Handwriting help for 8 year old?

Binxy

Magentasue wrote:

Well, dyspraxia was diagnosed through some OT tests (like picking up small objects, balancing, catching etc) and history. He was a classic case - fussy baby, difficulty starting solids, fussy about chewing, unable to dress himself, couldn't pedal a trike or bike or catch a ball, unable to manage knife and fork, disorganised, unintelligible speech until he started school (years of speech therapy) and so on.

Also not much of a joiner, has always had one or two 'best friends' rather than a group although he has found socialising easier as he got older.

Uncanny. You just described my lad to a tee.

Murtle

good luck at getting it resolved, thought I'd just add here throughout my school years I was picked on my teachers for my poor handwriting. Luckily I was quite resiliant, but it did have an affect and I always tried harder. My OH now has dreadful handwriting, he told his teacher when he was at school.....tough!!!! He missed his vocation as a doctor!!!!

What I'm trying to say is that handwriting isn't the be all and end all, but I hope he gets to a level he is happy with or to a point he can say tough

x x

Prudent

I am sorry to tell you that your wait for OT may be lenghty. Its around 18 months in my area.

I am a special needs teacher and can suggest a couple of quick things I use to help children improve their pencil control.

Firstly (and your ot may well suggest this) is to purchase a special grip pencil from Faber Castell: http://www.dickblick.com/zz204/00/
These are excellent and make a real difference to the ease with which children can physically write. WH Smiths stock them. You can also get colouring pencils in the same range.

Secondly make or buy play dough. This will improve hand strength and flexibilty. Make sausages, snakes etc Roll into a ball and pinch it into hedgehogs.Flatten it out into a pancake. Just have loads of fun!

Thirdly (and this is a bit more pricey) get a whiteboard from https://www.brightminds.co.uk at £9.99. They have ones which have the letters written on one side in correct script. Ask your child to trace over them for five or ten minutes a day. I purchased this for a child with severe hand writing difficulties and got unexpectedly good results. I have been getting some remarkable results ever since.It is self correcting and can be done in class while the teacher is doing the register nad dinners etc so no teaching time is lost.

Magentasue

http://www.dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/index.htm

My son wasn't diagnosed until he was in secondary school - when I first found out about it, everything fell into place. And I'm a teacher! Dyspraxia was never mentioned when I trained and I was forever explaining what it was at my son's parents' evenings.

culpepper

My boy had really terrible handwriting when he was younger.One thing that helped was we played drawing games.I would draw a dragon and he had to draw the wavy body.Id draw a snail head and he'd do the spirally shell.He especially loved those 'dog fight' pictures of biplanes and would spend ages drawing 'bombs'(circles) gun fire(dashes) and swirly smoke,the landscapes were spikey mountains,wavy sea and tufty grass.His writing is quite twiddley still but at least legible.

Savvy_Sue

Binxy wrote:

Their standards are ridiculously high, and short of wanting him to conform for their assessment requirements, they couldn't care less.

That's because it's assessed as part of SATS, isn't it?

I see someone else has suggested special pencils, I was also going to suggest that kind of thing. There is a funny shaped one I've seen which seems to have a 'beak' at the business end, and also one shaped like a Y with a short upright. Neither cheap, but perhaps worth investigating?

RichyRich

My handwriting is terrible. It's nothing medical; it's just that I'm bone idle, lazy and need to write quickly (including my own version of shorthand, which involves cutting words off half way through, slashes through the middle of words, words joined up into each other so I don't have to take my pen off the page, completely illegible about 5 minutes after I have read it, even to me!).

My teachers at school tried to get me to write neatly (this was before 'shorthand') and I would for a few days but then would slip back into spider-mode. By the age of 9 I was able to tell them that "intelligent people have bad handwriting"

I would second what has been said about tracing/copying letters/words though. I don't doubt that laziness is not the reason for your son's handwriting (just wanted to tell you my reason) so any outside help would obviously assist. Have you got the font "Futura" on your system? It is about the closest to a standard letter formation that I can find - i.e. 'a's and 'g's as you're taught to write them as opposed to the Roman versions. if you printed them off in something like 48pt it might make it easier, and dropping down a few point sizes each day/week/month.

I dunno if this would help, but I hope so!

Rich

patchwork_cat

hi
My daughter is 8 and her hand writing is terrible. She hasn't been diagnosed with any condition, although she is very clumsy too.

The teachers keep going on about it, but she has loads of confidence on the whole, whereas her older brother has none. I feel that he has none because everyone expected perfection and unfortunaetly concentrated on bad points and not good. I don't want this to happen to my daughter - her writing will come and even if it doesn't in this day and age of computers I can see a time where it won't matter. Her latest teacher agreed with me that it isn't a great probelm in the scheme of things.

Kitikat

After years of knowing myself that my 9 year old son has dyspraxia and discussing this with several different professionals, ranging from health visitors, teachers, gp's and paediatricians only to be told boys don't have nice handwriting or all boys can't be good at football, he has finally been formally diagnosed. He is now on the waiting list for occupational therapy and I am now in a position were I can insist that the school give him an individual education plan. I am going to see the school next week and am currently trying to work out what I am able to ask the school to do for my son, as they have a reputation of not offering unless asked when it comes to any kind of special education needs. If anybody has any experience I would appreciate any advice at all.

I am trying to help my son myself eg. karate classes, trampolining and he can now ride his bike competently, his balance has improved dramatically over the past year. I am also teaching him to type.

I was interested in Magentasue's post as her son seems just like what I am hoping for mine in 11 years time. Because my lad's handwriting is bad but his maths is good we would obviously encourage him in that direction.

Binxy - my son is also a very bright lad but he doesn't get numbers and letters back to front. I don't know enough about it to be sure but that sounds to me more like dyslexia, although I believe many people are both dyslexic and dyspraxic. If you think that your son has either of these don't give up until you find the correct person to diagnose him. For us, in the end we got satisfaction from our community paediatric department. But I had to go around asking other people who had children with dyspraxia who was the best person to see and then go to the GP and ask for a referal. My son is now a lot happier knowing that it isn't his fault that he can't play football or write very well. Best of luck.

Sorry I think I may have ranted on a bit, but this is so close to my heart.

$17mma

Hi Binxy

Does your son like using the computer? There was a programme that we bought from Toys R Us for our son, (cant remember the name of it though sorry)

It had a USB pen and a disk and you would use the pen instead of the mouse to write letters draw shapes, play ox etc...it is a playing environment so the child does not actually realise that he/she is learning so it is less of a chore for them but more fun..

If he enjoys computers this will be really good for his pen control. Have a look in your local Toys R Us store.