DS has to learn how to write all over again

[Myusernameismud]

AIBU to think I'll need to get him a tutor?

This is a bit of a long one...

DS is 10. When he was a toddler he had several surgeries on his hand after a crush injury. His handwriting has always been awful, but his class teachers have always insisted on 'another handwriting intervention' and 'lots of practice'. It has never helped, and his writing still looks like a reception childs.

We recently moved house, and his new teacher suggested an OT referral. OT said there's nothing they can do and to ask for a plastics referral as they are best placed to decide what can be done.

Plastics have said surgery is the only fix, which I suspected was the case, but glad to have it confirmed. She said he'll need intensive hand therapy after, and he will need to re-learn how to write.

His surgery will happen before the summer holidays, and the vast majority of therapy will happen over the summer. After that he will be in year 6 and obviously will be preparing for his sats.

I'm an early years practitioner and have worked as a reception TA as well, and while I'm confident I'll be able to support him learning to write, I don't think I will be able to teach him as such. And as he'll have 6 weeks off school, I really think having a tutor once a week is the best way forward. DH thinks I'm over-thinking it (entirely possible, I'm a huge over-thinker)
I also think the kind of support he will need when back at school in year 6 is probably more than can be offered at School, athough DS is a pupil premium child, and I wondered whether to ask the head if he could have some more intensive support, paid for with his PP.

AIBU (or overthinking this?)

Try a programme called ‘Write from the start’ it’s largely used for dyspraxia and dysgraphia but might help in these circumstances

I don't have lots to add. But just to say I have had no hand injuries but have always written with my middle finger. My handwriting is not the very neatest but clear and fast enough to get me decent exam results. If he finds this easier, it might be something to continue with. By the time anyone tried to correct me, it was way too embedded and I would switch back pretty quickly.

I once spent a day at a conference writing only with my non dominant left hand. I fooled everyone. The reason I did it was to try to experience how people with processing or motor difficulties feel when doing something that seems so easy to most. That instance was in a well lit room on a comfortable desk so it turned out reasonable.

I've just tried again in my little note book in a lamp lit room with no table to lean on. It's was absolutely exhausting and a very disappointing result considering I was trying so hard. But what's worse is I don't think I had/took the opportunity to truly express what I wanted to because of the sheer frustration.

Try it!

I liken it to:

When I went to a non English speaking country (Spain) I learnt a few words/sentences/expressions but I never learnt to communicate my thoughts or imagination.

I once met a young stroke patient who retained all of his faculties including his fitness, ability to do his job and drive but he couldn't speak.

Handwriting is so much more than marks on a page - so too is communication.

The ot/pt over the holidays will get him on the right track but mostly you just need to give him interesting things to do to develop the strength and coordination again - obviously writing but anything fine motor such as colouring, tracing etc. Kids are really resilient. As for pp the use isn't that straightforward, it's pooled to pay for extra ta's etc

stucknoue I know that's generally how PP funding works, but our school is very fortunate in that they don't need to use any PP money to pay for extra TA's. I've looked at their PP report and it's mostly used for things like interventions (run by their only HLTA, who isn't class based, but sort of floats around providing support where needed) buying uniform for families who can't afford it, paying for breakfast and/or after school club spaces (which DS currently uses) and also for a subscription to a maths and literacy game postal-scheme thing (can't actually remember the name, but essentially once a month a magazine and game get delivered to home for the PP child). They also use it to fund school trips for PP children.

It's a very small school, with a low percentage of FSM and doesn't attract a lot of PP. They keep a £5k buffer for 'unexpected needs', although this obviously gets spent once it gets towards the end of the school year. The head is really approachable and I'm quite sure if I spoke to her about extra support, she'd be accommodating. It's possible that the 'floating' HLTA I mentioned could support him once or twice a week. When we joined the school the head was at pains to point out all the different things DS was able to access as a PP child. I think she's quite proud of how it's used, and she should be.

DS last school used it almost exclusively to pay class TA salaries. They never hired any new TAs though, they were contributing to the salaries of staff who had worked there for years. It was very cleverly worded in the PP report, but when you read between the lines it basically says we use PP money to pay for class TAs.

Have you tried the idea of using his other hand? If his dominant hand is now weak from injury and surgery and affecting the grip maybe with practise his other stronger hand will be able to become the dominant hand.
Dh switched from Left to right when he was about 7 due to pressure at school from a special needs teacher. But he practised and over summer managed to switch, now he can only write with his right hand.

Troels I was just about to suggest this.
Use his other hand?

I did ask that when he was younger, whether it was worth trying to get him to change his dominant hand. He was only 18 months then, and the hand therapist said there was no point. She also said it's far more difficult for a right handed person to switch to using their left, than the other way around.

At this point I don't think there's any reason to try and switch him. Surely it's going to be harder to learn to use his left hand for everything, than to relearn how to use his dominant hand?

I also forgot to mention he also really struggles to use cutlery with his right hand. If he's got anything particularly tough to cut at home, I'll do it for him, which is something else we both want to get sorted. I get lots of 'let me try and do it mum', which I do naturally. But it upsets me watching him struggle, and in the end, when half of his dinner has skidded off the plate and onto the table, he always asks me to do it. He picks which days he has school dinners solely based on whether he'll be able to manage it himself (pasta yes, gammon no!). The lunchtime assistant would help him if he needed, but I think he wouldn't like to draw attention to the fact he can't manage it himself.

