Question about handwriting

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Just a point of curiosity, I thought some of you whose children have dysgraphia might have come across an explanation.

Is it understood WHY writing on a line or staying within the lines on traditional kindergarten paper is so hard for some kids?

It just puzzles me. DS9 has reached the point where he knows all the shapes of the letters and his writing is quite legible, if big for his age. It's not just that he often writes his descending letters (p, g, q, etc) completely above the line -- sometimes whole words wander down to where the line is crossing through the middle of the small letters. He's never had issues with his hand getting tired or cramped, I'm guessing it's somehow related to his other visual processing issues (which made it difficult for him to learn the shapes of the letters initially.)

As an adult with almost 60 years writing experience, I never could get my hand(s) to write or print the way I would like. I was/am just very clumsy; maybe that is the neurology.

Just my opinion and not the result of scholarly study: I think it for some it is related to a difficulty in sensing and controlling what the body does in space. Fine motor skills require a very small amount of space to judge oneself and small differentials make a big difference. It takes a lot of focus for me to concentrate and make motions that stay concentrated within that small space. It is not always worth it to me to care, and when I have to, it takes a lot of focus. I think people with nice handwriting don't have to focus. They can just do it from muscle memory or something.

I am out of practice now, b/c mainly I type badly instead of writing poorly. That makes it harder. It was easier when I wrote more frequently.

ASDMom, I recall you talking about dysgraphia before. When does it cross that line from bad penmanship to issue do you think? I feel dumb even asking.... I mean is it as simple as it never clears up?

something i have wondered about for years: why is it that my handwriting/signature are so atrocious and always have been despite years and years of practice (i write a LOT by hand compared to most people nowadays), and yet i can manage to draw pretty much anything i'm looking at with realistic accuracy and detail--are not the same fine-motor skills required for both activities?

it's one of the greater mysteries of my life.

I think some of it depends on the specific issues. My son and I have never had any dyslexic writing issues, which are would be concretely different from just bad penmanship. I am not an OT, but I would think that there is an arbitrary line drawn otherwise, probably made easier if other motor skill/spatial issues are obviously present. I know when I was fighting the school to keep them from lowering the amount of OT my son got, they positioned it as an issue of degree of severity. So, if he could manage handwriting penmanship that looked as good as kids who didn't get OT, to them it was not a pressing issue.

That is why I mentioned focus, b/c they would talk about his handwriting written under circumstances that look nothing like a real class. If he is focusing on a brief piece of copy work or even dictation in a distraction free room, this is not the same as trying to take notes in a classroom full of distractions. If you are writing original text, it is even harder. especially when autistic, because you have to focus on what you are thinking, organizing those thoughts, and getting them out of your head at the same time as making your writing look legible.

There are a lot of technical, developmental fine motor skill issues which figure into it. I don't know that much about that, but like most things, there are developmental stages involved with foundational skills needed to hold the pencil correctly, etc. My son also has issues with buttons, and snaps etc. Having issues with those things correlate with the fine motor skill issues involved, but I do think spatial issues and focus figure in as well.

My motor skills are not great, but I can do the every day things I need to do, and I can write passably when I have to. When I was in elementary school, I got a gentlewoman's "Satisfactory" in penmanship except for one year when I got the "Needs Improvement" that I am sure I deserved. No one ever said anything about OT, and it probably wasn't usual to suggest it, back in antediluvian times. My teacher just made me write over and over again with little improvement. I don't know that the severity would have put my handwriting in the dysgraphia category. My hands felt tired, I hated the physical act of writing, and it looked pretty bad, but I could manage without accommodations.

Then again, probably everyone with bad handwriting has some issues in that vein or everyone's handwriting would be gorgeous.

I don't have the link, but I recall reading that drawing and writing are two different brain processes. Often when my son's handwriting looks good, though, I believe he is drawing the letters and not writing them. I mentioned it an IEP meeting, and got a lot of head nodding but no verbal confirmation, so they might have thought I was wrong.

