Schooling with a broken arm?

[Cake and Pi]

My 4th grader broke his dominant arm the day before yesterday.  He's not able to write or type with it yet because rotating causes too much pain. 

 

What did or would you do in this situation?  Scribe for him?  Insist he *try* to use his non-dominant hand?  Cancel the vast majority of written assignments?  Verbal responses?

 

And if you've had a kid break their radius, about how long until they felt comfortable using their hand for small tasks, writing, typing, etc?

[Arcadia]

Mine did “two finger typing†most of the time so they could still type with the non-dominant arm for public charter school assignments at that time. They could write with their non-dominant hand for math.

 

Are you homeschooling him? Then just do everything verbally for now. My oldest doesn’t like to do things verbally so he wrote with his left hand when he had a bad cut on his right hand. My youngest is too happy to have an excuse to talk and not write.

 

The free Dragon Dictation app works for my kids but not me because they talk slowly and clearly enough for the app to work well.

 

ETA;

As for recovery I don’t know. I have always been the slowest to recover while my relatives recover on time or faster than estimated.

Edited January 19, 2018 by Arcadia

[SoCal_Bear]

Google Docs, Word and Apple IOS all have talk to text features if those are an option.

[Melissa in Australia]

My ds broke his arm when he was about 8 or 9. it was not his dominant arm. He thought he would "cheat" with his math by writing the whole times tables all over his cast. Guess what, by the time he had the cast off he know them all by heart because they were in front of him 24/7

[....]

 Cancel the vast majority of written assignments?  

 

Yes, we cancelled ALL written assignments when my dd broke her arm.  

[Mommyof1]

How long did the Doctor say recovery should take? Did the Doctor mention anything about school work?

 

I would cancel all writing, for the time being.

[JudoMom]

One of mine has broken both his dominant hand and arm on separate occasions. He had short arm casts for both, and after a couple days he was able to do most things. I did cancel a writing intensive I had planned and he got out of a piano recital.

 

I will tell you to order cast covers from Amazon for the shower. We made due with duct tape and garbage bags for the first 3 broken bones, but for the last one I got the covers and they were incredible.

[theelfqueen]

When my son broke wrist and elbow requiring extensive surgery on both..he was still in public school . He would tire really easily so at the beginning of have to pick him up early. We did a lot of scribing. Switched him to felt tip pens rather than pens or pencils (require less pressure to write) and worked with his non dominant hand.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

Edited January 22, 2018 by theelfqueen

[Ellie]

He's just nine. I wouldn't worry about his writing anything. You can read aloud to him from good books, take field trips, read his history and science aloud, do mental math. He'll be fine, bless his heart.

[Alice]

My son has broken both arms. The first time was his non-dominant hand and it was during the school year but he was only 5. The second time he was older (8) and it was his dominant arm and a much worse break (both bones, displaced and had to be set under anesthesia, in a soft cast for weeks as wasn’t stable enough to change it). It was luckily (or unluckily depending) during the summer. 

 

With the first one he was able to use it pretty normally within a week. He even played Tball with it. It would have been fine for him to write with it if it had been his dominant hand. 

 

The second one was much worse and he really didn’t feel great for a few weeks, until he got the hard cast on. I would not have made him try to write and would have just done school orally. 

 

:grouphug:

[Tsuga]

My 4th grader broke his dominant arm the day before yesterday. He's not able to write or type with it yet because rotating causes too much pain.

 

What did or would you do in this situation? Scribe for him? Insist he *try* to use his non-dominant hand? Cancel the vast majority of written assignments? Verbal responses?

 

And if you've had a kid break their radius, about how long until they felt comfortable using their hand for small tasks, writing, typing, etc?

What is it with 4th grade and broken arms?

 

I broke my arm that year too.

 

I wrote with my left, haltingly, until I could write with my right. I think that was about four weeks. My stepdaughter also wrote with her left in fourth grade.

 

I would give him a couple days since you have that flexibility and minimize writing but have him continue math with the left.