How old is this child - a handwriting spelling one

[13456few]

DC has just gone back to school and I asked her to practice her writing while I dictate it to her. How old do you think this child is and whst school year do you think she has just started? My concern is she is behind.

I certainly don't try and add any pressure on her. In fact, she ended up not doing any writing all summer because whenever I mentioned it she got upset. She herself feels like she's not good enough and compares herself to the other kids in her class.

There is a huge gap between her verbal ability to tell a story and her ability to do so on paper. She usually freezes, gets upset, complains that she's stupid, doesn't know what to write and can't write it anyway because her handwriting is so poor.

I was a TA for year 6 for a few years and my initial thought was year 4. I've seen similar handwriting for year 6 students too!
She's doing fine.
I'd be tempted to tell her that most people thought she was writing at y4 or 5 to boost her confidence!
My son has just smashed his GCSEs and started an apprenticeship today. He's a clever kid, but his handwriting is terrible, your daughter's is actually neater!
She's on the right track, don't worry. Noticed she managed to spell some tricky words, so for a y2 to y3 she's going good.

Hand writing can also be helped by things other than writing. Often low muscle tone can be an issue. Things like swinging on monkey bars can help to develop upper body strength. Also, a firm ball that can be squeezed can help to develop muscles in the hands and fingers. Kids who find writing tiring may need work on their hand and arm muscles.

Then, to help with the writing tidiness, it's fine motor skills you need. Lots of craft activities can help to develop fine motor skills.

I'd use Chat GPT or Google for a list of fun ways to develop fine motor skills in children.

Having strong abdominal helps too. Children, when tired, will slouch, lean on their arms and again, feel fatigue when writing. Having stronger abs/torso can help with sitting up, not leaning on her arms and developing writing stamina.

This way, you can get her to work on her writing skills, without writing at all. In fact, don't tell her why you're doing these things at all, let it just be fun. Get creative, the ball squeezing can be done in the ad breaks while watching TV.

If you work on these things consistently, it will help with the writing mechanics. She may of course, still need help with correct letter formation when writing, let alone the skills to order her thoughts on paper, but don't dismiss or overlook the strength needed for the writing process.

About 8? Year 4 or just starting year 5 maybe

That handwriting is fine for a 7YO that has just started Y3. You’ll probably find it comes along a lot this year without you needing to do very much and honestly I’d be wary of pushing too hard and putting her off even more. Does she like lego? It’s great for fine motor skills and she’ll have no idea she’s using her writing muscles.

@ItsNotMeEither we have really tried to get her to do more crafts and monkey bars but she really struggles and gives up. Haven't thought of using chatgpt to come up with a few more ideas. Not sure that she's got full blown dispraxia, but her fine motor skills are still very poor, for example, she can't wear joggers as she can't undo and redo ties or bows. Really struggles with buttons etc.

Year 4, 5 or 6. It’s not the worst I’ve seen.

The handwriting is better than my DS - Who started A Levels today! 😀

This also jumped out at me. For getting the ideas flowing and getting her to believe in her own abilities as a writer, why not find a good speech to text app? It won't help for assessment, but she may start to see that she is a capable little author, she just needs help with the mechanics.

Chat to her teacher, I'm sure the teacher would be happy to look over some of her speech to text stories and give her some encouragement.

She has very recently got back into lego and I have been encouraging that as much as possible. She lost interest when she wasn't as good as building the models for 7 and 8 year olds.

I'm a teacher, have been for over 40 years. Our youngest child struggled with the same things. He's an adult and won't ever write another narrative now, but he's a very capable writer when it's required. For him, it really was those sorts of skills that were the key.

When our son was in the first year of school, we had him see an occupational therapist. I think we only went 3-4 times, but we learnt enough to be able to follow up with him. This was before the internet was like it is now, so I'd perhaps even search You Tube for ideas of activities or games to help with fine motor skills and gross motor skills for writing.

Try to make a lot of it into games so she doesn't feel like writing is too big of a focus.

Wishing you all the best.

This looks similar to dyspraxic and autistic children I have taught. Only boys come to mind, though: less common to see this profile with a girl in my experience. I’d be advocating for her using a laptop as she gets older.

My 27 year old severely dyslexic is pretty much at this level! But don't worry, he's earning a great living as a software engineer!