Motor control....

is the combined effect of the primary motor cortex, a region of the cerebral cortex working in concert with the thalamus, the central pattern generators of the hindbrain and the selective, reactive and learning circuits of the cerebellum.

Added to this, written language is...

the coordinated action of Broca's and Wernicke's areas along with the primary visual cortex, thalamus (again) primary somatosensory cortex and primary motor cortex (again).

Broca's and Wernicke's areas are (usually) in the left hemisphere but there are corresponding areas in the right cortex that are responsible for prosodic production and comprehension. Prosody is often thought of as tone of voice in speech, but it also includes inflection, timing, volume, stance, etc. It is less obvious in written language but may appear in punctuation style, letter forms and other features.

So, drawing a shape is easy but writing a letter with the same shape hard--absolutely possible.

I wasn't able to write at all until I was 6. For a long time, I couldn't write on a straight line unless lines were provided for me. I learned to write cursive (badly)--but I don't use cursive any more in my writing. My writing is barely legible even now.

Your summary here makes a lot of sense to me, with all I know about my own disgraphic son. It tends to come together with hypotonia and hypermobility, and the later means that my son loses a lot of nerve signals as they reach the loose joints and, thus, those signals never reach the brain. As his OT said, he needs to move and touch to sense where his body is in space. So, your use of that concept definitely makes sense to me.

As we were told more than once, writing is a multi-task process; a lot of different complex ideas have to come together in the brain.

My son, btw, has a an excellent artistic eye. What he can't do is the precise execution, the parts that require the fine motor skills. But he can lay out a rough draft in perfect proportion.

fascinating, thank you for the explanation. there are far too many topics i wish too know more about, and not enough hours in the day to research all of them--neurology is definitely one of those topics. this darn wandering focus of mine.....

StarvingArtist - I'm NT, but I suffered from terrible handwriting as a child - when I was a young teen/ pre-teen I started doing calligraphy and it made a huge difference in the appearance of my handwriting. I'm sure I'm not as skilful an artist as you are (I'm not bad, but not good either) - but treating writing as 'art' made it easier for me and eventually I had really nice handwriting.

My son currently has awful handwriting! (Age 7) Something the school has commented on (many times) and he's clearly WELL behind his peers. The school wanted me to sit with him and erase any bad handwriting and make him do it again and again until it was neat and tidy. I absolutely refused to do so as I can still recall the agony and embarrassment I suffered when I was in 2nd grade. I don't think it helps that they take kids straight into cursive in some English schools - he has never learned to print.

You aren't looking for practical help, but you could try this: Trace the top and bottom lines with an even line of school glue and let it dry. Maybe that will help the child take more time and pay extra attention to where each letter is supposed to fit. Try to make it fun.

I was causing such problems too but in my case it was all fault of the teaching style they used on me. I just was never able to do anything that got no understandable and accurate reason.

Doing so called "trails" (writing A x100) was something I honestly hated. Every letter I wrote after the first one was looking more and more funny. It was just boring and pointless to me. I couldn't get why I have to write it again and again if am already able to write it correctly. So I was spacing out, making my parents worried. They were thinking I am unable to write the letters correctly more than a few times while I was - I just refused to do it since it was "pointless" to do so .

Another problem was the writing style they teach children. In my opinion one line was for one letter, I couldn't get why they want me to make the letters cut by lines. I was really happy once they finally let us use any notebooks we wanted (3rd grade) and I could write as I wanted - within one line. Since then I am just writing on the line. Letters like "a" take lower half of the space over line, letters like "d" touch the upper line and letters like "g" get tails under the line. My "font" is 3x smaller than the one they tried to teach me at first.

So there is only a single line on the traditional kindergarten paper? I learned to write between a lower and an upper line, with the extending bits of letters (the lower part of p/q, upper part of k/d etc) crossing the lines. It seems your son wants none of his letters to cross the line. Maybe if it is explained to him what parts of every letter go beyond the lines (lower and upper) he might understand and try to write that way. Because the way you phrased it it seems putting letters completely above the line is deliberate and not poor motor skills.
Btw, I never learned to write anything in kindergarten. It is not part of kindergarten here.