handwriting problems

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I have a 5 year old aspie son. He is very smart and social with just some minor sensory issues and transition problems. His biggest problem is handwriting. He hates to write and gets really upset when he is made to practice. He also has some fine motor delays (mainly with buttoning, zippering, snapping and tying shoes). I am so worried about kindergarten next year. Kids are required to do a lot of writing in school. Even with lots of OT he still struggles. Any suggestions for me?

Kathy

My son is 7 years old now and in his third year of primary school. His fine motor skills have improved greatly over the past few months - his handwriting, colouring in, dealing with buttons and zips etc.

My son enjoys writing, even though he has always struggled with it. We took the approach of not getting too hung up on the whole handwriting thing. His spelling and reading are excellent, and he has no difficulty thinking of what he wants to write, which I think are more important than having perfect or average handwriting.

You can get special chunky pencils which help some children as they are easier to grip.

I think the main thing is to be encouraging, and to try and incorporate fine motor skills and writing skills into play and other daily activities. I would ask my son to help me think of things for the shopping list, and ask him to help me by writing out the list.

If writing remains a struggle, then maybe he learn to type as he gets older.

I recommend getting him a keyboard and teaching him how to type. Or you could get him a keyboard and just let him figure out how to type by himself. You really dont need to type the 'proper' way in order to use a keyboard effectively.

As for writing, I dont think you need to bother wasting your time (or your son's time) teaching your son a skill that is only rarely used. Think about it, when was the last time you actually wrote something with pen and paper? For me I only do so to fill out forms once every other month or so. Almost all of my written communication occurs mainly through the computer (emails, papers, etc.). If you are determined to teach your son this skill then I wish you good luck, I am am 22 and my writing is still barely legible. And trust me, it isnt going to be fixed by more practice or trying harder. Slowing down and carefully drawing the letters one by one can lead to better penmanship, but reduces my writing speed to about 5 words per minute. This is generally what I have to do for forms (which results in them taking a while to complete) but gets the job done.

Overall, I would make sure that your son is capable of forming basic letters by slowing down, and then just let him use a keyboard and type up everything else. He is only going to use this skill very sparingly in real adult life. It doesnt make sense to bother him now to develop proper penmanship when all it will do is save him 20 minutes every other month. Just get the kid a keyboard and let him focus on less trivial things.

the OT should be making reccomendations to his teachers about strategies they can use to alleviate symptoms, and also to assist him in the writing process.

You should talk to the school about him getting what's called an AlphaSmart. Chances are, the school would have them. They're little portable keyboards that have a small screen built in. He can type in whatever he wants, and it's automatically saved. If he wants to print something, they keyboard connects to any USB computer. It also runs on standard AA batteries, so he can take it with him wherever he needs to go.

I used one in elementary and middle school, and they're great. I highly recommend it.

Here's some links:
http://www.areato.org/ausili/comunicato ... rt3000.jpg
http://www.alphasmart.com/
http://www.alphasmartdirect.com/NEO/specialneeds.aspx

Thank you all for the info and advice. I am already feeling less anxious about sending my son to kindergaten next year. I am glad to have found this website!!

My son is 11 and still cannot write legibly. He is now keyboarding fairly comfortably, but it is still very slow for him. He uses an Alphasmart when possible, but much of what is done in school is on worksheets, and the Alphasmart isn't always practical, so some level of comfort with pencil in hand really is necessary. Many kids hands aren't large enough to keyboard well until they are at least 9 or 10 years old, btw, so moving too fast into typing really isn't effective.

Your son's issue could be the result of several factors that tend to be co-morbid to the AS, and I think knowing which ones are at play with help guide the decisions you make, therapies you choose, and work-arounds you jump into it. My son has hypomobility (loose joints - something that cannot be changed, and that makes writing difficult and painful) as well as hypotonia (strength, which OT can improve) and disgraphia (the brain to hand connection; writing is a multi-task function, and my son can't multi-task. However, there are therapies that can improve this).

In elementary school, you should be able to get the accomodation of reduced work loads, or to allow dictation instead of writing.

BUT, I wouldn't run to accomodations any faster than you have to. As I noted in the first paragraph, it is really really hard to get through school without ever putting pencil to paper, IEP or not, so getting as far as possible in that direction will really help your child. Just recognize that the issue may be quite serious, that writing may be very painful, and that none of this is laziness. Make sure those around your child give him credit for having to work extra extra hard, so that he doesn't get frustrated or feel bad. Do as much as possible to make his hands work for him, but accept that work arounds are going to play a big role in his life. It's a really tough balance and I sometimes wish we had tried more in the way of hand therapies for my son earlier on. How much difference it might have made, if any, I'll never know.

Do know that many AS post here who had these issues as kids, and that learned to type quite comfortably and quickly before reaching adulthood. That's the plus side. It's the school years that get hard.