There is a huge gap between her verbal ability to tell a story and her ability to do so on paper. She usually freezes, gets upset, complains that she's stupid, doesn't know what to write and can't write it anyway because her handwriting is so poor.
Op she’s putting too much pressure on herself- it’s insane she’s thinking that at her age and with that writing, I wonder if she sits close to/ is friends with someone who is exceptional? Or maybe someone said something to her?

I really wouldn't be overly concerned at Y3.
My AuDHD twins have gone into Year 3 today: Twin 1 is fairly average in her learning, but her writing is nigh on illegible; Twin 2 (moderate spLD) has the reading comprehension of a end of Reception age child and few people can read her writing or decipher the words.

I don’t think it’s too bad. Definitely retrievable! I suspect my ds will be at a similar level at start of y3 (currently in y2).

My ds also refuses to do practice and constantly says he’s stupid. I remind him of all the things he’s very good at and I point out that no one is good at everything, that the hard things are the things he will feel really proud about when he improves, but he won’t improve if he never tries. It doesn’t always help but sometimes it calms him down enough to try and usually once he’s got started he will do about ten to twenty minutes with me.

Stop trying to make her fit a box.

Try a computer. Let her type. And use a spellchecker. If possible get dictation software to write what she dictates. For reading help her a little with ability appropriate reading but don't labour it - get her a subscription to listening books of she qualifies and allow her to listen to age appropriate books that she chooses - build her comprehension and vocabulary that way.

Make sure she does extra curricular activities that build her self esteem as that's likely to be taking a constant daily bashing as the school world continues to think every one has to be the same. Its ridiculous - how many of us have actually written anything much with a pen and paper today?

My son was severely dyslexic. School was something he needed to survive with the best self esteem possible. Then he was free to fly in the one area of life he is a genius at....

When he bought his first home earlier this year, we.popped up to help him move in. I wanted to write down the meter readings...he didn't have a pen or pad of paper in the house! He disappeared off and took photos of the readings...

I really don't want her to fit in a box. Her teacher mentioned it to me before the summer and DD herself keeps bringing it up. She actually loves reading, no problems there, she also loves audio books. It is things like her fine motor skills that are a problem, the fact that everyone else spends hours on the monkey bars but she struggles. She is also socially hyper aware, she knows how she is compared to her friends even without us ever mentioning it and let's be honest I have no idea what their writing skills are at all.

She needs to believe its OK to be different. And there will be something she is amazing at that isn't even tested at school. Writing is one small thing ..... especially nowadays when we hardly write at all!

Try her with a computer.

Finding the reason for missing pieces can take forever, but hopefully you'll find out one day. My son couldn't write, spell or read either. His issue is he sees every letter twice and they all jump around but not in unison. If its small writing it looks like a qwerty code. We discovered this when he was in year 9. No wonder he struggled. I think we all would!

My 5 rising 6yr old DD writes that neatly. The spelling wouldn't be as good (not far off) but her handwriting is pretty much like that, as is that of most of her friends - so much writing of little letters and notes!

I’m a teacher and would have said Y3. With writing, it’s important to teach the different elements separately (i.e. handwriting, composition, grammar, spelling). Dictation is tricky because it requires focus on grammar, spelling, listening, and comprehension. If you are worried about her handwriting, try to encourage separate handwriting practice where that is the sole focus. To relieve pressure, I would try creating a calm environment, maybe buying her a fancy pen she picks out herself, and setting a very manageable target that’s communicated in advance - for example two to three sentences or copying a short poem. The text is set out in front of her, she knows exactly what she has to do and when it will be finished, and it’s achievable.

Other things can then be worked on separately. For example, if you are focusing on grammar or descriptive adjectives, don’t worry about the handwriting and focus just on the specific objective of that session (commas, description, etc.)

Children make phenomenal progress with their writing in KS2, but where it goes wrong is where too much is expected of them at once. Writing is a very complex skill which is actually a whole bunch of skills mashed together. When they can focus on each element, and it feels achievable, things will come together and their writing as a whole will improve.

Also if she loves reading and writing but struggles with fine motor skills and her handwriting holds her back, definitely give opportunities for her to explore her creativity without the pressure of handwriting (typing up poems, stories, book reviews etc) or recording her idea using a voice recorder.

I don’t think you have anything to worry about my DD is 7 (just turned) and this is much better than hers!

That's really impressive tbf. Maybe handwriting is taught better in school/ nursery these days

I think it's probably just practice. She writes CONSTANTLY