Has anyone used an OT to improve handwriting?

[anecessaryevil]

DS (nearly 9) has always had problems with handwriting, although the letters and joins are fairly well formed, he seems to have problems with sizing and spacing within words. The overall result is very scruffy and the script is very large.

He does not appear to have any other problems, met all his early milestones and is doing very well academically. What he writes is very good and he actually enjoys writing stories.

However, even he is getting very disillusioned with his handwriting and is beginning to give up that it will ever get any better. We tried 'write from the start', to no avail and when I look at his first attempts at joined up writing 3 years ago, really there has been only minimal improvement.

We have worked on the pencil grip and he now has what appears a good grip.

I do not want to put him through more hours of careful practise if it is the wrong type.

Has anyone seen big improvements with an OT? Are they available under the NHS or do you have to go private?

The school agree that it is an issue, are constantly putting comments on his work, but have not really made any suggestions. It is now all affecting his self esteem.

I agree with you on that ReallyTired. I wish I had used 'write from the start' with DS at 4 too. There were some exercises in the book that he would have benefited from at that age. In DS's case, although there was a lot of improvement in the very early days he has hit a plateau for 3 years. I think it was clear intervention was needed by yr 2. He does sometimes make some improvement but then goes backwards again.

Maybe the Teacher's did not want to worry us or put pressure on, the trouble is, the pressure is now really on and it would have been a lot kinder to DS to get him help earlier. Maybe it is difficult to tell which children need intervention or perhaps Teacher's do not have sufficient training to know when intervention is going to be necessary. I do not actually think DS's fine motor skills were dire - he hit milestones at the usual times, ties shoelaces, etc and had the pincer grip before 8 months.

Haven't read whole thread so forgive me if repeating. Does your son have any other areas of difficulty relating to handwriting, beyond letter sizing and keeping letter sizes the same? Does he, for example, find it hard to think what to write, to plan his work, to remember what he is wanting to put down on paper, to edit his work and see grammatical errors. If so you really should do some reading on dysgraphia and see if you think there is an underlying issue.

OT can be great and make for some really big improvements, but if there is an underlying learning difficulty such as dysgraphia it is important this is identified and support given for all the acommpanying areas of difficulty it can cause.

No, actually, he does not have any of the other issues you mentioned. It is all about letter positioning, form constancy and overall sizing, I think.