So although handwriting is not the end of the world, there are other skills he'd like to improve on as well as writing.

Dd2 was born without a hand. She's missing too much for surgeries to be any help, but we know plenty of people who have. Toe to finger transfer is often used for people who have palm but no fingers, for example.
If you want a second opinion, go to Simon Kay in Leeds, as he's generally regarded as the best. He focuses on improving functional ability not look. Often parents (especially after injury rather than congenial) focus on the look, so he's very good at talking through how surgery can, or at times can't, help.

I think your therapist was talking a load of bull OP, swapping one is just as hard as swapping the other, Right handers don't have some inner strength that stops them learing to write left handed. I'd spend the summer trying it. It might be less traumatic than constant special handwriting help and things being pointed out to him. He'd still need to have help for strenthening his injured hand, but at least that isn't in front of all his friends in school.

Troels it's less to do with any innate ability and more to do with the fact that left handed people tend to use their right hand far more than right handed use their left. So it's an easier switch because they've used it more often anyway, IYSWIM. Admittedly this wouldn't have been a problem for an 18 month old, but generally speaking that's the case. Half the point of him having a tutor at home would be so that he could really focus on what he needs to in his own environment and at his own pace, rather than feeling pressured at school and missing lesson time for it.

Witchend thank you for that advice. I do feel quite happy with what his surgeon has proposed and she really emphasised that the surgery will, if he fully complies with his physio exercises, restore function in his index finger. He has a lot of scarring on his hand already, and he isn't hugely bothered by how it looks. When he was younger I used to catch him telling all sorts of stories about how he got all the scars, usually involving being bitten by snake . Obviously that's not what happened.

Mark Pickford was the surgeon who performed his first op, and he told me about a young man he operated on who had been injured in an IED explosion in Afghanistan. All he wanted was to play the guitar and they managed to use 2 toes to create a working thumb and forefinger which enabled him to hold a guitar plectrum. It's really rather magic the things that can be done.

We bumped into one of DDs friends in town today, she was out shopping with her mum and older brother. We got chatting and I thought her mum might be able to recommend a tutor, so I asked and her son piped up that he does a bit of tutoring in his spare time to earn money while he's studying for his a-levels. I said what it was for and he seemed very keen and said when he finishes his a-levels he's hoping to train to become a physiotherapist! He said his main interest is sports injuries, but I think it could be an interesting learning experience for him while also helping DS out. He said he'd be happy to do his physio exercises with him too. So we'll see how his surgery and recovery goes, and go from there!

Right handers don't have some inner strength that stops them learing to write left handed.
No but it is harder to be a left hander in a left handed world. I'm ambidextrous.My dm reckoned in a left handed world I would be left handed. I am at times right handed because the world is set up that way, so it's easier.

At dd's charity there are children who are clearly missing what should be their dominant hand. You can tell the way they go at things. This includes children who have been born that way, or lost their hand very shortly after birth. (and no it's not always the people who are missing their right hand)

OP, glad you've got a good specialist. They can do amazing things through surgery. My experience is that almost everyone is delighted and very pleased with the results of surgery. It's a tough time with physio etc, but they're glad they did it. And generally the earlier the better (within reason) so I'd go for it this summer.

If he wants to try using his other hand, then let him try, but I wouldn't push it if he doesn't.

I don't think I know anyone who is in a similar position, but the charity we're in Reach is there to help anyone with upper limb deficiency. We're generally a supportive bunch and it may be that there are people who have been through similar. There's certainly a fair number of toe to finger transplants, although the most common is missing hand between elbow and wrist, when operating is not considered to be beneficial.

I wouldn't be worrying about his handwriting not being small.

Context - I'm probably ambidextrous, definitely hypermobile and had inflammatory arthritis from around five.

Mine was officially atrocious until I had a teacher who refused to 'do handwriting' and let me use marker pens in any writing style or size I wanted. Over that year, I went from crappy infant school scrawls (in block printing, as that was the style I had first been taught before the fashions changed) to writing clearly and then, as I got older, I was given a nice fountain pen and switched effortlessly, still not quite sure how, into fluid, fully joined up writing.

I learned to play piano, guitar, bellringing, double bass, trumpet and so on, as well as attending art clubs and I'm sure that doing things that required dexterity other than writing helped as well, partly because I enjoyed them - and it's nice if you find out you're good 'with your hands' after being told you weren't by the only measure people counted. Like the analogy of an elephant only being 'good' if they can climb a tree.

Even now, I prefer to use (chisel tip) markers or Sharpies on A3, but my actual handwriting is fluent, readable and is actually so good, I often get asked to produce stuff for display.

The absolute worst part of handwriting lessons was having to keep within the tiny lines. Go big, get the shapes, movements and fluency, worry about size later - if at all.

Ds2 had a serious accident when he was in yr 2 that meant his right hand was out of use for over 6 months, and after that a lot of physio to get it working again. School arranged a scribe and/or a laptop for him but essentially he just used his left hand and it was amazing how quickly he adjusted. His writing was large and unformed a lot of the time but he still preferred it to the scribe.

Physio afterwards was able to retrain him how to hold his pencil through a variety of exercises for his fine motor skills. It sounds like your son will need need to relearn the physical part of writing, it's totally doable.

As an aside, I know lots of people who hold their writing implements in various "odd" ways and not the traditional thumb/index finger and they write perfectly well. Unlike DH and DS1 who both hold their implements normally but both have disgraceful, unreadable handwriting.