Handwriting and Buttoning - Fine motor skill question

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Hello,
My son does really poorly with his fine motor skills. He is 5 years old and still unable to button his own clothes, can't hold a pencil/crayon and can't cut with a scissors. He did a test regarding his fine motor skills and he was found to be in the bottom 1% of all of the students his age. However, we recently got a letter stating that he has been discharged from occupational therapy. (The letter didn't state any particular reason for the discharge- It was quite a surprise to both me and my husband.)

I have been trying my best to help my son learn the basic skills he needs but it has been a long road already and I don't want him to get frustrated.

He's in piano classes and he's really great with the piano- his teacher's complaints are that he is too slow and deliberate and that he should have more 'fun' with his pieces. I'm just happy he's willing to go to classes and to practice. I think it has helped increase his muscle strength in his fingers and that his co-ordination is improving.

When it comes to the handwriting or buttoning though... Are there any tips or tricks that I can use to help him???
Thanks.

Piano lessons would be great for strength and dexterity! That's really cool that he will do them. My guys have adamantly refused any type of music lessons due to their sound sensitivity.

My sons had/have similar difficulties. Buttons are still difficult and frustrating for them. We buy clothes with as few as possible. Snaps, zippers and even drawstrings are all easier for them to manage. Practise helps, as long as it is fun. We did a lot of crafts involving scissors, which they really struggled to learn how to use, but now use proficiently, and whenever we could include printing and drawing in our fun and games at home we did. They liked making lists of their favourite things, and now make up games with detailed character, weapon, ability etc. lists. Tracing over pictures of their favourite characters/animals etc. on tracing paper was another activity they liked.

One of my sons still has very poor printing/handwriting, and the other can be very neat, but is laboriously slow when doing it. But I figure that in this age of technology, it just isn't an important skill anymore (no matter what the teachers say ). Basic keyboard and computer skills are far more important, and there is voice recognition software if your son cannot attain proficient typing skills. One of the first things we changed after getting the AS dx, was to get the teacher to stop pushing the printing and modify some of the homework requiring lots of it. As long as they can scrawl a simple note to themselves when necessary as adults, the rest will be done on computers anyway.

it is important to find similar activity (similar to writing and cutting) that makes sense for your boy. I aagree that piano is a great start but probably something else along the lines of squeezing and pinching would be even better to strenghten the hand muscles. I know they did playdough with my son for the same purpose. However was not interested in it and all the cutting and painting.
he made a great improvement when we started letters. he loved writing his name so basically a child that could not draw a cross did great with letters. he can write most of them now and enjoys writing words however would refuse to draw a picture or just paint (now we are teching him a structured way to draw).
they tend to do "fun" stuff in schools and OC to keep students interested however for a structured child it is easier to do a structured work so try to find somethingthat makes sense for him (maybe toy tool box to repair his airplane or something). for us 5 mins a day of writing letters did wonders.
and please try to stay positive despite these low scores because they make mistakes too. a child with anxiety he will score lower there than in home.

Percussion and piano helped me a lot... took me years to tie my shoes, to be honest. As for handwriting... well, mine is atrocious. The more freedom I give myself in writing, the more legible I get. As a result, a page of my writing might look like 5 people wrote it instead of one, as the shapes shift and change. Try to adjust your expectations, and look at the strengths over 'deficiencies'.

[edit] To get started on percussion, all you need is some silly putty and some drum sticks - just make sure that it is understood that the putty is the only thing one hits with the sticks right now. Good for muscle development in wrists and fingers. [/edit]


M.

I think its wonderful that your son enjoys piano. Anything he does that requires him to use his fingers in a skilled way will help with muscle development. We considered piano for my son, but he wasn't excited enough about for us to pull it all together (first step, we don't have a piano or any space for one, so it was a little complicated).

My son has a co-morbid that has hindered his motor skills a lot, and it was actually an adult on this forum that tuned me into it. The adult here referred to it as hypermobility, which is basically loose joints. That issue, by and of itself, can never be solved; the ramifications can only be mitigated. Stronger muscles helps, as well as work-arounds. Handwriting has always been literally painful for my son, and he now keyboards on an alphasmart at school.

