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My son, currently in Preparing is really struggling with handwriting. While very neat, it's physically difficult for him to do it. When he's done he often complains of his hand hurting. While he's never been diagnosed with any type of learning disability, I feel he does have some dyslexic tendencies, and over the past year had ended up setting aside handwriting (the last half of the cheerful cursive book) to beef up skills like reading, spelling, and math. Now that I feel we're back on track, or at least making strides in the right direction with those areas, I'm realizing that we need to do some serious concentration on handwriting.

I'd like some input on how to attack this-here are some options that have crossed my mind; and feel free to dive in with others that I haven't thought of!
1. Scrap the cursive that we've done so far and start over with the Italic Cursive option. I think he may have done better with something that's less flowery, and closer to manuscript-style letters. I originally chose CC because I wanted him to be able to read cursive, and I think we've gotten that out of it!
2. Continue our current path-following the handwriting recommendations in the Preparing. He's been doing dictation, narrations, and notebooking in print, and Draw/Write Through History in cursive about half the time. I could just require the copywork to always be done in cursive. He has not ever successfully completed an entire page of the copywork (we're not too far into Preparing yet, only unit 6). I set the timer for him to write (he's at 8 minutes right now) and he this week he wrote at a rate of 12 cursive words in that time, or 25 manuscript words. Is it possible that he'll just grow into this being easier for him? I think I'd hoped that his struggles were just because he was a boy, and slower to develop these skills.
3. Try to finish the Cheerful Cursive, adding it to our current requirements in Preparing.

With my own son, he did go to OT for a time period. It helped tremendously with hand strength. They had different stiffnesses of putty and he would have different exercises that he completed with it. That helped him gain a lot of hand strength.

As for doing the copywork in cursive, my son is only going to finish half of cheerful cursive before starting Preparing. When he does Preparing, I am planning to only have him do the writing in the Drawing and Writing through History book in cursive. All the rest of the copywork for him will be completed in Print. I am not sure if I will ever make him do copywork in cursive mainly because of a lot of other things going on with him. Read and spelling have never come easy to him and I want to be sure to have plenty of time for that. But if I find that half way through the guide he is ready for the cursive, then we will switch. But other than that, I am planning on printing for the time being. Just a quick question for you though - did you finish Bigger as written other than the writing? If not, then I would plan to take some of Preparing slowly. It seems like the volume of writing in Bigger is great prep-work for Preparing.

One last thing that really seems to have helped my son with his finger strength is playing instruments. He (along with my girls) have been playing the piano for almost 2 years now. We love it. It seems like it has helped him build up his muscles and gain some dexterity. He isn't the most advanced player but he has made serious strides in his abilities.

Thanks for the feedback. We did do Bigger as written, except we haven't added in DITHOR and its writing requirements. He also has started piano; and we're currently in OT for vision, and they've incorporated some gross and fine motor control exercises; I'm just not seeing the drastic improvements in his handwriting abilities that I saw a few months ago with his reading abilities when the Therapy started. His therapist did mention OT for his writing the other day being a possible avenue for us, but I'm just not sure that's the way we need to go right now.

I totally understand your thoughts on the fine motor therapy. We have had times when we have had to take breaks because it just becomes overwhelming and it is also expensive.

Has your ds been evaluated for dyslexia? I see from your post that he's undergoing visual OT so there could be more to his struggles that need help. What signs are you seeing? Kids that have LDs or even other struggles (like vision) tend to mature later and it takes more time to bring all those skills together. He could have dyslexia and he could have dysgraphia - which is a writing issue. If that is the case, no matter how much cursive instruction you give, it is going to be a major problem and that alone may further delay his progress. Take a look at right brain/visual spatial learners and see if he might fit in that class of learning. Those kids tend to write later and it is a struggle although they suddenly take off with reading. I know handwriting is important and the newsfeeds are filled with the fact that schools are no longer teaching cursive but unfortunately, some kids may benefit from typing and having mom scribe - especially when learning those narration skills. I'm a mom to 3 dyslexics (one of which is hearing impaired) and visual spatial/RB learner who is maturing slowly and struggles with handwriting. One of my dyslexics is dysgraphic and learning to type has been the key to his academic success. Yes, he can write and I've seen gradual improvement but boy does it take a long time and a lot of patience. If you suspect dyslexia or even dysgraphia, if possible, get some professional evaluations. Those are key in establishing the paper trail needed for later accommodations when high school (testing/SAT/ACT) come up and later on in college. You'll both feel better about it if you have some clear understanding of what he's struggling with and how you can help him.

