Can I insist that my DS does not do cursive or joined up handwriting

[WineAndChocolate]

My DS is in Y1 and is very very hypermobile. He is really struggling with his handwriting and can barely print let alone do cursive writing which is what they are doing in his class. I was talking to his teacher the other day and she said that she has never experienced a situation before where a child is bright and able but cannot write hardly at all. She is at a loss what to do and said that she is reliant on his OT to give her guidance. She said that he really needs one to one support in class with his work but because he is not statemented and is bright they just dont have the resources.

I am seeing his teacher on Wednesday for parents evening and want to insist that they drop cursive writing and allow him to master printing first. How will this go down? He has a job share and one of the teachers is very lovely and approachable and the other is the opposite so not sure if they will agree to it and also whether they will be able to teach 29 pupils one thing and my DS another.

What are your views?

We are doing all the exercises to build up his core so that eventually writing will be easier but I just dont want him stressing and losing confidence in the meantime.

nah. in the late seventies and early eighties most schools did calligraphy at some point. i just assumed they still did tbh, but obviously not. i think it was a curriculum enhancement sponsored by osmiroid or some other fountain pen producer. there were competitions and everything.

If your DS's writing is more legible and more fluent as print rather than cursive,then keep on pushing for him to continue to print (As the mum of DS whose writing finally got on track as print only to be completely derailed by a shift to cursive,and as someone whose DSis still prints,and has managed O Levels,A levels,BSc and MSc just fine...)

If they can teach him to right clearly and fast in cursive then fine,but there is no point in using cursive just for the sake of it if writing is then slow and illegible,at a point where most other children are not having this sort of problem.

I doubt he'd write clearly and fast in cursive or print in Year 1, PrideOfChanur. It's pretty normal at that age to be fairly illegible in both and not, in any event, to have to write very much at all. And as you say about your own ds, learning print and then being told you now have to learn cursive isn't necessarily the way to go. Declaring at age 5 or 6 that you never intend to learn cursive seems a bit OTT to me, too.

My daughter has started reception this yr and was told she has to learn 'cursive script'. I looked at it and thought it was ridiculous and difficult - so I looked into the reasons why on the internet and found this interesting article which made me feel much better about it all.

www.howtotutor.com/cursive.htm

SImilar situation with hypermobility in the family here. tbh I don't think I would ever have managed an academic career without word processors; I was just in so much pain for so much of those years when handwriting mattered at school. So for me, permission for ds to use a word processor at school and in exams would be absolutely fine.

Having said this, dd who also has EDS has had much less pain in recent years (secondary) and now finds it an advantage to have learnt cursive handwriting; she writes neatly and relatively quickly and finds it less of a faff not to have to bring a laptop everywhere.

The child with by far the best handwriting in DS class is the only one who never learnt joined up writing. For eyesight reasons, he was allowed to continue with "cursive printing", and learnt touch typing while the others were being forced into joining up.

His handwriting now has developed gradually into a form of italics, and he naturally joins up some letters where appropriate. He is no slower than the rest, and a lot faster than some of them who have been allowed to continue with very strange pen-holds, because (obviously) the first few words they try when holding it properly come out looking even worse than before.
(I know all this because I help in class and have talked to this child's parents and also seen for myself the wierd pencil grip that some of them are allowed to get away with).