Keep him on the piano, give him squeeze toys, encourage him to draw (my son has an amazing artistic eye, its cleaning up the details he cannot do), and encourage him to mold with clay (my son's handicap is far less apparent in clay, and his artistic eye gets to shine more). Beyond that, however, be prepared that writing may prove incredibly difficult for him, and accommodations may be required. Don't push any of it to the point where he gets frustrated and wants to give up; keep it gentle.

It is really hard to see those reports, isn't it? But they don't define your child. Remember that.

You should think about getting him some k'nex. Those things are loads of fun, and require a good bit of fine motor coordination. You can get loads of them off eBay for cheep.

My older son loved to build with K'nex they even have cars with little motors. Hours of fun out of one kit because you can rebuil them a new way when your done with the first. What bothers me about the first post is they never told you why he's no longer gettting ot. If it's a school in the US this in not legal to cut him off with our notice you also have to agree to in a IEP meeting if he's not on a Iep get him on one before next school year. They will have to provide him with ot because he clearly needs it. Don't be afraid to pull the laws out and slap them on someones desk sometimes we've got to be the B*** to get what our kids need. I hope this helps a little best of luck.

Legos and tinkertoys helped me when I was a kid... horribly clumsy starting at age five or so then gradually improved the fine motor skill over time. Working with the smaller pieces helped, but models were the bane of my existence.


M.

I have issues with putting thread into a sewing needle...I tried doing that to fix a pair of my pants but havent been able to, due to poorness in that section of motor skills.It's strange..I can drive a vehicle and I have a drivers license but I can't do something as simple as putting a sewing thread in a needle.I have horrible handwriting.It is just legible enough to read for study purposes....I handwrite for my lecture notes in college.Luckily for tests, the instructors are able to read my writing.Its crappy but at least its legible enough that college instructors can read it.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful responses!! !
It is so good to know baby J and I are not alone in facing these challenges. Thankfully, he's wonderful with a computer but we'll have to wait until grade 1 to put that in his IEP. Annotated_alice, my son actually asked me 'why do people have to write when we have computers and blackberries'? Sometimes I think he's too smart for his own good. lol

CRD, we are in Toronto and hubby and I are still baffled as to why the OT was cut off. No notice was given to us and they had actually given us 84 pages of 'homework' to do over the summer holidays. I thought it was a bit extreme for them to give a student going into SK so many pages but I divided up the pages into 2 or 3 for each week day that he doesn't have full-day camp. The ending of his OT is probably for the best because baby J didn't really like the occupational therapist and I just signed up to do the "Handwriting without tears" workshop so I'll be able to work with him one-on-one myself.

AnotherOne, I will definitely keep it to 5 minutes a day of practice for baby J. I think that any time over that would actually be counter productive and I wouldn't want him to get overwhelmed. The assignments that they gave are pretty boring and don't hold his attention at all. I'll probaby do something that I think is more "him" where we can focus on a list of trains that he wants to look up or something like that (instead of writing the same letter over and over).

DW_a_mom, I especially love your idea of having him draw. He doesn't usually draw anything BUT he loves trains and he loves planning subways and telling me where they should put in new routes. Hubby tried once to show him how to draw a plan but he didn't follow through with it. I think now would be a good time to try again especially since my son recently declared he wants to be a civil engineer. It would fit right in with his obsession and we don't have any computer programs at home where he would argue with us that it's better to do it on the computer instead of doing it by hand.

My son is resistant to using playdough, but for some reason he was willing to use clay. We did a workshop at one of the museums here and he actually enjoyed making things to take home. (He used some of the molds that they have) He LOVED seeing how his piece looked with the glaze.

Makuranososhi, I have to admit - I didn't learn how to tie my own shoes till I was a teen. I am just glad that they make slip on shoes and shoes with velcro. My own handwriting changes too. The very first bit on a page looks beautiful, but by the time you get to the bottom of the page you can barely make it out. I think my son gets his handwriting difficulties from me since I actually had to use sandpaper to learn how to write. My teacher would make me use crayons on top of sandpaper so I could 'feel' it. I tried using a similar technique with baby J but he doesn't like how it feels.

Tracker, I'll look up the k'nex to see if there's anything that he'll be interested in. Sounds like a great toy!

Tory_canuck, I was trying to post a description of how I got over my own needle-threading thing but my explanation was getting too wordy and it makes much more sense with pictures. I found a link which explains how to use a needle threader. It is a wonderful little invention which I thought was just pure magic when I first learnt about it.
http://sewing.about.com/od/notions/ss/n ... reader.htm