How to improve teens handwriting?

[CoisFarraige]

I wonder if anyone could give me some advice on how to improve DS's handwriting? He is 14 and left-handing and his writing is getting worse! Small, badly formed letters, hard to decipher, messy. Ideas on what to do and how to motivate him to do it would be very welcome - hope it's not too late! Thanks.

[SummerintoAutumn]

Two of mine were like this.
They saw the Senco at school who decided they should use a laptop for most subjects.
If it is their usual way of working the exam boards will allow it at GCSE etc.

[Hellohah]

I'm placemarking for tips. DS was left handed, he broke his left arm early on in school and they made him write with his right hand. He has continued with the right, and did have beautiful writing in Year 6. BUT the 7 years of being told to write smaller - he took literally and now writes so small you can't read it. I gently encourage at home to write bigger, but most of the homework etc is done online, so it's difficult. I do worry that when he does his exams, he'll struggle because the markers won't be able to read anything.

[SlayingDragons]

Oh we have the same problem with 14 yr old DS. The best thing for him was when we lived in the US and he was taught cursive. It worked for him and his handwriting was lovely. Once we moved back to the UK and he was back in a school which just didn’t prioritise handwriting, it just slipped away. Now he’s in 4th form and studying a lot of essay heavy subjects, with the plan to study more essay heavy subjects at A-level, he really needs to be able to write consistently well even over longer pieces of work.

My solution thus far has been to buy him a cursive handwriting book to practice on and to get him to copy out at least one poem every day on top of his school work/revision. I don’t know if it’ll work but it can’t harm him and I think it will at least help him improve the muscle memory.

DS is hypermobile and I think that’s part of the problem with him - his joints are all just so loose that keeping his writing neat is actually really hard work for him.

[HeyMissyYouSoFine]

Speed Up - some of the exercise in that might be useful - did it end yr 6 for Ds and did get DD1 then end year 8 to do some.

Their handwriting still isn't great though and I do worry about exam marking.

[Michaelahpurple]

The whole lap top thing is only a partial solution. I too have a 14 year old hyper mobile dyspraxic etc etc son with shocking handwriting. He has been signed off for laptop use for years but come GCSEs , that will help with english and history but as far as I can see, little else. Science requires 3 line answers on the question sheet, as does geography and most of french, Latin etc. I don't think that these can be done on a laptop, so he really does need to sort things out.

How on Earth to get him to do so, I do not know

[Lara53]

Has he had an Occupational Therapy assessment? I have heard good things about a program called Magic Link handwriting - i know you can buy the materials online and do it yourself at home. I would also teach him to touch type. My DS's both have handwriting/dyspraxia issues and having been taught to type properly they now have less handwriting to do so I find their writing is neater as they aren't so tired/fed up! DS1 ia now L6th, but from Yr8 onwards used a mix of typing/writing and was able to use a laptop in GCSE's - English, history etc

[CoisFarraige]

Thanks for all the replies, I'll follow up on all those suggestions and see how it goes. If anything works I'll update this!