need advice about dysgraphia

From what I have read, dysgraphia can exist independently of any fine motor problems. That is, a child can test out just fine in an OT eval and still not be able to write. The cause of the problem is not motor skills, but probably some not-yet-identified area of the brain dealing with written language.

Having said that, I want to point out that writing reversals are a characteristic of developmental vision problems. If he has not had a developmental vision evaluation, then that is what I would do next. You want to either rule out developmental vision delays or correct them before moving on, because vision affects so many areas of learning and performance.

There is yet a third possibility, which is that he is one of those children who has a high visual-spatial IQ but has not developed the ability to maintain a fixed point of reference. This type of child sees a “b” as just a “d” flipped over, not differentiating between them because the 3D version is the same letter. Children like this seem to get dramatic improvement from the Davis Dyslexia program.

Then, too, it could be a combination of all of the above.

To me, what you are describing does not sound like a motor planning issue. While IM is a good therapy and may help some things, I don’t think it would specifically help the dysgraphia issue you are talking about. My inclination would be to check out vision and perhaps Davis first.

Mary

I don’t necessarily see fine motor problem here either. What I do see is a child, who for whatever reason, isn’t acquiring new muscle memory patterns to replace the ones that haven’t worked. Or- if he is- they aren’t automatic yet. So, frequently he slips back into the patterns that his body is comfortable with. Handwriting, in addition to having a visual component at the learning stage, becomes largely a matter of muscle memory at your son’s age. You just don’t think about it consciously- and most certainly don’t look at it. Six months isn’t very long for major graphomotor issues Socks… remember, he has been printing this stuff for at least six years. It isn’t going to get better quickly. Imagine if you were told that you had to learn a whole new way to ride your bike- because the way you were comfortable with looked funny… Your body would rebel. I ran into this when I was learning to knit (as an adult)- I had practiced a way that was really inefficient relative to holding needles etc.- and it was VERY hard to alter what my body was doing because I had become fairly automatic.

One question- and I actually think we talked about this before- is the OT doing printing with him? and if so, why?

Robin

Socks,

My eight year old has some of the same issues. We have seen progress with therapy to address his SID as well as the directionality exercises in PACE. Does your son automatically know his right from his left? A number of cognitive programs have pages of errors—right, left, up, down, that kids are supposed to read. It has helped my son.

I have heard from some people that IM helps handwriting but I think it probably depends on what the cause of the difficulties.
IM addresses motor planning.

Also, my son is now doing exercises with a therapist addressing his reversal issues. He is now doing the exercises correctly but in real life doesn’t form his letters correctly. Now his writing is legible and he almost never reverses letters so this isn’t the issue. Rather, he visually processes letters that can be reversed more slowly (p, q, b, d,), which impacts his reading.

I am hoping that cursive will solve his handwriting issues. Is your son learning cursive with handwriting without tears? My son learned to write in K when it was all but impossible to get to form his letters correctly. I understand that motor memory is the strongest form and it is very difficult to change the way people write.

Beth

When my own son was diagnosed with dysgraphia, my physician husband and I did an exhaustive search of the educational and medical literature. We sadly didn’t find any solutions to this issue. Martha Denkcla and Sally Shaywitz who seemed to be the two experts in the field both recommended “bypassing” the issue and letting the child type or dictate to a typist.

That’s what we did. Over the years I’ve noticed it’s getting a little easier for him to write and maybe over a few more, it will continue to get better.

My son too will read back his writing as if it’s completely correct. He does not “see” his errors and that must be a part of the problem.

Good luck to you and your son.

Robin,
as always Thank you for your response. Yes,he is printing with the OT,as well as Sensory intregration. Do you believe OT for six months isn’t long enough? I am curious,because the Therapist initially wrote her eval to reccomend six months at one hour per week? Now she would like to try the IM program which can take six weeks,depending on the kid. The Neuropsych stated that she thought it might be in the visual spatial realm.(she is the one who reccomended OT for habndwriting ,and nothing was mentioned about visual spatial in his eval) He uses visual cues to strategize his decrease in auditory processing skills. He actually used these cues to bring up scores in his evaluation. According to the Psych. If it is in the visual spatial realm then it wouldn’t be an issue of motor develpoment? or could it be both? BTW,cursive is even worse! He really gets messed up with this,and besides it’s mostly numbers he tends to reverse. Thanks .

Beth,
does PACE address visual spatial issues? Thanks,Socks

YES! Sara,truelly the best thing that ever happened to him was his keyboard. I definitely agree AT is the way to go,but a BIG problem for him is Number reversals. Math turns into the one place he can’t use his keyboard. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Thanks to all for your great advice!

