Need suggestions for high schooler with terrible printing, please

[iammommy]

My high school ds has miniature, (and I mean miniature) and sloppy writing.  I've been lenient the past year or so, but I would like to help him improve his writing.. Any suggestions on a handwriting (not cursive) program that might be tolerable by a high schooler? He'd resist something meant for young elementary kids. It's not a handwriting disability, it's his ADD wanting to rush through it as fast as he can, so he will exaggerate how looooooong it takes him to print larger.Thanks!

[PeterPan]

Has he had an OT eval?  Does his hand hurt when he writes?  Is his motor planning for the writing automatic?  That's what I would be checking before you make any assumptions.  The hyper-miniature writing is probably him trying to get control, so the question is WHY he doesn't have control.  Some randomly chosen program might be good in general but it might not help if his real issue is weight shifting or low tone or something you're not clued into.

 

Fastest way to sort all that out is with an OT eval.  Around here you can get one with the ps by making a written request (yes, even for a high schooler, I just did) or you can get one privately for $80.

[Heathermomster]

According to our last OT, 50% of kiddos with motor planning issues will have ADHD.  Definitely seek an OT eval and consider accommodation.

[OneStepAtATime]

Agree, you might seriously want to get an OT eval.  If there IS an underlying issue, then targeting that underlying issue may net much better results than just trying a random handwriting program.  There are so many little things that add up to proper handwriting.  If any one of those little things is off, then handwriting can be off.   ADD/ADHD is frequently co-morbid with genuine handwriting issues but it is often hard for a layman to determine what the true underlying issues may be.  

 

Good luck, OP.  

[City Mouse]

Handwriting without tears has Can do cursive and Can Do Printing that are geared for 5 th grade and up. I am using it with my 7th grader. The books are identical except except for the print or cursive. Part of the print book does work on reading cursive and translating it into print.

[iammommy]

Thanks everybody. He has had an OT eval, and they didn't find anything wrong. He used to have very nice handwriting. I'm pretty sure he is just writing small and quickly to get it done. I will look at the HWT printing program. Thanks!

[PeterPan]

What I did with my dd around that age was to have a sit down with Jesus kind of talk where we got real about her handwriting.  We figured out what letters she *couldn't* make legibly, which she could, and we worked through the whole alphabet.  Adults, which our kids are becoming, do not write one particular script or even just cursive or just manuscript.  Adults write a blend, and it usually has some personal style.  So I told her to channel an elf and develop elf letters (Tolkien-esque) and things she could actually write.  That way it's HERS.

 

Who did his OT eval?  If it was the school, the question was whether he qualified for therapy, not whether he needed it.  The ps standard is 1.5 deviations below the mean.  My dd is right on that line, even now.  She doesn't qualify for OT for the school, but clearly it's a problem for her, a serious relative weakness.  She types anything she can.  

 

 

[Julie of KY]

My son with severe dysgraphia and handwriting issues had multiple "normal" OT evaluations. What helped him was vision therapy of all things - he has phenomenal visual spacial mental skills, but very poor real-life spacial judgement which severely impacted handwriting as well as other things.

[PeterPan]

My son with severe dysgraphia and handwriting issues had multiple "normal" OT evaluations. What helped him was vision therapy of all things - he has phenomenal visual spacial mental skills, but very poor real-life spacial judgement which severely impacted handwriting as well as other things.

Julie, just to rabbit trail on this a minute, this ds is also dyslexic, yes?  And were they working on things like convergence, focusing, tracking, depth perception, etc., or were they working on more visual processing?  (speed, figure completion, visual memory, etc.)  I'm just asking, because the COVD doc keeps saying ds' convergence is fine and then suggesting we do a full eval anyway.  I've gone through some of the notebook of work with him, and a lot of stuff he can blow through.  Now in his case turns out he has several retained primitive reflexes, one of which definitely, definitely affects vision.  I've just been trying to sort out data points in my mind.  The COVD doc will say voodoo things about how from their perspective dyslexia is a vision problem (baloney), and I've talked with people whose only issue, as far as they knew, was dyslexia, who got no progress with their VT.  On the other hand, it's unlikely to say VT issues couldn't be impacting the dc's function, mercy.  

 

So I was just curious what your ds actually did in his therapy, what the focus was.  

 

And for the op, hopefully that's not too confusing.  My first dc did VT, so I'm a HUGE fan of VT.  I've just never been really precisely clear that my ds (dyslexic and more) needs it and I was interested to know what Julie's VT doc was working on.

