Is a big difference between writing and spoken stories normal at 5 or could this indicate working memory problems? Apologies for length!

[thegamesafoot]

DD (diagnosed ASD) seems to struggle to remember what she's going to write - so a sentence will change several times during the course of writing it.

There also seems to be a big difference between her ability to tell a story verbally and what she can write. I'd expect there to be a difference but is it normal for a difference this big? I'm asking here rather than special needs because I want to know if at 5 this disparity is still usual?

Here are two examples, the first is written (punctuation and spelling her own), the second is a verbal story.

Written
My family is the best. My mummy has long black hair. I like my daddy because he is funy. My sister is very cudly.

Verbal
Once upon a time there lived a little puppy called Angel and she had no one to look after her. And one day she was padding along and she heard a little voice say "what's that noise"? And she pricked up her ears before seeing something large and very scary - it was a human!

And then the human caught her ear and carried her home. And once the human carried the dog home Angel started barking because she was very scared. The human started talking and laughing and Angel started to get used to humans. Soon Angel became the human's pet and everybody loved Angel, she was so pretty with two bows in her hair.

And then the humans decided to buy a cat too and the cat started to chase Angel because Angel was smaller than the cats and cats like small things. Soon the cat was taught how to not chase little things and they all lived happily ever after.

Here's an example of how she changes her sentences as she writes "I like my daddy because he is funy" was initially going to be "I like my daddy because he is silly", by the time she got to daddy, it changed to "because he is very neat" (she's saying the sentence out loud, rereading it, then sounding out each word as she writes it) and by the time she had written "he is" she then wrote "funy" - if I ask her, she has no recollection of her previous choices and will happen with all but the shortest 3 or 4 word sentences .

If this is usual at this age then am I right to think it will sort it's self out as she gets older? If people think that perhaps this might be a working memory problem I'll go and post in SEN for advice - hope it's ok to ask here first though!?!

at 5 I think it is perfectly normal for the difference to be so great.

not sure about the sentences changing as they write them but normal in my daughter and I think it is just as they concentrate so hard on writing and spelling they forget what they were going to write or decide it is easier to spell something else.

I think writing takes quite a lot of concentration at that age. My DS (6) will still start a sentence with one thing in mind and then finish it with something else. I wouldn't be overly worried yet

Sounds very much like dd2 a year ago. And dd1 (who is in Y4 and lazy ) can tell stories as complex as Harry Potter, and almost as long, but if she has to write them down she definitely keeps it short and sweet where possible!

Completely normal for children of that age to find writing a lot more challenging than reading and speaking. I would advise that children need to say their sentences out loud at least six times before writing.

everyone - all very reassuring