How to turn regression around-very worried-need some input

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She was in private OT for 2 years. She started right at age 5. We live in a small town with 2 pediatric therapy places. The GREAT one we went to doesn't take all insurances (and not ours). The other one is poor (I've been told) and so I haven't tried it. The poor one consists of the school OTs and SLPs. The other one was amazing. After 2 years of OT I know pretty much how to do the exercises at home. It was about $90 a week when we went.

This is a bad method. Practicing writing is a good thing, but remember: you're taking away something in the process. My first-grade teacher took a slightly different approach: she allowed students to use pencil for regular assignments, but made everyone practice handwriting in pen. This method worked fairly well for me, although if my NT parents didn't "have a meltdown" (read: go into a yelling rampage) each time all the letters on the practice line didn't look perfect, it would have been exponentially more effective. I, personally, can't imagine any benefit in taking away the eraser, because in that case, a lot of aspies will focus more on something being taken away, rather than on practicing handwriting. I'm sure my teacher had no training on Asperger's whatsoever, but she was smart enough to choose a method where erasing simply wasn't an option.

It's no different than taking away the poles while teaching someone to ski. That's what the instructor did at ski lessons I took as a child. (At the time, my family lived in a region with a lot of snowfall.) The instructor made all kids ski without poles, which made things so difficult for me, that I spent more time on the snow than on the skis. More importantly, I knew that if she didn't take away the poles, I'd actually be able to ski, rather than fall all the time. Similarly, the child knows that if he just had an eraser, he could correct the letters when the look bad. But he can't, because the teacher took it away. That would frustrate me so much, that all the efforts to teach me would go to waste.

I wouldn't focus too much on the "level" at that age.

According to my Mom I didn't read anything at all until halfway through first grade, but teachers at that time had a more relaxed attitude towards milestones and didn't consider it exceptional.

My AS daughter was a precocious reader. In first grade she was reading at a 3rd grade level. But then she moved to a different school and in 3rd grade she was reading at a 2nd grade level (according to the teacher). It was very frustrating. She had an advanced vocabulary and interests, but she was very weak at interpretation and inference. The teacher assigned her books she didn't like so she just stopped reading entirely.

Writing was a challenge for many years because she simply didn't know what to write. She had a lot of difficulty expressing feelings (except stating that she doesn't like something or she doesn't like pretty much everything). And she couldn't state facts unless they were certain. We could easily spend an hour to generate a single sentence of homework. I stubbornly refused to compose the words for her, but it was just really difficult to help her to make her own sentences. I'm not sure how it happened, but in 5th and 6th grade this problem simply disappeared. If I didn't once in a while look though the giant mess on her desk then I would have no idea what she's doing in classes. So long as there are no problems, I'm really happy that she's able to handle all of the assignments on her own.

It seems like your teachers are on the right track and certainly have the best intentions. Please don't be discouraged if you daughter ends up out of synch with the normal standards. She may be learning in a different way that brings her to a normal (or paranormal) level in the future.

As an adult, if I need to produce anything handwritten, I write it first to get the content, and when I am happy with that, I re-copy it, to make it legible. I don't worry about whether it can be read by anyone else (or even me after a few weeks!) until the final draft - at that point all I have to focus on is the letter formation. So in this way I found my own way of separating the two components to suit the fact that good handwriting is too slow, so I lose my train of thought; yet creative writing involves re-thinks. Having notepaper to create on helps a lot.

Acting as a scribe, even occasionally, and then re-writing the final effort to concentrate on only the lettering might help.


One handwriting guru is Christopher Jarman. Do a web search and have a look at his ideas/books.

There are some sample pages and a reference to an American contact from this page (I don't know how current it is).
http://quilljar.users.btopenworld.com/par.html

And you can download the fonts from here.
http://www.napeenterprises.org.uk/

The 'jardotty.ttf' allows you to create printouts with dotted letters/words, which a child can overwrite to get the feel of how to form the letters. If you use simple phrases and start with a large font (40pt up) this can be very good to build confidence in actually forming the letters, without worrying about errors, since fresh pages can be printed easily, so the idea that practise will improve things can be learnt. It is a way of separating the 'muscle learning' of handwriting (which DCD/Dyspraxia can make difficult and slow to learn) from the creative effort involved in what to write. Starting large, and then decreasing the font size, allows the correct muscle movements to be learnt and then refined.

Maria Monisorri taught kindergardeners cursive before print because it is a much more natural motion. As far as the incorrectly formed letters go There is a technique of teaching kids to write by drawing in sand, it is used for those with dyslexia with great success. the feeling of the sand creates additional neuropathways in which one learns to write.
Also it sounds like she needs to go back and re-learn the letters again. You may have to put her back a grade...she missed important steps in her education while she was in public school and she is lagging behind what the teachers are teaching. Education is built in steps and if she misses a step...she will continue to be lagging behind. At her age, being put back a grade is not as damaging as it is when they are older and they equate that with failure.

I think with my daughter it's not that she "doesn't know" how to make the right letter formation. She went through 2 years of Handwriting without Tears as well as OT intervention. Before going into the public school she had much, much better writing. I can take a writing sample of hers from June 2009 and juxtapose it with one from June 2010 and it is alarming. Anyone would swear they were not produced by the same person. On one hand she is very OCDish about the writing, erasing and erasing. I think she is withdrawing so much more than she used to as a coping mechanism (especially in class) and just "getting through" the work sometimes involves not being able to really apply what she knows to what she produces. Last night I watched her grip the pencil in a fist which she knows not to do but I intuitively feel she's just so overwhelmed that she can't plug into good handwriting on top of everything else right now. Or it may be that she's actively rebelling against the writing by not doing it properly?

I really value everyone's opinions on this, thank you.

Personally I hated these things, and I still don't hold the pencil quite like everyone else, but it's an idea:

http://www.thepencilgrip.com/

Ah the old fist grip. I am so disappointed looking back that the 1st grade teacher didn't teach my daughter the proper grip. The OT says it's too late to change it now.
My daughters writing still sucks too, but at least it's legible which is the real point of writing - to get the words down, not to impress.
Couild be a psychological issue? My daughter was accutely aware she couldn't do what others could do and like I said was doing similar things, with rubbing out.
Or it could really be just a physical issue. I know here for kids with major issues with writing they let them use a computer in class instead of having to write, or they let them dictate. You don't want what is really a small thing - ability to control a pencil - to disrupt her learning.

We have the writing Claw one and she used it at first but it made her hand hurt even worse so now she adamantly refuses to use it. I made an appt today for the OT to look at her writing and see if they can give me some pointers on what to do. It is a double edged sword-on one hand she needs practice, on the other too much practice will make her hate handwriting even more. I wish there was a way to make it "fun".

Shaving cream?

Maybe she could try writing with the other hand.

...Just throwing suggestions out. I have no reason to think the latter would work, and you've probably tried the former.