Laptop recommendations (dyspraxia)

[SudowoodoVoodoo]

DS1 (8, going into y4) has recently been identified with dyspraxia and the report recommends that he learns to touch type and types much of his school work as he finds writing so painful and laborious (with limited legibility and productivity). He also has dyslexia and has used coloured tints/ glasses to help him for a couple of years.

School have basically said, yes go ahead and buy one. They have no budget to fund it (we can provide one without a problem) and they have no advice on any preferences.

I'm assuming we need something fairly small (portable) and a decent battery life to get through a school day. Word processing is the main obvious function, but any other software that would be of use?

Any advice or experience on what we need and applications that would be useful to him? DH's research so far indicates that Microsoft tends to be dearer and more high-powered than what we need.

Can't advise on the type, but do get a really robust thickly padded case for it.

I know 'a laptop' is usually suggested for dyspraxic kids to save handwriting, but then there's the faff of getting it in and out of said case all the time, then when it's not in its case, the risk of it being knocked, dropped and they are quite heavy and large.

Is there any reason a tablet couldn't be used instead for school, it's smaller, lighter and its kid-proof case could be permanently attached so damage would hopefully be less.

He's dabbled with the school tablets, but I think appropriate software and the more variable keyboard layout weren't ideal. He gets on well with the keys on our laptop at home (which would definitely be too big for him to handle!) He's inherited my small hands too keyboard size is a factor

There isn't the capacity in the school tablets for that to be the regular tool for him as there is just the class set funded by the PTA in recent years.

Hello,

I have a DS same age same year with DCD. He can produce some legible handwriting but rather not have to write obviously.

We have seen an OT twice in 6 months and trying to do handwriting exercises everyday. The summer holiday has compromised our routine seriously though and also I'm prioritising his speech at the moment.

Anyhow, the SENCO at our new school, advised to keep on trying with handwriting. She said typing shouldn't substitute handwriting. There is apparently a school of thought (sorry I can't paste literature on this), that indicates that consolidation of handwriting is still advisable for brain development (again, sorry, I might oversimplify).

What I mean is if your DS's handwriting is so frustrating and painful to him, a laptop would be an invaluable help. I wonder though if there still could be an regular intervention for him to still learn basic letter formation, as the penny might drop at some stage.

There will still be a focus on handwriting and interventions, but for general classwork, typing would be much more productive and less painful and frustrating which causes a lot of distress. (I'm certain he has SPD mixed in with it all as he finds things like trousers too painful to wear, permanently lives in shorts. Currently on a waiting list for ASD assessment)

Having been a teacher, handwriting is great for fine motor control, but getting him to just be able to get words into a legible, structured written form will make such a difference to him, and long term typing is such a useful skill.

DD2 is just going into Y2 but started taking her iPad (insured, in as much protective casing and screen protection as we can find) into school to use toward the end of last year when writing started to become "a thing" that was distressing her.

She uses an app called Snaptype Pro where you can photograph and tap and type directly anywhere on worksheets to complete some work, and Clicker Docs as a very basic word processor - but to be honest she has MS Word on there as well once she starts to outgrow that. Clicker Docs has a wordbank set up for her with things like her name and the words that make up the date so she doesn't spend 3 hours trying to do her name and date on work.

She has a little keyboard that hooks onto the iPad to make it a very very mini laptop style thing - but tends to prefer to type on-screen a lot as well. If you're connected to wifi there's actually a voice dictation option on iOS too - but I've disabled that as it was just being used to type "sibling is a poo head" to great hilarity in the house!

Using handwriting training apps with an apple pencil has also helped letter formation no end as well - and she'll willingly write using it because she can zoom in to write comfortably sized for her - but then print it out like "normal" handwriting for her peers.

We ended up just providing our own as the school ones are ancient, dying a death and we'd been waiting months to get appropriate software on it - we just print out anything that she does that day at home (taken a bit of training to get her used to saving work but she's managed fine and she's a very dippy 6 year old!) and send it in the following day.

We'd had some initial reluctance from the Head to allow us to go down this route as physically her writing isn't really poor by dyspraxic standards - but she was starting to feel very distressed by the fact it wasn't the same as her peers and we had sobs of torment that "my letters won't stay on the line where I try to put them" which were heartwrenching!

I'm pretty sure DS1 has SPD, mostly Sensory Seeking, which is a common one for DCD. Here's an interesting podcast about SPD and ASD with the author of Out of Sync Child book. www.tiltparenting.com/2017/09/26/episode-76-carol-kranowitz-talks-about-sensory-processing-disorder-and-the-out-of-sync-child/

Good that you are persisting with handwriting. It is excruciating though. And I find it harder everyday to trick into writing the odd sentence here and there. Which is a shame as he is so creative with stories. I actually volunteered to teach Creative Writing to his whole class of YR2 which was a lot of fun and made him more confident.

He has lateral lisp, so we've been working hard on his speech lately to make sure he gets it corrected before he gets teased.

Kuponut "Dyspraxic standards" made me giggle. My DS1 was seen as unusual by the standards of the EP who assessed him. And I was, like, are you telling me that my quirky kid is even quirkier than the rest of the quirky kids?! I'm still wondering what a typical dyspraxic is. My DS1 is a very neat eater and his brother not DCD is a messy eater. So that puzzles me. There is still so little research on dyspraxia I think we still have tons to find out.

Great tip on the Apple Pencil. He does the Letterschool app but he complains that it hurts his finger.