My 10 yr old boy has aud. proc. disorder. While most aspects of his therapy have been extremely productive, I stuggle whether I should address his pencil grip. I’ve never really done fine motor Occupational Therapy with him. Some therapists have suggested it’s too late to change a grip on a 10 yr old. It takes him 2-3x as long to write as his classmates. His hand cramps, etc. Therefore he HATES to write. Are there things I can do at home to faciliate a more comfortable grip?
Re: Pencil Grip w/ 10 yr boy
Personally I despise those rubber pencil grips. They are tactilely revolting and to be honest, I have never seen a child really helped by them — just another diesstractor/excuse.
I do help older kids and teens straighten out their writing. It is a long haul — five or six years of practiciong counterproductive habits will not disappear overnight — but yes, if the student wants improvement, a lot can be done.
Step one is to throw out the yellow pencils. Literally. Trash them all. You want writing tools that require NO pressure. That is how this problem grew in the first place — a small child with small weak undeveloped hands tries to make shapes with a pencil, so in order to get enough force on it he grabs it tightly in his fist, props his body on the desk with his other arm as the fulcrum, and leans his whole weight through the pencil. You want to stop this force, tension, and stress, so first get rid of the cause and the trigger. My Grade 3 teacher, Mrs. Ross (may she be blessed) had a class of forty kids write with dip pens and inkwells — she said you will know it when you make a mistake. You don’t absolutely have to go this far, although it doesn’t hurt; a calligraphy class complete with the dip pens and tracing the alphabet in good directionality can do a lot of good.
Getting more modern, you can use whiteboard markers on both whiteboards and alphabet tracing models inside plastic sheet protectors.
For daily paperwork you can use rolling writers or other light-pressure gel pens, or even fountain pens (many of my students think these are cool.) Buy desent-quality paper, a penny a sheet at large stores. ALWAYS clean paper; this is not a garbage class.If the teachers complain about his work being done in pen —and I can never figure out why they don’t like nice clear readable pen and prefer smeary pencil — I will be happy to write you a formal letter, with all my degrees on the end, recommending this as treatment for his dysgraphia.
Now, what to do.
After you get good writing tools and materials in order, find a good printing model and a good cursive model, with arrows for the directions.
Have him sit in a normal relaxed but alert position, butt on the chair, back erect, paper fairly straight in front of him, and show him a *relaxed* pen grip with the pen sticking *forward* of the hand. The pen grip does not absolutely have to be forefinger and thumb only, in fact I brace my pen on the middle finger, but pen forward and body upright are vital. Oh, yes, also make sure you have enough light — it is astounding how dingy many of my students’ supposed work areas are. Make sure his left hand is out of his work area, holding down the side of the paper, NOT in a tight fist (I am seeing a lot of this lately, another bad habit allowed to grow into a mania).
Have him simply trace the lowere case alphabet, following the arrow directions. You sit beside him as his coach. You will find that at first you have to move the left hand out, get the thumb out of the fist, and/or push the pen back forward of the hand, every ten seconds. Well, that just demonstrates how ingrained these habits are. He doesn’t even know he is doing them.
You work for ten minutes at a time, never too much at once, once or twice a day, retraining the habits. Consider yourself as a coach; this is a physical skill, like hockey or basketball or whatever. Just as a hockey coach would work all year on retraining a bad skating posture, you work all year on retraining a counterproductive writing method.
Once you get to the point that he can form the letters properly and doesn’t have to kill himself with stress to do so, you have him practice writing sentences on the whiteboard and again you immediately stop and correct any backsliding and malformed letters and especially any directionality issues.
Soon after this, you start to work with him on doing his homework in pen on paper, forming all the letters with proper directionality and a smooth, *light* touch.
You can start cursive as soon as he is getting some control; properly made, cursive letters follow the same direction as printing.
Over the year he will do well for a while and then backslide for a while. This is normal. Just have him practice again for ten or fifteen minutes a day for a couple of days.
One wonderful side effect of retraining writing directionality is that reading and spelling directionality often straighten up at the same time. Reading becomes more fluent and spelling improves, especially if you work a little on showing him the connections.
Re: Pencil Grip w/ 10 yr boy
Thank you so much for your detailed input on this frustrating topic. I worked so ####### his auditory processing throughout the years … this pencil grip never was in the forefront of his problems. I need to get on it. I’m going to the educational supply store tomorrow to purchase the stencils. I personally love the gel pens too (have a million of them). I tend to press hard myself and the gel pens ease up my “stressed” grip. I need to work on posture too. I might take you up on your offer to write a letter stating his need for gel pens. He goes to a private Catholic school where deviating is not so common. They use the erasable blue pen and of course the traditional pencil. Thanks again!
My dd came up with a creative way to support her grip - floam. :) She put it around the pencil and then squished it around until the grip was just right, let it dry overnight and she has a great grip designed just for her.
Personally, I don’t think that it is ever too late to work on a comfortable grip.
Other ways to get him to write would be to use a computer. Having him type may be an easier way for him produce longer written pieces. Keyboarding skills will come in handy as he gets older, too. Many Middle and HS teachers require typed work.