Dysgraphia??

[df]

Not long ago the SpEd teacher mentioned looking into Dragon Speak for my DS (ASD, 8.5, 2nd grade) next year in 3rd grade. It appears that is a Speak to write. I'm not very familiar with dysgraphia but google is telling me he has quite a few symptoms (poor spacing and sizing, short simple sentences, not great fine motor skills-he didn't declare a hand until 5 and didn't hold a pencil properly until 6.). The gap in writing between him and his 2nd grade peers is significant. Much more than any other academic area. What are the quality informational resources on Dysgraphia?

He has his annual DP appointment later this month. Based on how his teachers this year filled out the forms I suspect he will get an ADHD Comorbid Dx and we'll be looking into meds. Is Dysgraphia (or the LD that covers it) something a DP diagnoses or do we need to go to a psychologist? Should we wait to see if it's more of an executive function issue that may be helped by treating ADHD?

I've got a pretty strong grasp on parenting and advocating around his presentation of ASD but I need to dive deeper on possible LD's.

[bubbalicious]

We have something similar. Both kids have dysgraphia. Kiddo number 1 has a diagnosis from her neuropsych eval. Kiddo number 2 is presenting with signs and has a more difficult time with handwriting than kiddo 1.

Both kids lost OT this year because they have improved handwriting but the amount of time it takes to write is significant. The frustration is huge for kiddo 2. He is in 1st and I can only see this increasing.

I asked his OT to look inot ideas. But if history tells me anything, I will have to have to bring in stuff.

AT Evaluation possibly but this may be more useful for grade 3.
Cursive writing as cursive is a bit easier in kids with dysgraphia. Our district won't teach it but I am going to ask for it in the IEP if I can find research (solid).
There was also an app posted by akafred (?) a bit ago which I need to review.
Keyboarding is recommended for dysgraphia. I have seen this floating around but do not have any solid info on it. www.readandspell.com/us


We have an IEP meeting Tuesday so I am hoping others have some info on Dysgraphia.

[mrsbuttinski]

Dysgraphia is almost universal among kids on spectrum for a number of reasons; DS has mild dysgraphia despite having excellent fine motor. He, too, was late to reveal a dominant hand and used both interchangeably until close to 8. He has mixed dominance as well; his eyes, hands and feet don't all line up which is more common in kids with learning differences.

There are ATs for dysgraphia, but Dragon Naturally Speaking would not be where I would start for a couple reasons. Firstly, it can have a steep learning curve and be frustrating for a student to use. Because he'd be required to speak into the system, it would be stigmatizing and disruptive to other students if he is mainstreamed. Going forward, tests would have to be done out of the classroom.

I would look at keyboarding first if the written production of assignments is too laborious for him to keep up with peers and grade level expectations. That said, if part of the issue with handwriting is related to hypotonia in his core or hands, he might need PT/OT to work on strengthening those areas so he doesn't fatigue as quickly.

The short sentence piece to this should also be looked at. If he was asked to tell a story/produce sentences for his journal orally using a scribe- how would he do? DS's spelling word sentences always sucked; he thought it was a stupid assignment; we eventually had to require a specific word count even with keyboarding.

Many kids with ASD have a disorder of written expression that is separate from their issues with physically producing writing.

Sometimes this is a matter of an ASD trait where assignments that aren't a favorite get the minimum effort- like the kid who is going to ace the spelling test and resent the hell out of writing sentences using the spelling list. Sometimes it's more related to content- like the kid who struggles with literary devices in fiction or emotions in journaling. Often kids like this could write all day long about science or a special interest but couldn't answer a question about whether Prof. Snape is a good guy or a bad guy.

As you touched on, getting an idea on paper requires a number of skills that are impacted by ASD (and ADHD to a lesser degree)- Theory of Mind, Executive Function, Expressive Language and Central Coherence. If the glitches in writing are related to any of these, therapy to address these pieces to writing should help him find his voice on paper.

Theory of Mind is the notion that he could make a realistically good guess about what someone else might be feeling or know. For writing, this means understanding his audience and what they bring to his work. DS sometimes assumed more background knowledge than was needed to write a coherent piece. He got rote instruction around this and his pragmatics group helped as well. Another problem for some kids is that being a writer means being a reader. Many on spectrum have a very limited interest in fiction or stick to a narrow genre- it helps to read fiction to such kids and talk about what motivates the characters; movies can be used this way, too.

Expressive language delays sometimes persist with ASD; DS (who spoke in sentences at 16 months) got help with this as well through middle school.

Executive function and organizational skill issues can make it hard for a student with ASD to get their thoughts down in a logical manner. Central coherence glitches can make it hard for a writer to give the proper weight to components of the story so that it makes sense. Scaffolding in the form of rubrics or even composition software can be useful for these kinds of issues. I know a number of kids who have used Kidspiration and Inspiration for their composition assignments. A couple of them tried Dragon and found it too burdensome for a younger student to get set up.

www.inspiration.com/Kidspiration

[anintrovert]

I just realized I posted with an old account last night. I'm df

Thank you both!
Bubba-
AT Evaluation possibly but this may be more useful for grade 3. They'll be looking into it in the Fall when he has his triennial. I'll need to be on top of it because the SpEd teacher he's had since K is retiring. Her replacement is a new hire who won't know my kid at all.
Cursive writing as cursive is a bit easier in kids with dysgraphia. Our district won't teach it but I am going to ask for it in the IEP if I can find research (solid). I did not know that about cursive. I don't think it's taught at his school either
There was also an app posted by akafred (?) a bit ago which I need to review.
Keyboarding is recommended for dysgraphia. I have seen this floating around but do not have any solid info on it. www.readandspell.com/us Thanks for the recommendations



Mrs B you articulated several things I suspect.

