Texas Mom of Possibly Dysgraphic Son Seeks Support

Welcome to life in the sped lane.

Yes, it’s a total aggravation when a teacher sees a kiddo can nicely, neatly copy the alphabet — so gee, there’s no problem, is there? Except that *writing* is a whole lot more complicated than that.
Mel Levine’s _Educational Care_ has an excellent explanation of the complexity of the writing task, and suggestions for dealing with problems. (It was one of the main sources for the dysgraphia “accommodations and modifications” article on this site.) If his writing is what’s keeping him from learning what he should be learning, then it’s not at all unreasonable to expect accommodations.
Semantically it’s really important (you probably know this already) to establish that he needs the help & accommodations in order to get an *appropriate* education, as opposed to an education that will be best for him. In general, you don’t have to worry about drawing the line — schools are pretty good at that! They generally aren’t jumping up & down to give more help & accommodations, and it can be mighty hard to get them to give what they agree to give sometimes, especially when you have to get a teacher in the classroom to agree with an IEP they may not have had much participation in (or might not have agreed with).
Also in the semantics department, learning disabilities aren’t like viruses. You don’t get one that gives you a case of dysgraphia and a different one for dyslexia. Especially with bright students, their needs can change and evolve through time. So a 9 year old who has been doing fine in the reading department but just needs accommodations with the motor task of writing might find the reading and language demands of middle or high school much more taxing. (A close scrutiny of test results can help predict which kiddos are more likely to run into those problems, but sometimes they surprise you in either direction.) AS far as the thing that gets him eligible for services, it is that umbrella of a “learning disability.” Are you afraid that that label will convey more problems than he’s got and make teachers lower their expectations? It’s a reasonable concern; it’s a constant challenge to keep a kiddo challenged where he should be challenged without frustrating him… when do you tell him to keep plugging and work at it, and when is it accommodation time? My general rule (but Your Mileage May Vary): When in doubt, focus on the content and higher understanding, and sacrifice mechanics and rote stuff :)

Schools do not like to use “dys” words when identifying classification for Specific Learning Disability. One of the classifications for SLD that IDEA supports is Written Expression. You need to have your child tested for a Written Expression disability. How can schools provide the remediation your son needs unless they identify all areas of need? Does he have goals and objectives which address his writting deficiet. Look at the site below for information on assessment of dysgraphia. The TOWL-3 (Test of Written Language) is one of the standards for identifiying Written Expression Disorders.

http://www.margaretkay.com/Dysgraphia.htm

IDEA states that the need for Assistive Technology should be considered at each IEP meeting. You should ask for an assessment for Assistive Technology at you upcoming meeting. Put your request in writing for both testing for Written Expression disability and Assistive Technology Assessment and take it to the meeting. Bring up the requests at the meeting and if there is hemming and hawing present your written request and ask for Prior Written Notice if they refuse. Prior Written Notice ( you can do a search to find out more about this) should be a statement from the district of why they feel a service or assessment is not needed. Most districts do not want to put rejections in writting and will go ahead with the assessment.

I have a 14-year-old with a Written Expression disability who uses a computer for most of his writing. I get the impression the school is telling you to go back to your kitchen and they will take care of everything; don’t count on it. You are on the right track needed to continue being your child’s advocate. Good luck.

Helen

Don’t back down, if you think your son needs help, then he needs help. He’s your child and no one knows him better than you. Kids have a good way of hiding real feelings at school, they shrug it off by being the class clown, etc. But when they get home, and let the defenses fall, you’re the one who sees how frustrated they are.

Cindy -

After two years battling with the school to even do the pysch/ed assessment, and they came back with the diagnosis “specific learning disability,” I went through the same thing you are going through now. Why didn’t it come back and say dyslexia? (Although that’s clearly what he has.) Why didn’t they say dysgraphia even though they pointed out problems with legibility, capitalization, punctuation and limited written output. It drove me nuts. If I had a diagnosis, I felt I could find specific resources that would help me know what to do to help him and the schools would do specific things to help.

Three years later, I can say that focusing on finding out the right words for a diagnosis isn’t very fruitful. Even if you eventually get a diagnosis of dysgraphia and/or dyslexia, each child within those classifications is different and will have different strengths and weaknesses.

You will get the most mileage by identifying your child’s specific weaknesses and getting him specific help for those areas. My feeling is that for dysgraphia, it is pretty hard to remediate the writing skills, so it’s definitely best to get them assistive technology (Alphasmart keyboard, laptop; if you child is willing to use it - ours resisted because everyone then knew he was SpEd) and get extensive accommodations for the written language problem: allow you to be scribe on homework, have teachers scribe, reduce written output, and grade only on content and not on mechanics. The keyboard did not help our child much. In 7th, his typing skills are still so poor, typing is not an advantage. But his own writing skills are now catching up and he’s now going it on his own (a mixed blessing because he doesn’t have the spellchecker function when he doesn’t keyboard).