[Julie of KY]

Julie, just to rabbit trail on this a minute, this ds is also dyslexic, yes?  And were they working on things like convergence, focusing, tracking, depth perception, etc., or were they working on more visual processing?  (speed, figure completion, visual memory, etc.)  I'm just asking, because the COVD doc keeps saying ds' convergence is fine and then suggesting we do a full eval anyway.  I've gone through some of the notebook of work with him, and a lot of stuff he can blow through.  Now in his case turns out he has several retained primitive reflexes, one of which definitely, definitely affects vision.  I've just been trying to sort out data points in my mind.  The COVD doc will say voodoo things about how from their perspective dyslexia is a vision problem (baloney), and I've talked with people whose only issue, as far as they knew, was dyslexia, who got no progress with their VT.  On the other hand, it's unlikely to say VT issues couldn't be impacting the dc's function, mercy.  

 

So I was just curious what your ds actually did in his therapy, what the focus was.  

 

 

 

Yes my son is severely dysgraphic and also dyslexic, but he reads 100+ novels per year. He also tests in the gifted range and self-accomodates for many of his difficulties. He had trouble with "textbook" reading which the COVD doc said was actually probably from the fact that he spent so little time per word, etc. My COVD doc recommends an eval if the child is not meeting what you think is their potential. My doc says a lot of kids are misdiagnosed with dyslexia when is might only by a convergence problem, but he's quick to say that a lot of kids also have language processing problems which VT will not help.

 

Convergence went from normal to excellent with VT. Worked on paying attention to every little word on the page and discrimination.

 

Worked a lot on depth perception. Before VT he tested at 99% in visual spacial, but his real life spacial skills were poor - who knew? When asked to guess with a piece of string how wide a microwave was - he'd guess 10 inches rather than 30 - he's a teenager and uses the microwave everyday. He couldn't begin to guess how many steps it took to cross a room. MY COVD doc said my son was "lost in space" and probably had no idea how far away the paper was for writing and then had poor spacial judgement of letter size. I bit the bullet and paid a bunch of money for VT - he recommended 30 weeks of therapy and at about 20 weeks my son started picking up a pen and writing by his choice for the first time in his life at age 15. His writing is not neat, but it is legible and he can now fill out a form, write notes for a rough draft, and write down his own math problems. :)

 

[PeterPan]

Yes my son is severely dysgraphic and also dyslexic, but he reads 100+ novels per year. He also tests in the gifted range and self-accomodates for many of his difficulties. He had trouble with "textbook" reading which the COVD doc said was actually probably from the fact that he spent so little time per word, etc. My COVD doc recommends an eval if the child is not meeting what you think is their potential. My doc says a lot of kids are misdiagnosed with dyslexia when is might only by a convergence problem, but he's quick to say that a lot of kids also have language processing problems which VT will not help.

 

Convergence went from normal to excellent with VT. Worked on paying attention to every little word on the page and discrimination.

 

Worked a lot on depth perception. Before VT he tested at 99% in visual spacial, but his real life spacial skills were poor - who knew? When asked to guess with a piece of string how wide a microwave was - he'd guess 10 inches rather than 30 - he's a teenager and uses the microwave everyday. He couldn't begin to guess how many steps it took to cross a room. MY COVD doc said my son was "lost in space" and probably had no idea how far away the paper was for writing and then had poor spacial judgement of letter size. I bit the bullet and paid a bunch of money for VT - he recommended 30 weeks of therapy and at about 20 weeks my son started picking up a pen and writing by his choice for the first time in his life at age 15. His writing is not neat, but it is legible and he can now fill out a form, write notes for a rough draft, and write down his own math problems. :)

 

Ok, so what were they DOING for the spatial?  I've got the therapy notebooks for regular stuff and visual processing that our VT place uses.  (DD had therapy years ago.)  There's just nothing there that rocket blast seems like it would work on that, kwim?  So they did tracking exercises to slow down his reading?  On what is he reading 100+ novels a year?  Print or etext?  That is WILD.  Did you do RAN/RAS work or he's just a really fast processor?  He did Barton?  What is his comprehension like?  Did he have issues when he was younger and then they faded when it clicked?

 

Oh, you said you worked a lot on depth perception.  The regular packet has depth perception stuff, with the circles and whatnot.  I think when I started going through the materials with him I just didn't get that far.  I started with convergence things, saw he was able to do what we tried (this was a year ago) and went oh good, fine, check.  

 

And I totally agree, when you improve vision skills on someone who is average, that strength can help make up for some other things that are weak, making them more functional overall.  I hadn't thought through it that way.  