There are ATs for dysgraphia, but Dragon Naturally Speaking would not be where I would start for a couple reasons. Firstly, it can have a steep learning curve and be frustrating for a student to use. Because he'd be required to speak into the system, it would be stigmatizing and disruptive to other students if he is mainstreamed. Going forward, tests would have to be done out of the classroom. Thanks for the info I wondered how easy it was to learn. I'm not worried about stigma YET. He's mainstreamed but his school houses a level 2 ASD center based program and there are accommodations all over the place. However, MS isn't all that far away and the service delivery model is very very different to put it mildly (it's really a cliff-I'm part of a parent group advocating at the district level for changes)

I would look at keyboarding first if the written production of assignments is too laborious for him to keep up with peers and grade level expectations. That said, if part of the issue with handwriting is related to hypotonia in his core or hands, he might need PT/OT to work on strengthening those areas so he doesn't fatigue as quickly. He has OT minutes but it's only like 60 minutes a month-which really means the OT is in the classroom for 60 minutes a month.  There's only one OT for 4 schools.  When he was younger we did private OT for sensory regulation (he's primarily a seeker.)  It might be time to revisit for writing. I did ask his school OT for recommendations on programs to teach him how to type. We're going to spend some time this summer on Keyboarding without Tears

The short sentence piece to this should also be looked at. If he was asked to tell a story/produce sentences for his journal orally using a scribe- how would he do? DS's spelling word sentences always sucked; he thought it was a stupid assignment; we eventually had to require a specific word count even with keyboarding.

Many kids with ASD have a disorder of written expression that is separate from their issues with physically producing writing.

Sometimes this is a matter of an ASD trait where assignments that aren't a favorite get the minimum effort- like the kid who is going to ace the spelling test and resent the hell out of writing sentences using the spelling list. Sometimes it's more related to content- like the kid who struggles with literary devices in fiction or emotions in journaling. Often kids like this could write all day long about science or a special interest but couldn't answer a question about whether Prof. Snape is a good guy or a bad guy.

As you touched on, getting an idea on paper requires a number of skills that are impacted by ASD (and ADHD to a lesser degree)- Theory of Mind, Executive Function, Expressive Language and Central Coherence. If the glitches in writing are related to any of these, therapy to address these pieces to writing should help him find his voice on paper.

Theory of Mind is the notion that he could make a realistically good guess about what someone else might be feeling or know. For writing, this means understanding his audience and what they bring to his work. DS sometimes assumed more background knowledge than was needed to write a coherent piece. He got rote instruction around this and his pragmatics group helped as well. Another problem for some kids is that being a writer means being a reader. Many on spectrum have a very limited interest in fiction or stick to a narrow genre- it helps to read fiction to such kids and talk about what motivates the characters; movies can be used this way, too.

This one is going to be difficult to parse out. He does put in minimal effort into many things. He just wants to get it over with. However, he sometimes writes short fiction stories for fun but he can explain what's going on and what his characters are thinking/doing much better than he can write it. Plus, it's also pretty illegible because he uses plain white paper. He does worse without lines.

Theory of the mind is an issue that he's getting better at because of explicit social skills instruction (Social Thinking curricula). It's an issue though. He absolutely assumes more background knowledge, even in everyday conversations. I have to explicitly ask for it regularly.

He loves being read fiction and now that he's gotten over the hump of being able to read simple chapter books to himself, he likes reading it too.  He really likes it if there's mildly inappropriate humor (Captain Underpants, Diary of a Wimpy Kid...)

Expressive language delays sometimes persist with ASD; DS (who spoke in sentences at 16 months) got help with this as well through middle school. He has speech minutes exclusively for social speech. He's learning to slow down and take turns. He has a habit of monologuing and talking really really fast. Not always about special interests but definitely about his interests without taking the other person into account.

Executive function and organizational skill issues can make it hard for a student with ASD to get their thoughts down in a logical manner. Central coherence glitches can make it hard for a writer to give the proper weight to components of the story so that it makes sense. Scaffolding in the form of rubrics or even composition software can be useful for these kinds of issues. I know a number of kids who have used Kidspiration and Inspiration for their composition assignments. A couple of them tried Dragon and found it too burdensome for a younger student to get set up.

www.inspiration.com/KidspirationThanks for the recommendations. I'll look into them.  Thank you for all of the info.

[mirandah]

I've been fighting this fight this year to not much avail. DS is in third grade. He ticks all the boxes for dysgraphia but our insurance won't cover an eval (neuropsych) I requested a school eval and it was pretty wimpy; results came back negative tho he is still barely at or just below grade level for his writing skills. Compared to his peers he is significantly behind. I pushed for more keyboarding during his two weekly writing pullouts; I didn't see any improvement in handwriting or sentence structure this year. His ASD teacher is compliant but lazy. DS put up a fight over keyboarding so she has let him write his sentences, even tho they continue to be illegible. Just a few weeks ago I checked in again and complained- his ASD teacher apologized and said it was just "easier" (for her) to let him write. Argh. The program they use is word prediction (cowriter)- its like autocorrect on steroids. He likes it, but isn't confident in it yet. Next year all the kids get chromebooks so I'm hoping he will find a groove there.

I asked the mom's in our schools special ed parent group about accommodations around this. They all uniformly said they believe their kids have dysgraphia, but none had an actual diagnosis. One mom said she thought they were difficult to come by until the kid is older. And, it doesn't necessarily matter if your school is providing accommodations. Our school really drug its feet on LD testing- they kept telling me that DS's services and accommodations wouldn't change because he was already receiving services for writing. The quality of this services really suck tho!