1shortmomof4 wrote:Has your ds been evaluated for dyslexia? I see from your post that he's undergoing visual OT so there could be more to his struggles that need help. What signs are you seeing? Kids that have LDs or even other struggles (like vision) tend to mature later and it takes more time to bring all those skills together. He could have dyslexia and he could have dysgraphia - which is a writing issue. If that is the case, no matter how much cursive instruction you give, it is going to be a major problem and that alone may further delay his progress. Take a look at right brain/visual spatial learners and see if he might fit in that class of learning. Those kids tend to write later and it is a struggle although they suddenly take off with reading. I know handwriting is important and the newsfeeds are filled with the fact that schools are no longer teaching cursive but unfortunately, some kids may benefit from typing and having mom scribe - especially when learning those narration skills. I'm a mom to 3 dyslexics (one of which is hearing impaired) and visual spatial/RB learner who is maturing slowly and struggles with handwriting. One of my dyslexics is dysgraphic and learning to type has been the key to his academic success. Yes, he can write and I've seen gradual improvement but boy does it take a long time and a lot of patience. If you suspect dyslexia or even dysgraphia, if possible, get some professional evaluations. Those are key in establishing the paper trail needed for later accommodations when high school (testing/SAT/ACT) come up and later on in college. You'll both feel better about it if you have some clear understanding of what he's struggling with and how you can help him.

Thank you for the feedback, Heidi. No, we haven't had him evaluated for dyslexia or any learning disabilities. He's in vision therapy right now because of headaches and eye pain he was having when he would try to read. He hated reading, although he was decent at it, he would often go back and repeat words, or skip lines, lose his place, and comprehension was very low. He'd say the words were blurry or moving around. Those were the reading issues. In general, I would just say he's struggled to learn across the board. Memorizing math facts is hard for him. Lining up columns in math; remembering anything that has a certain order. He still has a hard time figuring out when to regroup with subtraction, for example. If I or the directions don't specifically tell him to do that, he will just take the bigger number minus the smaller number. He still isn't solid on remembering our phone number and address (we moved a year and a half ago.) His spelling is terrible...although I feel he is finally beginning to improve with it, he's still not confident at all with it, and will constantly ask me how to spell things, rather than take a chance that he'll make a mistake with something. In general, he's easily frustrated, and hesitates to try new things, and has a hard time translating one skill to a different area (like when learning addition, he often got a problem right on a flashcard, but missed the same problem on paper a few seconds later.)

I had never thought about the importance of having him evaluated for leaving a paper trail to enable his success later. Where do I begin to look for that evaluation? Our local public school is pretty willing to work with us, should I see if there's someone there who could evaluate him, or see our family doc, or do I need to find a psychologist of some sort?

You could try the PS but very specific in asking if they test for dyslexia or other learning disabilities. Where I live I would never have success in getting any help or testing because the schools don't test for dyselxia. The vision, floating words thing is definitely an issue and related to dyslexia (my dd has this type). Dyslexia comes in many shapes, sizes and forms. If you have great insurance I'd be inclined to start with the peds office and get referral to a neurophysch who will make this type of diagnosis. There are many people who believe in the vision therapy and there have been some great results but for us that didn't work. Have you tried having him read with a color overlay on the page while reading? Sometimes something that simple will make a world of difference. You mention that you do flash cards for reviewing math? but if he's struggling with vision this won't make a connection in his brain. Do you use anything on the computer for review fun? Until you figure out what is going on - and there really looks like something going on - I'd be his scribe more often and see if taking away all that extra step processing makes a difference. I'm sitting here with a million ideas running through my head. If he's not able to follow a list of instructions - verbally given - can you write the steps down and see if that helps? Has he finished phonics instruction? Have you had his hearing tested? There could be so much going on. Also, dyslexia tends to be hereditary - do you or your husband have any of the traits? My dh has dyslexia but never had any idea until we started homeschooling and began to see the similarities between him and the kids issues.

