Dysgraphia

I think dysgraphia can improve over the years. I’m not familiar with the research that suggests gains are made around the time of puberty. I did an extensive search of literature pertaining to dysgraphia a few years ago and experts such as Martha Denckla and Sally Shaywitz at the time felt there were no good treatments for it and the best strategy was to bypass the ‘glitch’ by either dictating to a willing typist or best trying to type yourself.

I hear People speak well of Handwriting Without Tears but never tried it myself.

I have used Handwriting Without Tears, and find it an excellent program, but it only teaches the mechanics of handwriting itself, not the writing process per se. Depending on the age of your child, it can help them learn either good printing or good cursive skills. In cursive, they teach a “straight up” style, without the slant that so many LD kids find almost impossible to master. It was designed by an OT, and can be purchased, fairly inexpensively, at www.hwtears.com

If your child has trouble with other aspects of writing, HWT won’t help much, but if the handwriting itself gets in the way, it’s a good start. Spelling is another issue, of course, and if anybody has a great program for that, I’m always open to suggestions myself! I use LMB LiPS and supplement it with Seeing Stars, but as everyone will tell you, spelling is the hardest of all to remediate. By high school, my very dyslexic/dysgraphic son was using a computer with a spell-checker to write, and that made a huge difference. Also, as he became a more fluent reader, just seeing the words multiple times seemed to make a difference. There is also a software program called “Inspiration” that uses graphic organizers as pre-writing tools… As for teaching writing itself, I’d look for the “Stack the Deck” program, which can be used in the classroom as well as individually; it combines oral, grammatical and writing process activities in a very useful way. Hope this helps!

Sharon
www.angelfire.com/on2/thepuzzle