 

I don't think I can do much on it right now, simply because we have so many other things we're trying to do.  Thanks for explaining though, because now I know what I'm looking for to move it up to the someday pile.  Right now I have other problems, like intonation/prosody, sigh.  It's never just one thing, lol.

[Julie of KY]

Ok, so what were they DOING for the spatial?  I've got the therapy notebooks for regular stuff and visual processing that our VT place uses.  (DD had therapy years ago.)  There's just nothing there that rocket blast seems like it would work on that, kwim?  So they did tracking exercises to slow down his reading?  On what is he reading 100+ novels a year?  Print or etext?  That is WILD.  Did you do RAN/RAS work or he's just a really fast processor?  He did Barton?  What is his comprehension like?  Did he have issues when he was younger and then they faded when it clicked?

 

Oh, you said you worked a lot on depth perception.  The regular packet has depth perception stuff, with the circles and whatnot.  I think when I started going through the materials with him I just didn't get that far.  I started with convergence things, saw he was able to do what we tried (this was a year ago) and went oh good, fine, check.  

 

And I totally agree, when you improve vision skills on someone who is average, that strength can help make up for some other things that are weak, making them more functional overall.  I hadn't thought through it that way.  

 

I don't think I can do much on it right now, simply because we have so many other things we're trying to do.  Thanks for explaining though, because now I know what I'm looking for to move it up to the someday pile.  Right now I have other problems, like intonation/prosody, sigh.  It's never just one thing, lol.

 

He doesn't fit your typical dyslexic - I originally taught him to read with Reading Reflex and some other material for dyslexics just because I liked the material (and got really lucky by teaching him reading explicitly). I wrote off a lot of the early reading difficulties as it's my first time to teach reading, but now I know better. He masks a lot of his reading difficulties by how smart he is. The first time someone told me that he was dyslexic I thought they were crazy - I've since been told my others and neuropsych testing, but (non-textbook) reading has not been a problem. He tests in the >99% in comprehension with a 1st percentile speed - crazy numbers on both ends. He's an avid reader of print books. Textbook reading is completely different and he couldn't do it which he was much older before we figured that out. I have two younger kids that are severely dyslexic and use Barton.

 

VT - lots of depth perception

Tracking exercises to learn skills important to textbook reading where you actually have to read and process every word/number (he mostly had difficulty with reading math/physics which I always read aloud since I also needed to scribe - figuring out he couldn't "read" the math problems well but could listen and do all the work in his head took awhile to sort out; he's my kid that won a four year scholarship based on math in 8th grade but could barely write his name)

 

Lots of "easy" visual-spacial work at home - lots of taking string and guessing how long an object across the room is and then going and seeing how close you are to being correct; LOTS of step counting - how many steps to cross the room, how many steps long is the driveway?, how many steps to get across the yard?; Lots of throwing a beanbag to land on another

 

It's really hard to explain to a smart teen how step counting and throwing beanbags will help with writing - but it did!!!

 

[Guest2]

If his ADD is making him rush through it, will a different printing program help? Does anything help the rushing? Does he do better after exercise especially pushups( shoulder stability) or at different times of day? It is pretty difficult to teach someone that has been writing for a long time to change the way they handwrite . It may not be necessary if speed is the issue? Idk

My NT son pretty much typed everything in high school, but we homeschooled and I'm not sure if that is typical.

[Junie]

One thing that helped my ds with his handwriting (math, especially) was using graph paper.  One number or letter per box.  Legibility improved dramatically.  Maybe this would work with your ds?  

[kbutton]

Good luck. My husband has good fine motor skills (he sutures for a living), but he feels like he still draws letters rather than having them come out automatically. This is a common theme among his family members. He writes very tiny stuff. It would be legible if it were larger, but he literally leaves no room for error. And of course, he likes a gel pen, so small becomes almost a blob. He thinks Dragon is the best thing since sliced bread and would like it at home if he had to write more here. 

 

I know my teachers in high school encouraged people with poor handwriting to write in all caps, but make the first letter of capitalized words larger than the other letters. A number of people took them up on the suggestion.

 

I think having a come to Jesus moment about individual letters and what works is good. My son's dysgraphia is annoying but not radically intrusive. I try not to overburden him with writing tasks, and in turn, he agreed to start forming all his letters consistently and with efficient pen strokes so that they would become more fluid. It has helped, and in the meantime, he's getting proficient with typing.

[Mom22ns]

I'm a bit late on this but you might consider Fix it Write.