Visual spatial issues don’t rule out graphomotor issues as far as I know…

I am not sure about OT and length of time- but it would be hard to remediate much of any serious delay in six months…

i would expect cursive to be hard- but for many kids- not all with a nod to Victoria who has pointed this out several times- for many kids it is smoother,and if they can acquire some degree of automaticity- and- you can’t reverse.But for a child with dysgraphia- it is all going to be slow and frustrating. How is the typing coming?

Robin

Socks,

There are a number of exercises in PACE that address visual-spatial type issues. We had already done some work on this with Visual Perceptual Skill building books from Critical thinking. I also spent a long time del. teaching him right and left, back and front ect.

There also are a number “games” that we have used. I think all are available from Rainbow Resources. One is called Rush Hour. Another game is SET which works on nonverbal logic and discrimination.

Beth

His typing skills have improved. His understanding of how to use the PC has helped him also. It will be,I can see,a necessity. He would much rather go dig up worms in the back,then use the computer for long periods of time,unlike his older brother who does. Thanks again:-)

critical thinking is the series of books? I will check into this,thanks:-)

The publisher is Critical Thinking Books & Software www.cricalthinking.com

The books are called Visual Perceptual Skill Building. I got them cheaper from Rainbow Resource Center www.rainbowresource.com. It is a homeschooling source. If you order from them, get their catalogue. It is a wonderful resource. I got the Rushhour game from them. It is actually really fun.

My son made major leaps in visual spatial skills prior to starting PACE. I think it was Neuronet therapy—which worked on his vestibular integration problems (SID) and the other work I had done. He had been in special ed math because of his visual spatial problems, even though he was very good conceptually. At the end of the year, he was moved out, even though we had done no math at home all spring because of the tremendous progress made. (remember my school fiasco last year—the lovely teacher who caused much of my grief isn’t going to be there this year. It has to be an improvement.)

PACE is building on this foundation. He still has a ways to go but he doesn’t reverse numbers and letters very often any more. PACE has a processing exercise which requires circling two letters (for example, y and b) as you track down a page of random letters. My son is much slower when the letters are b, d, p, q, than if it is something like s, t, f, h. This slowness, I am sure, impacts his reading.

He is 11 yes? That would fall under my definition of developmentally appropriate:) Many times I would rather dig worms than type too… and I am far older than that.

Robin

Socks,

How much of a decrease was there in auditory processing? Normally this is an area that is VERY responsive to good instruction.There is nothing wrong with using visual cues to support decoding (think homonyms here) but AP skills should not actually decline unless something happened to affect his hearing. Typically- they go up when you are doing OG or some similarly therapeutic intervention because it is such a huge part of the procedures. I know this is not what we were talking about before- but it tweaked my internal alarm a little.

Robin

Socks,

Am I remembering correctly that your son has ADHD? If so, you might look at the IM website. There are some controlled studies which found nice effects on ADHD with IM. I guess what I am thinking is that you could do IM for this reason and if you got handwriting improvements (which some people say they have) it would be a nice bonus.

We did Neuronet this way. My son had such severe bilaterality problems that the newly trained IM person didn’t want to take him without OT first. We have done Neuronet instead with very good results. One of the areas the therapist originally spoke about was with rapid naming. We have now seen big improvements with reading fluency but am still waiting to see if word retreival improves at the point she says it will. If it doesn’t —well we certainly have had enough other good things happen that I wouldn’t feel like we have wasted our time and money. I know word retreival is supposed to be almost impossible to fix so any improvement will be a bonus.

Beth

I’m not sure if we’re talking about in school or out of it. I may be off base here but there are magnetic numbers and magnetic boards. He could do calculations with those and not put his calculations at risk from number reversals. Is that the problem, by the way? While reversing your numbers throughout life will make writing checks more of a challenge, what immediate problem is this posing for him right now in school or out of it?

Certainly if we’re talking about “showing our work” as many teachers require such things would become more than tedious with magnetic numbers.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Are there some numbers he more commonly reverses than others? I don’t know any tricks here but maybe with thought we could come up with some. I still need to make an L with my fingers to prompt myself to be sure about my left and right. Somebody invented that little trick and perhaps we could invent some of our own to help with number reversals.

How did you find a Neuronet provider? The only address I am aware of is in Florida.

I live in Florida. There are providers as well in Illinois. There are also people who use pieces of the program. I think you have to take a number of classes and pass an exam to call yourself a NN provider. Some people take a class or two.

