What causes poor handwriting?

[ally]

My daughter was adopted at age 7 from Ethiopia with her sister who was 5 at time. She is now 9 and has the worst handwriting (printing). She writes very large and presses down way too hard. Her younger sister has very neat handwriting. She does not hurry so that's not the issue. In fact, she writes very slowly. In spite of a lot of practice and instruction, it still looks like a very young child's messy printing. I'm hesitant to try cursive since she's struggling so much with printing. She doesn't have poor fine motor skills in other areas and actually is quite a good artist! I'm totally stumped with how to remedy this. Any suggestions?

[calandalsmom]

It can be a lot of things, including muscle memory- maybe its still an effort to move her hand in the correct way to make the letters because her muscle memory is not well formed.

 

Cursive is sometimes easier for kids who have trouble printing.

[monalisa]

You might try this if you aren't using it already. Even start w/ the K book (It doesn't say K on it for the very reason that its often used by older kids - I think the title is "My Printing Book").

Apparently HWT is really good for remedial handwriting issues.

 

FWIW, my dd who was adopted at 1 from China has similar issues as yours, but is only 7. When she was in K and the teacher told me she had poor fine motor skills I was shocked, because in everything other than writing her fine motor skills are great. I have used HWT with her with some success.

[Jennefer@SSA]

My daughter was adopted at age 7 from Ethiopia with her sister who was 5 at time. She is now 9 and has the worst handwriting (printing). She writes very large and presses down way too hard. Her younger sister has very neat handwriting. She does not hurry so that's not the issue. In fact, she writes very slowly. In spite of a lot of practice and instruction, it still looks like a very young child's messy printing. I'm hesitant to try cursive since she's struggling so much with printing. She doesn't have poor fine motor skills in other areas and actually is quite a good artist! I'm totally stumped with how to remedy this. Any suggestions?

 

Usually kids that push down way too hard have poor muscle control, especially in the shoulders. My ds8 was a very late crawler and only crawled for a few weeks before he started walking. Unfortunately most kids need that extended crawl time on hands and knees to build arm/shoulder/torso-trunk strength that will last them all their lives! Of course I didn't learn any of this until we were in OT several years later. One of our biggest exercises was getting ds on the floor as a 5/6 year old and playing "crawling" type games. Low muscle tone can also be a factor in why she is pushing so hard. She has no other way to control the pencil.

 

If you know of an OT (a friend or acquaintance) who would be wiling to talk with you, you could pick their brain in a short time and get tons of great ideas to help. If you had to just schedule a one time appointment with one and pay for that one session it would be worth it. You can just google this topic and find lots of help online as well.

 

When you say she is a great artist, is her preferred medium pencil or is it painting or something else? Using a brush would require different muscles to be used than a pencil and that super-fine motor control needed for handwriting.

[ElizabethB]

You could try different types of pens instead of a pencil.

[MistyJ]

When my dd was in ps, she pressed too hard. The teacher said it was a developmental stage. She was in 1st at the time, I believe.

 

This dc still doesn't have great writing, but a lightbulb finally went off (a post on this forum helped) to sit with her and have her write just one letter neatly 3 times. Eureka! We've been doing a few letters a day this week.

[PenKase]

Pencil grip. Pencil grip. Pencil grip. Fine motor skills are key when dealing with penmanship. We also used HWT and it made a world of difference in my dd5's penmanship.

[SonshineLearner]

Cursive is easier, and should be what most students learn first.... (based on studies I believe...). Did she do any writing in Ethiopia? ...I have no idea what their "letters" are like..... but maybe try a simple cursive. From another recent post... put a computer mouse pad under her paper. Use a good pencil grip...

 

Good Luck..

Carrie:-)