If you have the financial means, definitely consider getting a tutor if he has any reading (dyslexic) issues or other language arts issues. (We still have gotten absolutely nowhere with spelling though, so we had decided for the last few years to concentrate on areas where he could succeed.) You can try to get the schools to deliver but they never give one-on-one sessions addressing your child’s specific needs. We have had private tutoring for four years now for his reading deficit and writing process issues (organizing his thoughts - not mechanics) and it is really starting to pay off now. He is virtually back at grade level.

With your son’s intelligence, you will probably find he can create absolutely amazing stories if his only task is to think of the next sentence. So on his next creative writing assignment or book report, work together as a team at the computer. Just let him generate ideas while you type. When we gave up trying to have him write in his own handwriting and look up spelling words and switched over to me writing or me typing, what we got out of our child’s head was incredible.

The trick is to stay positive in the face of these incredible hurdles and find ways to make your child feel he is succeeding. They hear far too many negative messages about their learning differences from their teachers and even from their peers.

Cindy,

I know where you are coming from. My son is 9 4th grade LD class. I have always though he is dyslexic but here in Pa noone will hear the word. They have tested him the last test was in Aug. and the psycologist said if his scores were anymore scattered he would be dyslexic but he would only term him visual learner, right brained thinker, ld.

Sometimes we as the moms just have to get help for our kids on our own and let everyone else do their thing. I got my son a reading tutor and the improvement is great, it also has helped with his writing. His tutor makes him write about his reading.

Good luck.

Cindy,

You found a great bb; lots of us parents out here and you aren’t alone. Our son was diagnosed in 1st grade with sld. Many long battles with our elementary district. He is now in local junior college. They never would utter the “dys” word. Loooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggg story.

Anyway, trust your instincts. Follow your gut feelings.

Check out this web site: http://www.dyslexiacenter.org/

Good luck.

Andy

Don’t second guess yourself!
A keyboard will be a big help. It will not remove the language needs but it will reduce frustration once keyboarding skills increase. Jumpstart him yourself, research says 10min a day of keyboarding is plenty. Look into an AlphaSmart too. That is how my child got going and we had excellent success with it. Written Language instruction using Project Read and Landmark approaches have been very helpful, still an awful speller but spells words phonetically so a good spell checker often catches it. Sentences have expanded too. Folks with dysgraphic can benefit from assistive technology, learn about the I.D.E.A. law.

I also live in Texas and when my daughter was in the 4 th grade I had her tested privately because the school wouldn’t listen to me. She has mild dyslexia and her problems were almost the same as your son. If you know where there is a Sottish Rites close to you you need to get in contact with them. They will be able to help you. If you don’t know of one let me know where you are located and I will let you know where the closest one is. My daughter is attending the Scottish Rites Learning Center in Lubbock, Tx. It has helped her so much they have helped her handwriting, spelling, organization, she is more sure of herself, she can stay on task.and etc. Scottish Rites is free and they do a lot for these kids. They will guide in in what you need to do and I can tell you I think your sons school is scared to get he labeled because by law they have to accomidate him. My daughter has only a few 504 modifications because that is all she needs but others have more because that is what they need. If I can help you let me know.

Is Scottish Rites just local in Texas or are they nationwide. I would like to check them out myself. I live in Tennessee.

No, Scottish Rites is in TN also. There is Chattannooga Scottish Rite Childhood Speech & Language Clinic (423) 778-7916, Mountain Region Speech & Hearing Center in Kingsport (423) 246-4600, Scottish Rite Childhood Language Disorder Program Knoxville (423) 974-5451, Scottish Rite Childhood Lanuage Disorders Program in Memphis (901)528-6511 & Bill Wilkerson Center in Nashville (615)320-5353. If I can help you anymore let me know. Good luck. Dona

I’m in Texas too. Scottish Rite has been a great resource for me. My son has never officially been diagnosed with dysgraphia, but he is. We are in a private school partly because I became disillusioned with the public school red tape. Don’t get me wrong… there are some WONDERFUL teachers in the public school, and they are more up to speed on how to work with kids with special needs than private schools. I just needed a smaller school for my son, where we could help hand-pick the teacher each year and have a less socially competitive environment. We did not go through 2 year Scottish Rite Alphabetic Phonics program (which is FREE). But, the director there helped me to make my decision. Currently, my son sees an Academic Language Therapist who was trained in the Scottish Rite program, 3 times/week during his school day.

