Year 3 writing problems

[ScoutFinchMockingbird]

DS (7) has always struggled with writing, both in terms of neatness, but also with regard to layout e.g. full stops, capital letters, finger spaces. When tired / in a hurry / not concentrating (i.e. most of the time), he just puts all his thoughts on paper as fast as possible, with no thought for spelling; punctuation; legibility; layout (frequently just joins all words together, with no finger spaces, so it's practically unreadable). However, on a good day, when fully concentrating and with dire warnings about no tv / play time unless he does a good job hanging over him, he is capable of producing a quite neat; nicely laid out; fairly well spelt; and fairly well punctuated piece of work. Bizarrely he has got the hang of apostrophes, so they're always correct. Is it dyslexia (except he has a reading age of 9); dysgraphia (but surely then he would produce no goodish work at all?); adhd (see the previous rider); or just him? Is it something that will improve in terms of consistency as he gets older? All advice very welcome.

Hmmmm sounds like maybe dysgraphia/dyspraxia is a possibilty. Does he struggle with any other activities - fine/gross motor?

DS1 has dyspraxic tendencies with handwriting as you described. Has he had an occ therapy assessment?

DS1 couldn't ride a bike in a straight line/without regular falling off/accidents until around 13. Couldn't tie shoelaces or tie until 11. Ds2 is 12 and still cant do his tie - he is missing one of the muscles in his right hand which grips the pencil.

They both get pain in wrists, hands, fingers, arm when writing too

Lara53 he isn't the most coordinated, but learnt to ride a bike aged 6 and has recently (aged 7) got shoe laces. But as I say, I find it confusing because he can do adequate work - just rarely and with the fear of seven depths of hell hanging over him . Does that still mean dyspraxia is a possibility?

Fits how DD2's writing can be (she has a dyspraxia diagnosis). The letter formation's decent enough (especially by dyspraxic standards) because we've worked so hard on it but she has no concept of spatial relationships whatsoever so spaces between words and letters parked one after each other... nope - you get a couple of decent words and then a collision of alphabetti spaghetti on the page. With adult support and prompting she can produce really good written work (the phonics is definitely there), or using a keyboard where she has to press space between words the same difficulties aren't there - it's just like the bit of her brain connected with spaces between objects has clocked off for a holiday. She also has a lovely habit (remember that spatial relationships make no fucking sense to her whatsoever) of trying to offer me car parking advice. No sweetie, my family car is never going to fit in that 10cm wide gap however much you tell me there's a parking space over there!

Good days and bad days as well where she's got it really together and then days where she gets defeated by the logistical difficulties of putting her pants on.

Thanks Reverse. Love the alphabetti spaghetti analogy!! I’ll look into getting him assessed. Does your DD have help at school; exercises she does at home?

My ds had no problem with fine motor but did with gross motor skills. He did struggle with upper body strength.
He has been doing lots of muscle strengthening through his ex-curr club, and we also encouraged him to do stuff like monkey bars and wall climbing. It did make at lot of improvement.
Also did 3 minutes writing everyday with various topic.

I think the key is to find out what's the problem and work on it.
My ds was really struggling with writing in yr3. By yr5, teacher couldn't believe he was always kept in to finish his work in yr3.

We get very little in the way of help at school and the little we do gets channelled towards help with speech and language as she also has verbal dyspraxia.

It's good to hear your DS has improved so much irvine - we do practise writing at home and DS does kickboxing and swimming (which he's just really taken off on, having struggled for ages).

Sorry you get no help with the physical side at school reverse.