how on earth do I get a 5 yo to change pencil grip?!

[cuppateaandtoast]

Is it now impossible do you think? He gets really annoyed with me when I try to get him to hold his pen properly. I spoke to someone with older children at his school and she said the school dont really seem to bother to correct them and her dc have poor pen grip too. I bought him special grips to put on the end of his pen and he doesnt mind using them. But as soon as he holds a normal pen he is back to the poor grip again. Do you think its not really worth worrying about? Will they all be typing their work anyway soon enough?
Any tips gratefully received!

I'm a dyslexia assessor, teacher and tutor. I have noticed that a significant number of pupils who have habdwriting grasps other than the recognised 'tripod grasp' have underlying reasons for having naturally adapted. Typically, many gave hypermobility / hyper extension of the DIP joint in the index finger. For this very reason, nagging or 'pushing them' to adapt their grasp is really not to be recommended. Developing the muscles in the fingers and hands are helpful in supporting the joints. Some great websites are available with plenty of suggested exercises. One such example is: www.teachhandwriting.co.uk/handwriting-warm-up-exercises.html
Obviously, without knowing/ seeing your child, I'd be unable to say whether this may be the case for him.

I always held a pen the wrong way-not sure what the "right " way is any more. teachers and my parents continually tried to correct me but it made no difference. I am now a doc-consultant -so clearly I have awful handwriting but no worse than any of my colleagues who hold their pen the right waynot that I would even notice how they hold a pen