If you have not ever been to see a Neuropsychologist for Educational testing, see if your insurance will help cover it. You can learn so much that way. It costs about $1000. They might also suggest that your child go to an Occupational Therapist to help with fine-motor skills. We’ve done OT with our son in the past. It is great to have than independent opinion. Plus the schools have their own ways of defining and “qualifying” different disabilities.

A neuropsych doc. might call it dsygraphia, but you might need a broader label in the schools in order to get services. I know that my son could only receive Occupational Therapy in the public school, IF he was already “qualified” for Speech Therapy due a language disorder. He was; this was 4 years back. But the sp.ed. resources are stretched very very very thin. I know the counselor and Speech therapist and OT all sincerely wanted to help my son during our ARD. But, in the back of their minds, they are also calculating just HOW MANY kids and schedules they are going to have to juggle.

Remember you CAN bring other people with you to an ARD meeting. I paid my son’s private Speech Therapist for the hour to attend. I also hired an Education Consultant for just 3 sessions before 1st grade to observe my son in class, review his testing documentation, and consult with me on his school options. That is how we ended up in a private school. It really helped me to have some other people there with me at the ARD. I didn’t feel out numbered. And ARD’s are emotional meetings. You want to have this good working relationship with the school, but at the same time you are needing to fight for services and focus on all your child’s disabilites. Take a friend or a family member. I remember not wanting my husband to go, because he was still in denial that our son even had a problem and his lawyer background was a bit intimidating. But, if push came to shove, the SQUEAKY WHEEL GETS THE GREASE. Being persistent is important. In the long run, it is easier for everyone if problems can be resolved in a pleasant and professional way. Writing things down can be a BIG HELP. Written communication can be more controlled and less emotional. But, if you are unhappy with how things are being handled, take it to the next level.

Just some other thoughts…

My son takes classical guitar lessons partly for a love of music, but it also helps to develop fine-motor skills and concentration. It has been very good for him. Karate or TaeKwonDo are also commonly recommended to help kids with motor skill delays and attention problems. Incidently, my son also has dreamed of being a pilot since he was 5. He can fly the Flight Simulator games for adults and it is his one real passion. We have several pilots in the family.

My son takes a class at FutureKids afterschool once a week. He loves the computer class, and he is learning a lot. He stays an extra 30 minutes for a keyboarding class that last 8 weeks. He is taking it for the 2nd time. My hope is that his keyboarding skills will be developed enough for him to use a small keyboard, like an AlphaSmart or QuickPad at school next year.

I think you mentioned that your son was the youngest in his class. You could consider holding your son back for a year. A year of catching up might make a big difference. You could transfer to another school nearby so that your child would not get teased. My sister repeated 5th grade this way. Just an idea. Not sure if it is appropriate in your case. I still consider that idea for my son, except that we love our private school so much right now, I couldn’t dream of switching.

My son never had much trouble with reading UNTIL we hit 4th grade and the textbooks are SO MUCH harder. Our son’s disagnosis is a fluid changing thing. As we tackle and remediate one problem, other challenges rise to the surface. Attention use to be the BIG concern, after PACE and some growing up, attention is not the problem. Reading fluency, weak vocabulary, and dsygraphia are the big ones now. I’ve stopped caring about the labels. They are only useful to me in helping to describe the situation to others. I now look for more specific weak areas so that I can target the problems more carefully.

I gave my son an old laptop with a word processor on it. I told him he can use it as a diary. He does occassionally get on it to write on his own. You can also try having your son use a dictaphone to dictate his stories or ideas. Just getting him to organize thoughts and express them, will help his writing. Writing emails to family, even thank you cards is all good practice. I don’t agonize over the poor spelling skills too much. I care more about sentence structure and coherant thoughts in writing. I also don’t worry much about neat handwriting. His teacher can read it. I did discover that if he writes very small it is much neater. It forces him to control his pencil more. I bought him smaller ruled paper to use at school. Oh yea… there are also some great pencil grips now that can help hand fatigue. www.pencilgrips.com sells them.

One last random comment….my son can barely write a paragraph for a school assignment, but he has occassionally written a 2-3 page creative story of his own. He started doing this after I got him interested in reading and creating comics and cartoons. I got some old Superman comics for him. Combining the words, dialogue, and pictures was appealing to him. He wrote a mystery using the Nintendo characters Mario and Luigi. I made a big deal of it! I told him that his ideas were so creative and interesting, that he could be a WRITER someday. He looked at me and said, “Mom, I’m going to be a pilot.” “You could be BOTH! In fact you could write stories about all the place you fly to.” I have no doubt there are famous writers who started out dyslexic, dsygraphic, ADD, and everything else. People do overcome these struggles with hard work and encouragement. My son still dislikes writing at school. But, I think his overall attitude towards writing is different now. Good Luck with your son and dealing with the school.

Rosie