4yo unco-ordinated and neither left or right hand dominant - any clues?

[LargeLatte]

Morning all,

Had parents evening for my 4yo 9mo ds. He is well behaved at school and is progressing slowly but is being held back by 2 things - he has some degree of hearing loss which we knew about (hopefully just glue ear), but also he is unco-ordinated and seems to not have a strong preference for left or right handedness. When he rights he always uses his left but he is still struggling to form letters properly despite lots of practice. Everything else he switched from left to right hand. I was (and still am to a certain degree) ambidextrous (sp?) so I'm guessing that's probably it. But I'm wondering is there more we can do to get his brain and hands working together. It is so frustraing because he is a bright boy but is struggling to read because he can't hear the difference between the letter sounds and he's struggling to write stuff down too

Any thoughts, tips, suggestions gratefully welcomed.

DS2 is similar, even now (almost 6yo) he writes with left hand but eats with right hand. And sometimes he just switches and uses either hand for anything.

DS has speech problems, too, although not hearing loss as such.

I suspect that practice is the only way to go, little and often. I note that DS has produced better quality work for teachers he liked best; with him, personal rapport goes a long way.

Hi

My dd had very similar problems and after passing the NHS hearing test, though they thought she probably had glue ear like my older child had, but then had a hearing test privately as a favour from someone - she had very poor hearing in certain frequencies and was complete ambidextrous - she was 4.5 at the time. Anyway she has had a programme of Johansen Sound Therapy [[http://www.soundlearningsystems.co.uk/id13.html

She now has perfect hearing and is def left handed and forming her letters much better etc, she is 4.7 and in reception. The other thing to consider is that he may have neuro developmental delay which is not as scary as it sounds more information here

www.inpp.org.uk/

these are treatments that help speed up drastically the improvements a child will probably make on their own.

I will check on this thread and am happy to tell you more about my dds experiences if you think it will help but I'm not around much this weekend!

Thanks CS _ I think his letter formation is definitely better when he is happy.

CarGirl- interesting you raised NDD because I looked into this last year when his speech development stalled and we were having some behavioural issues - ds1 was assess by paed for ASD - but found to be 'normal'.

He's a very happy child, and still very young so I don't want to stress out too much about it.

I think I'm going to focus on fun practice and if there's not much progress early next school year, then i will start further research. Thanks for the links - I may be in touch on Sept, although I hope not IYSWIM

Thing is NDD doesn't need a diagnosis to be used nor does it feel like they are being tested. My girls loved going to see the practioner, doing the "tests" and the "treatment". If you think he has mild ASD traits then I'm sure NDD could really help him as it's likely that he does have mild NDD in several areas which would then improve. He's a bit young for the questionnaire on that website but did you do it?