as a clumsy school-kid. I would point out that what’s really important to your son, especially as an elementary school student, is that he be able to type, rather than that he be able to type without looking at the keyboard…a distinction that my mom figured out when I was in school (and home pcs just becoming available). After many stormy sessions with a typing tutor, she agreed to let me just play with computer games that required you to type commands (back in the day most adventure games, even if they had pictures did) and, in the interests of solving some particularly gripping puzzle or capturing a most coveted prize, I practiced with great diligence! Touch typing does come with time, but isn’t really all that vital unless one’s typing up hand-written papers, something your son presumably avoids like the plague. I would work on providing him with lots of low key computer play time that forces him to type, even if just a few words at a time.
Good luck to you and your son - school does (albeit slowly) get better and better.
Meg

Thank you for your detailed response. I truly felt uplifted after reading it. My son is very bright, but I do worry sometimes that he won’t be able to use all he has because of his his physical limitations. Your note was very inspiring as well as informative. My son does incredibly well with computer games- he even holds his own playing against the 16 year old across the street! On your advice, I think I will look for some games that involve typing words- there are some I know of on educational websites. His teacher does allow him to use a computer in the classroom at times, but it’s not practical for every writing assignment. Someone else mentioned using a scanner, which I will look into since many of his class’s writing assignments are on a pre-printed worksheet. If he could scan them in and answer on the keyboard, that would be a help. At this point, his attitude is very positive, and I’d like to keep it that way. You don’t mention any other support or accomodations that were helpful to you - did you ever receive any physical or occupational therapy? Thank you again for your note! Good luck with your studies!

Hi, sorry to take while to respond - the sun quite unexpectedly came out this weekend and I was lured away from my computer for a few days!
I think my most important accomodation has always been computer word processing. I’ve never tried the dictation software packages, like DragonNaturally Speaking, but would point out that while computers will become more and more omnipresent in your son’s school- and workplaces, dictation software seems likely to remain a rather specialised accomodation for some time, and so one that he might not reliably have access to. I’ve always detested handwriting work (as a highschool student, when I had to write English homework assignments in one of those marbled composition books, I always typed them and stapled the pages into the notebook) but when I moved to Europe, I noticed that many students wrote with fountain pens. When I tried one, I found it amazing how much easier it is to write with than a ballpoint - the barrel is quite a bit thicker and easier to hold, you don’t have to press so hard, and the pen strokes are a bit thicker, so my handwriting doesn’t look so wobbly. In the U.S., I think they rather conjure up the image of stout businessmen, clutching Montblancs or gold plated Cross pens, but when your son gets a bit older and stops using a pencil, a relatively cheap, plastic one, might be worth a try. The only down side is not being able to erase things, but having erased holes in lots of homework assignments, I’ve finally decided that it’s better to just cross something out, and move on to the next line, than try to re-write.
With regard to special interventions in school: I did OT every day for a year as a second or third grader, and had pull out classes in my school’s ‘resource room’ every day through out elementary school. My spatial perceptual problems were, in some ways, much more problematic, academically, and inasmuch as I my school was all that motivated to be helpful at all, that’s largely what my teachers addressed. I do hear somewhat wistfully, now, of IEPs that address kids’ gym class obligations for them - either modifying them or making teachers more aware of childrens’ special needs. I really hated P.E. as a school kid - I was clumsy, got confused and disoriented in the middle of big playing fields because of my spatial perceptual deficits, and got whacked in the head all the time with balls. As a college student I took up sailing, which I love (and lets you move around in a more enclosed space) and running, both of which are really just a better match for me!
I do wish that there were better software for doing maths on computers - I spent much of high school and my my first undergrad year wishing there was such a thing as a wordprocessor for numbers. By the time I graduated, my college did, however, have a section of both differential and integral calculus taught in the computer lab, using Mathematica. The professor would write up files of sample problem sets, and the students could solve them with him, in lecture. A far cry from *my* class of 80 students, in which you were called up to the whiteboard in front of the whole class to solve problems and had the ever memorable opportunity to show off all of your number reversals, backwards written symbols, and confusion over Greek letters to the entire group at an agonizingly slow pace…I would imagine, though, that this approach is going the way of the dinosaur.
Good luck to you and your son!
best,
Meg

Thank you again for answering me. You must be very busy with school already - I hate to take you away from your work. I had to smile when I read that you used to type your English and staple it into your composition books. That’s exactly what my son did with his spelling work! I think his teacher found it strange, but I think she finds him somewhat mysterious to begin with. It probably seems inconceivable to an outsider that it would be easier for a child to type work rather than handwrite it. I feel like my son is destined to be a trailblazer in his school. We will certainly continue to pursue the use of the computer in the classroom for him along with any other related accomodations that are now available. Thank you again for sharing - all of your information has been very helpful and encouraging.