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Do those pencil grip thingies really work?


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So I have one child- my 1st grader- who cannot for the life of him remember to hold his pencil the right way. He writes well and his letter formation is solid. I have tried everything and now just remind him every time he goes to write something. So, do those rubber things you stick on the pencil really work? If so, which one should I choose as there are so many options?

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They never worked for me.

 

I gave my kid a cotton ball and rubber band until his grip was solid.

This is so brilliant.

 

In the school I worked at for every 5 kids who used them I would say they worked fantastic for 1, somewhat for another and not at all for 3. This, of course, is not sound scientific data but my coworker and I talked about this quite a bit.

 

The hardest to treat was those who wrote with pencil resting on ring finger instead of middle finger. I myself write this way and grips only made me cry as a kid. They have up on me much to my happiness. One of my sons writes the same way and I let him. His writing is beautiful and he doesn't get fatigue.

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A quadropod grip is fine, according to HWOT training :).

 

They recommend using really tiny crayon pieces, chalk bits, etc to develop pencil grip.

The tiny chalk and pencils really can be effective because it forces kids into a tripod grip which usually leads naturally into proper position. I had forgotten about that with HWOT. Edited by nixpix5
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What kind of grip does your child use? There are several effective variants supported by research; standard tripod isn't best for everyone.

 

"Research has shown that an ideal pencil grip is not needed for fluent handwriting. In fact, trying to change a functional adapted grip often creates problems for the child.

 

The message is: any grip that is comfortable and allows a child make small bending and straightening movements of the fingers along with very small wrist movements is acceptable.

 

Attempting to change a functional adapted grip into an ideal tripod grip will often make handwriting difficult and tiring for the child. It creates a problem rather than solving one. "

 

http://www.skillsforaction.com/handwriting/pencil-grip-overview

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I second what others are saying - there's more than one correct grip. And there's more than one type of grip correction thingy and method when a grip is genuinely incorrect - so if he actually has a bad grip, then one of the various options may work but not necessarily the one that you're thinking of.

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Thank you so much for those links. I tried everything for dd, including various grips, and finally gave up. DD is hypermobile in all her joints and it never occurred to me that it would affect her pencil grip. She holds the pencil just like in the picture, but it moves closer to a regular tripod grip when she writes in cursive.

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The "Claw" pencil grips definitely work for my 5yr old son, who could only do a fist backwards grip despite much teaching him the correct way.  Once we got the Claw grips - no more issues and he is building up the correct muscles in his hands now to hold the pencil.  You can even use them on crayons.  We learned about them from an OT website.

 

We got 6 on Amazon for under $5 but I just checked, they are now a bit pricier.

 

I did a post just now on them on our homeschool blog because I couldn't get the pictures to upload on here:

http://www.cambridgeshireacademy.com/2018/03/help-for-holding-pencil-correctly-claw.html

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