I think the developer has focused more on Central and South America. She speaks Spanish fluently and regularly visits countries there.

Socks,
If your son is reversing 2,3,5 and 9 (these are the ones my daughter reversed)I may have a suggestion. I noticed that all these numbers have a curve like a backwards c. So I “taught her arm” to make them the right way. That is, I stood behind her, holding her right arm making a large backward c in the air - 5 or 6 times a day. The reversals lessened a lot. When she couldn’t remember how to write the numbers, she remembered to make that arm motion. I don’t have any suggestions for 6 though, that one is still backward a lot. I think this is very important problem- far more important than reversing the numbers on checks. Math is one of the few areas where dysgraphia is less of a handicap, where the kid can excel. Good luck.
P.S. Thanks for the advice on the Sunday night chat. Mandy

Absolutely:-) He is the coolest kid! Although I love my puter,I loved digging up worms when I was a kid. But my little “Horse whisperer”? Let me tell you! He dug up an egg in the yard. Small egg,about ahh 1/2 inch in diameter. He sat it on the bed of dirt and watched it. Sure enough,the egg started hatching. Out of the top of this egg,popped a baby lizard! It wiggled it’s way out and jumped on my kids shoulders,there it stayed for at least a couple of hours!I have NEVER seen a lizard hatch,I felt like I was in Jurassic park. Is he an awsome soul or what? He also feeds a wild rabbit we have in the back. Do Vets have poor handwriting too? Or is this saved only for the medical profession? If so,we don’t have too much to worry about:-)

He had a low frequency hearing loss,upon his inital CAP testing.
In subsequent audiogram it was barely abnormal. OG is strictly reading correct?
He did Fastforword during the summer,and he tolerated it better then his brother! Wasn’t as frustrated and improved quicker. I have noticed improvements in certain areas,it’s all very insideous so I’m not sure what did it,the program or maturity. For one thing his flow of speech is better,he almost getting chatty. He had a difficult time with word retrevial,but this seems to have gotten better. He still questions what word you are saying,i.e. did you say rum? No I said run. oh,because I thought you said rum! He wouldn’t even question the distinction before. Know what I am saying?

Let me ask a very strange question,okay? I don’t know if you remeber but I am in a State voucher program. He is in a private school,the State funding goes to him directly,and we have to privately contract for services,and programs. The school is specific for LD students,so he gets plenty of accomodations,and he is definitely doing well. Here’s the question: because I am basicly in control of what services we contract for,and /or remedial programs,I am in the position to try anything. Of course it isn’t unlimited funding but it is aprox. 5,000 dollars above and beyond the schools tuition. 1,000 immediately goes for his laptop. I guess I am wondering if you could do any program for this type of kid,what would you suggest? Continue with OT,try IM? This would take care of another 3,000 dollars. I am trying to be an educated consumer,plus not overwhelm him with frillious therapies. He is very happy right now. He is in good space right now,not frustrated,laughs more,and Loves school. He is enjoying being a kid too.

Beth,
Thank you for all the good info! I will check it out.!

OH my god! Sara,what an awsome IDEA!! Magnetic numbers! SOme else gave me the idea for my other kids visual spatial math problem to use different colors ,could easily do this with magnetic numbers! THANK YOU!

Another AWSOME idea! Thanks!

BTW,your welcome:-) See you again soon:-)

Beth,
Is neuronet cheaper than IM? Curious about this. Yes,we are proceeding with IM for our oldest,and have gotten word from networking the experts are here,that it might also very well help the handwriting. And should do this before LMB for example.

BTW,I am SOO glad you have a new teacher,here to a good school year!

Our vet has terrible handwriting- he is lucky he fills his own prescriptions:) I am not sure the most skilled pharmacist would have any luck. I love the lizard story- what a gift!

Robin

Socks,

Here IM is cheaper because of its shorter duration. Both treatments (and OT as well) are about $65-$70 an hour. NN is more comprehensive but IM more intensive in certain areas. IM doesn’t work attention, for example. For that reason, we may still do it. I personally would take IM over more OT though. I looked into this awhile back and concluded that IM would give me more bang for the buck than OT.

I would say that doing NN is more comprable to doing OT in duration and costs. We have been doing NN since January and probably will be done in a couple months. We were told 6-9 months originally and he has made great progress in the last few months. I think you get better results with NN compared to OT though because of the intensity brought by it being a homebased program. IM is quicker than either and thus less costly. Here I think it is about $1000 for a standard 15 hour program.

Yes, I am delighted with the change in teacher. It has to be an improvement.

Beth