Can I have any encouraging stories about dispraxia/AS and handwriting?

[spicemonster]

Hello - first post in here.

My nephew is 7 and is a lovely, lovely boy but has struggled with school in a whole variety of ways. Last summer, he saw someone who said they thought he had dispraxia but it's taken a while for him to get his referral through for a proper assessment. That happened on Tuesday and they said he has Asperger's.

I know my sister is massively overwhelmed by the news and it's going to take her some time to come to terms with it and sift through all the information and support that is out there.

In the meantime though, I'd appreciate your stories about how your AS DCs cope with handwriting as that's what my nephew struggles with most when it comes to keeping up with his homework. He can write (not terribly well but it's about legible) but getting him to sit down and write more than about four words is beyond painful. How can we help him with this? What happens to children who don't do their homework? Will the school let him use a computer rather than writing by hand?

If you've got any advice or could just let me know your experiences, that would be enormously helpful

he needs a referral to an occupational therapist who can help school put a programme together to help him, also assess to see if a sloped writing board would help/ different style pen/cil etc.
we use 'write from the start' but there are loads.

is he yr 2? sometimes there are issues with the workload ramping up into juniors, which will need careful management by his teacher - and later they may suggest using a laptop once he hits secondary for speed and ease.

does he use a computer at home? a lot of the kids with AS that i worked with really struggle with pen and paper but are total whizzes with a computer. best to get OT support sorted out now on the back of a new dx, or it will disappear into the ether and never ever happen...

good luck

Ds1 (8) has ASD and a lot of dyspraxic traits. His fine motor skills in particular have always been delayed. At his assessment at 3.5yrs old he had the FM skills of an average 18mth-old.

Handwriting has always been something he's had a problem with. The school has done a lot with him over the past few years and he's much better than he used to be. In Yr1 he found it physically painful to write more than a couple of letters at a time and his teacher said that he might need to use a laptop or something similar to record his work. At the time a lot of people on here recommended something called an Alphasmart, so that might be worth investigating.

Ds1 did a lot of OT exercises to strengthen his hands. Things like manipulating playdough for a few minutes each day made a big difference. They also helped him with letter formation by letting him do things like tracing letters in the sand or flour. A particular treat for him was when he was allowed to draw with the interactive white board thingy.

Part of the problem (and I think this applies to dyspraxia too) was that his body is actually quite floppy and so he spent a lot of effort just trying to stop sliding downwards in his chair. The inability to sit up properly also affected his writing position as he ended up at awkward angles when trying to stay upright. It also meant that he used to try to tense his muscles a lot, which in turn meant that writing was painful.

He now has a special cushion which he puts on his chair. This helps to keep him centred. He also has a sloped writing board, which helps with his positioning.

Ds1's handwriting is still not as good as a lot of his classmates but it's so much better than it used to be. It's generally legible and he can write pages at a time instead of just two or three painful letters.

When ds1's writing was at its slowest his teacher said that he could do as little of his homework as we thought appropriate. Worksheets which would take other children 5 or 10 minutes would take him up to an hour as he found it so difficult to record his answers. She only asked that we let her know if there was a problem.

spicemonster - the OT will assess for all of the things that coppertop talks about - they will give a programme for the exercises eg playdoh or pegs etc, and look at his seating too. the lea should fork out for the stuff he needs.

Thanks very much for the responses. I saw my sister today and she is going to meet with his OT, his teacher and the inclusion manager (ie senco) and go through the report to discuss how they can support him. He already has a sort of Swiss ball to sit on, a sloping desk and a pen with things to twiddle on it but the inclusion manager said today that they can get him a sort of keyboard thing which he will be able to use rather than handwriting (maybe the Alphasmart thing you mention coppertop?). The playdoh thing is very interesting - I will wait to see if they suggest that. He plays on the wii a fair bit which I would imagine improves his fine motor control.

The school seems to be very well set up to help him which I'm so pleased about - he had terrible problems at his last school where they said he was lazy and the headmistress said he just needed a good clip round the ear