Learning her ABC'S was easy. Writing her ABC'S was not ! 

My daughter has struggled with handwriting since elementary school.  She is now in high school and still struggles with handwriting.  

Learning handwriting is not exciting and can be difficult for children.  I mean heck I am  an adult and my penmanship can be messy at times. 

The Mechanics of Handwriting 

The mechanics of writing involves alot when you think about it.  It involves grip, muscle memory,  moter skills, hand eye coordination.  Then there is legibility which involves spacing, consistent sizing of  letters ,and the ability to write in a straight line. 

And we wonder why some kids get so frustrated when trying to write . 

Difficulty with writing can mask a kids potential. Especially if they are on the spectrum. Communication is often a challenge for autistic people which may prevent others from seeing how talented they are. 

As I said my daughter struggles with writing.  She hates doing writing assignments.  She is a very talented. Her creative writing skills are  fantastic. Her imagination comes alive in her stories .

When she would write she only wanted  to write short stories. She had difficulty writing a one page story. Her writing was illegible and holding a pencil was uncomfortable.  She would constantly erase! One day her teacher decided to let her do her creative writing assignments on a laptop . Wow ...........  what a difference that made. She was able to expand her ideas , lengthen her stories  , and her frustration level dropped tremendously.  She types incredibly fast. Suddenly school work became something she enjoyed ! 

Unfortunately she cannot use a laptop for all assignments and writing is still a challenge. 

She still does things to improve her fine motor skills. I give her things to do to improve her pincher grip. Hanging up pants on is clip hanger is one she does regularly. If only I had started working with her at a younger age. I depended to much on teachers and therapist to do the job.

I wish I would have known some of the things I know today .She has always performed well in school despite her handwriting. It affected her motivation to complete assignments. I now realize the importance of  having a IEP.

Her IEP allowed her to  answer discussion questions and take test verbally .The IEP accommodations  helped her excel academically. 

If your child is having difficulty learning how to write there are  somethings that can be done to improve your child's situation. 

GRIP AND HAND STRENGTH HAVE TO COME FIRST

Notice your child's grip. Weak fine motor skills make it difficult to hold  writing tools .Using a fatter and shorter writing tool are helpful.Make sure the child is comfortable holding the bigger writing tool before moving on to a skinner writing ones. 

Lacking hand strength will make it  difficult to hold and use writing tools. Hand strength and fine motor skills are crucial to the handwriting process. Here are a few exercises to improve fine motor skills,and can be done at home. 

Have the child use a tweezers to pick up iterms. This is very good for improving the pincher grip.

Using a clip pant hanger or a close pin to hang up clothing strengthens the hands 

Sqeezing a stress ball improves both grip and hand strength.

Posture is important The forearms should be on a table or desk. Have the person use their non dominant hand to secure the paper.

Tracing letters and shapes is great practice. I would suggest using a  highlighter to draw what I wanted traced. My daughter did better when she used big lined This type of paper helped her with letter size consistently.

OUR EXPERIENCE 

Once my daughter started writing sentences  spacing was a problem. 

To help her with sentence writing I did a few thing . I used a highlight to draw slops. The number of slots drawn depended on what she was  spelling. After she wrote the word I had her stop and use her index finger to create a space before starting the next word. This took more time but was definitely helpful. 

Example 

_ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _ _ _    _ _ _  .

The slots and spaces you see above model what her paper would look like before  she started to write.

Look at the sentence below

Good morning mom .

Notice there are  the appropriate number of slots for each word.  Notice  I also left spaces to between each word  I suggest using the index finger for the spacing.

I hope this entry didn't bore you   much. I wish I would known more when she was learning to write. As moms we sometimes beat ourselves up feeling like we missed something. Asking what if ??? 

I don't want another mom to miss what I missed. Read it and you decide.