Small Motor Skills

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My 6 year old (still undiagnosed...still waiting for the stupid Regional Center) son has some fine motor skill problems and it makes it difficult and painful to write. I got some thera putty from my daughters OT and we hide little things in it for him to find before we do writing. Ive also tried video games but he gets frustrated because his fingers wont work the way he wants them to. I have him in charter school so I am, in essence, home schooling. Does anyone else have any ideas on how to help "exersise" his fingers and help with the writing?

Piano lessons?

Thats a good idea Fnord but too expensive for us.

Maybe a typing game for the computer?

This is my son's biggest issue, and either we've missed the boat despite 4 years of OT through the school or the condition simply is what it is. Typing becomes a great solution but their hands have to grow into it. My son is just now getting into typing at age 11.

What we believe is the root cause is loose joints, or what some people call hypo-mobility. Because the joints are loose, a few things happen. My son cannot get the right pressure on a pencil. And the sensory input from his fingers is lessened, because the nerve signals have to pass through the joints on the way to the brain, and not all the signals get through when the joints are loose. I was actually first alerted to this by an adult at Wrong Planet who suffers from it, and I am now sure this is the problem.

My son has always been unusually flexible, and that is probably the first clue. But not all people with the condition are, because a condition that results in rigidity can accompany this and hide the looseness.

The reality is that using the fingers is painful and stressful for many of our kids, and all the exercises in the world aren't going to change that. Not to say you shouldn't give him fun exercises to do, for muscle strength will help him, but to keep your goals realistic. My son had difficulty learning to use the hand break on his bike, still hates to tie shoes (we buy velcro), loves music but gets frustrated because he can't play at the speed dictated (they learned to play recorders at school), won't play video games because that is also affected, and so on.

Hopefully your son's condition is not as extreme as my son's is, for we are finding this a very difficult one to overcome. It holds him back in so many ways, and is the main topic of conversation at IEP's. The elementary school let him dictate or voice record assignments, but I am realizing there has been a downside to that, now that he is in middle school, in that he has never developed punctuation or capitalization habits that bear any resemblance to the correct way to do things, and the middle school is asking a lot more from him. At some point I want him to be able to communicate in writing without relying on a second person, and since he is really excited about his AlphaSmart portable typing computer, I am hoping we can clear out some of the bad habits in the near future. But this is a constant, uphill battle, and a fine line to walk. Keep him learning, keep him moving forward, while helping him work around what we now see is a real disability.

If I could go backwards, I think it would have been good to realize that this was a joint problem and to involve the pediatrician right from the start. I don't think anyone ever thought it was that serious; just an area he needed extra help with, and time to grow into. But, perhaps, being more pro-active could have done more; I have no way to know. I would discuss the potential issue of loose joints specifically with your child's pediatrician or an OT, and get a handle NOW on (a) if this is part of your son's problem and (b) if there is anything that can be proactively done about it before your son is left falling back on accomodation tools. Accomodation tools are great, don't get me wrong, but if the need can be avoided, that would be even better.

Good luck to you and your child! It really is amazing how much there is still left for the general medical community to understand about our kids.

Yeah... writing... I still write worse then a 3rd grader. Get him a keyboard, he may not be able to span the entire keyboard like an adult, but he can still type with his finger tips. I know I started typing when I was 5 years old. Back then the computers had a 5" orange phosphorus screen, and ran dos. But I learned how to navigate dos ^^. So, if I can figure out how to type at 5, he should be able to figure it out too. He probably wont be able to type as fast as an adult, but he will be able to type faster then he can write, and with much less pain.

P.S. The 'bad' typing habits of typing with my finger tips have carried over into adulthood, so I still type oddly compared to the 'proper' way. But seeing how I can type 100ish words per min, I can live with that.

Playing the piano is a good idea.
My children have a casio keyboard with light-up keys, so that one can play without actually knowing how to read music. It is quite helpful, not only for manual dexterity, but also for focus.

http://www.casio.com/products/archive/M ... s/LK-200S/

When I was in school I had a special class that like helped me with my motor skills kinda like. They had me make a ok sign with my fingers on both hands so I had two ok signs then I had to move my fingers still making the same ok sign but using every finger one by one then they had me doing that for along time then they had me close my eyes and do it.

Thank you all for your advice.....DW_ a_ Mom thanks for all that info and I will make sure to bring this up when we are having him assessed. I actually wonder if I may have the same problem....I have very flexable joints in my fingers and sometimes I have a lot of pain. I still print when I write and I hold my pencil in a strange manner. Typing is much better for me.

An Occupational Therapist is the best person to talk this over with and to plan a programme or recommend aids for your son. This is their specialist field

One more idea:

The same person who alerted me to the loose joints issue also noted that they have had some success using a sort of finger splint, which is basically a pair of rings that go over the fingers and together help firm them up. I have no idea where to get them, or what sizes are available, but it dawned on me that if a child used a tool like this while learning to write, it might allow them to avoid the bad habits that form so quickly when you cannot hold a pencil properly. If you can find the splints, I would DEFINITELY give it a try, this is such a crucial stage in your son's writing development.

It is entirely possible that you have a version of the same issue; I was told by the WP member that it is genetic, although neither my husband or I have this in any noticable fashion.

And, definitely, run it all by the OT. Hopefully you have one who is familiar with the issue.

I spoke to one of the OT's at work about finger splints ( when I saw the post about the ring finger splints from Amanda a few weeks back )
From my understanding of what the OT said, finger splints are not normally used while a child is growing and fine motor skills are still developing. Using an aid like finger splints or wrist splints prevents the child from developing those little muscles and working on as much control as it was possible for them to get. OT's work on gaining as much function as possible first, then I think they would tend to look at an aid later on, adults of course are different since they have normally reached a point where they are not going to gain a lot more function.
What about some pencil grips or larger pencils for writing ?
Hypermobility is pretty common ( especially in children with ASD), and it can certainly cause some problems if the issues that it creates with school age children and writing are not looked at. Having a really good OT is important.

Ill try the larger pencils....we tried grips on his pencils but he complained that they hurt him more. I wish he did have an OT. My 3 year old Autie daughter has OT at school and through our private insurance. Until I get a diagnosis for my son my insurance will not pay for OT or any other types of therapy and I can not afford to pay. They make it very difficult to get a diagnosis for a child after they are past the age of 5. Basically my insurance will not cover evaluation and it would cost me around one thousand dollars to get one myself...this is why we are going through the Regional Center. They are quite slow but free.

Have you requested an SST referral at school? Oh, wait, you home school / charter school? Since writing is an educational issue, the school has a vested interest in dealing with it. My son has OT through school, although the amount he gets is very limited. Still, if you have any way to access that resource, do it. It was actually the writing issue that eventually alerted us to my son's Asperger's. We started with an SST, OT review, but without having a special ed qualifier, she couldn't actually work with him, so my question was, "how do we get a special ed qualifier?"

Small manipulation toys like Leggos, tinker toys, etc are also good. My 6 y/o is in OT and they do the putty- hide coins in it, and other things like that. They also have him play with play dough and moon sand.

My 10 y/o with HFA has fine motor skill issues too- poor pencil grip that hurts her hand when writing too long- she holds it just like me BTW and I have the same problem. The only real problem we've run into is with her orchestra teacher who insists that she hold her viola bow a certain way that is painful to her. She gets marked down for her bow grip. Unfortunately, her teacher is quite insistent and won't listen to us about the HFA and fine-motor skill problems.