I honestly wouldn't go through the school A neuropsychologist is probably your best option. They will do a very complete evaluation including IQ, but also look at all learning issues, visual and auditory process, working memory etc. You may need a referral from your pediatrician. Your vision therapist may know of a good neuropsychologist to go to. The evaluation can be expensive, but I know our insurance covered it. We learned a lot of valuable information. It also establishes a relationship with the person who will be most able to help you get accomodations for the ACT/SAT later on if needed. We had our son evaluated when he was 12 and are now going to repeat the evaluation due to needing it within 3 years of him taking the ACT. The same neuropsych will evaluated him both times so he can see where improvements have been made and where he still struggles and will be able to document that.

1shortmomof4 wrote:You could try the PS but very specific in asking if they test for dyslexia or other learning disabilities. Where I live I would never have success in getting any help or testing because the schools don't test for dyselxia. The vision, floating words thing is definitely an issue and related to dyslexia (my dd has this type). Dyslexia comes in many shapes, sizes and forms. If you have great insurance I'd be inclined to start with the peds office and get referral to a neurophysch who will make this type of diagnosis. There are many people who believe in the vision therapy and there have been some great results but for us that didn't work. Have you tried having him read with a color overlay on the page while reading? Sometimes something that simple will make a world of difference. You mention that you do flash cards for reviewing math? but if he's struggling with vision this won't make a connection in his brain. Do you use anything on the computer for review fun? Until you figure out what is going on - and there really looks like something going on - I'd be his scribe more often and see if taking away all that extra step processing makes a difference. I'm sitting here with a million ideas running through my head. If he's not able to follow a list of instructions - verbally given - can you write the steps down and see if that helps? Has he finished phonics instruction? Have you had his hearing tested? There could be so much going on. Also, dyslexia tends to be hereditary - do you or your husband have any of the traits? My dh has dyslexia but never had any idea until we started homeschooling and began to see the similarities between him and the kids issues.

Thanks for these ideas. We have done several of these modifications-switching math programs a couple of times and finally settling in with MUS where he has better success because he can physically manipulate the blocks and see what things mean; I have scribed things for him and he did have much better success with that. In fact, I've been shocked through Preparing to learn how much he enjoys-and is fairly decent at doing-creative type writing. He loves the poetry writing activities that Carrie has us doing each week! As long as I write it for him. It's a good reminder that I need to maybe look at some of these modifications as more long term than something we do for a week or so to get over a hump.

Unfortunately, we do not have insurance at all...we're members of a health-sharing ministry that has reimbursed us for Vision Therapy, but I do not know what (if anything) they would do for something like this. I'll have to check into that. I guess that was part of my thinking with the school; I was concerned with whether a diagnosis from them would be official enough to leave the paper trail you were mentioning. My dh does have some characteristics of dyslexia. Nothing he's ever been diagnosed with, or we ever really thought about until I started researching my son's difficulties.

Insurance is a bugger, that is for sure. Many don't cover (mine doesn't). I've begun to really wonder what they do cover these days. A few options you could try: I've seen people mention the Scottish Rite Center. If you have one they might do the testing and help with cost (not sure if they would do for free). Another low-cost option is an area college may have a Psych School and they will offer reduced rates for testings and the DX and paper works are legit. The testing is overseen by actual PhD. but allows a future provider to learn the process and DX. Might be an option? You might look at the Barton/LindaMood website, too. Hope this helps - just a little.