My son is 9 and has the same problem. He wasn't diagnosed with AS until he was almost 8 - and we are only just now dealing with the school district in an attempt to get him on an IEP. As a result, he has always had to print - no typing accommodations given - and he also had to learn how to write in cursive (that didn't go well at all and he still is mostly unsuccessful with it, which only adds to the stress of school). His teacher claims to "accommodate" him with the printing - but the fact is, she doesn't do it ALL the time, and she still requires that he do one sentence out of every paragraph in cursive. As though making him practice is going to suddenly make it click...which of course it will not. I am hoping that once we have him evaluated by the district (right now we're fighting to just get him EVALUATED...which is ridiculous!), they'll be able to have him work with some OT.

As for cursive, the bottom line is that schools require cursive. It's not that I want him to write in cursive, it's that the schools still require it. It doesn't matter that we don't use pen and paper that often anymore - it's still in the curriculum, and therefore the school has to work with him on it.

My son also has trouble tying his shoe laces (he sticks to shoes with no ties, which is getting more difficult as he is getting older now) and doing buttons. He *can* do them - just not very well and it takes him forever. One thing he can do though is tie his karate obi...I think it's because the straps are bigger!

My 10 y/o has the same problem. She also can not tie her shoes and eating w/ a spoon or fork is a nightmare. She does it, but it is a mess. As for the writing, that is not a skill they teach in school anymore, at least they do not in Texas. It's not on the TAKS test so no classroom hours are devoted to proper printing or handwriting. It's a shame.

Interesting how some states still require cursive and others do not....it's so frustrating.

The thing with cursive, btw, is that if you don't learn to write it, you may never learn to read it. While some kids with handwriting issues do much better at cursive than printing, the whole thing was a disaster for my son, and no one pressed him on it since writing is an IEP item. But now I'm finding that he is missing things in class "because she wrote it on the board and I can't read her cursive." THAT is a real problem, and I think it is important to use the opportunities given with cursive instruction to learn to READ different kinds of handwriting. An 11 year old shouldn't be missing things because he didn't fully learn cursive.

Good point. I know that part of my son's problem with cursive is that he CAN'T read it...much less be able to write it. I really think though, that if the district would at least see that there's a problem there, that with some OT he'd be able to at least function with the cursive...right now it's just a constant frustration to him, and I can't blame him. What really amazes me is that his teacher doesn't seem to understand that he could "practice" the cursive every single day and still not be able to write it because his brain doesn't work the way ours does. He wants his hand to make the letters, but the connection there just doesn't work that well. I really feel for him and it's hard for me because I have no idea how to help him...otherwise I would!

This is off topic, but in the 2nd grade my daughter was told to do a creative writing project. Since she is so very literal she was creative w/ the way she put the words on the paper. She went up on side of the page, across the top , down the other & so on untill she had spiral all the way to the center of the paper. Her teacher was shocked but knew she had indeed creativly written . She got an A+

I LOVE that story!! !!

Actually, I learned how to type at age 5. My father had this old computer that ran off DOS, so if I wanted to get into the games I would have to type in the proper command prompt. So I learned how to type. I was by no means as fast at typing as I am today, but I was still able to learn.

By first grade I could easily type much faster then I could write. I'm not saying I typed extremely fast, I just wrote very slowly. The key to typing with small hands is to not try and type the 'proper' way. I.E. most people will tell you to keep your fingers on home row (asdf jkl;) and then just move them up or down in order to reach the letter you want. I had to learn to type with my index fingers. The trick is to bounce you finger off the key, then land on the next key, and repeat. With practice you get very fast. A few years later, I started using my index fingers for the buttons in the middle and my middle fingers for the outer keys. I finally upgraded to using my right ring finger for the far right keys. (P, and .) And my right pinky will hit enter. however, I still wont use my left ring or pinky fingers for typing.

This has led to various odd habits, like hitting the T key with my left middle finger, and hitting R with my left index finger. But despite the unusual method, I can still type at 300 characters per minute.

All that to say... Don't think that you have to wait in order to teach your child how to type, as soon as he has enough co-ordination to hit on key with his index finger, he can learn to type. Waiting till his hands are large enough to type 'properly' wont help him learn to type any faster or more effectively.

I think you are unusual in having found a way so young. I don't mean to tell anyone they MUST "wait," but it IS important to understand that you can NOT RELY on an assumption that your child will learn to type young. Despite lots of exposure and encouragement, NEITHER of my children learned to type by age 8 or 9; my son is ONLY NOW, at 11, really developing the skill, and the reason I've been given by all our experts is that hand size didn't allow it to be comfortable for him before. And this is a child we've been DESPERATE to get on a keyboard. He really, truly, wasn't developmentally ready before but, fortunately, is now.

300 words is FAST - I'd love to watch you type sometime!