Joined Up Handwriting

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When I was in school I remember at least a couple of grades where they made us write everything in cursive. I think it was a waste of time since after leaving school I never used cursive again except to sign my name.

I don't really remember how to write cursive any more and have trouble reading some people's cursive writing.

Bad handwriting is common in kids with AS. My son has barely legible printing, and his cursive, now that he is learning, is not great either. He receives OT for this in school but it is helping only moderately so in the long run he may type more. (He has not learned well enough yet, though school is teaching him).

I don't think printing vs. cursive specifically is an AS issue. Personally, I write too fast in cursive, and it is so sloppy I cannot read it later. When I print it is slower but more readable. I am NT.

I have dysgraphia. I hear it's also more common in people with AS anyway. I belong to a dysgraphia group on yahoo and they're really accommodating and sweet if you join the group and I've learned a lot from them. There are even professionals in the group.

Things I've learned re dysgraphia from them and through my own experience:

1. Don't even bother with "handwriting without tears"-- basically they confirmed to me what I already knew-- it's a pile of crap and all it did to me as a kid was make me cry. Some of the kids of the parents in the group have some success with "loops and other groups" and other programs but it really depends on what they struggle with.

2. Don't waste your time with teachers who want to focus on remediating/teaching writing instead of typing. The more times I write something, the more it looks fit for the rubbish bin. Rewriting things does NOT help, and especially if a person has dysgraphia, repetitive writing will make them feel fatigued and the end result is worse than when they started. Instead, get your kid typing ASAP. It will make their life easier and will liberate them to express and organize their thoughts easier. It's no secret how my ability to express myself picked up after my family circa early-mid 90's bought their mac and it came bundled with mario teaches typing.

3. Re: method of teaching typing, there's no use to go all catholic-nun-with-a-ruler over typing method. In other words, your kid will probably not start out happily on something like mavis beacon tailored for adults learning to type. They'll probably want something more fun and kid oriented (not sure what exists out there nowadays but I know something does because they talk about it on the group). Also, don't freak if they don't get homerow typing down right away-- many kids, myself included started off with a more "adaptive" method, where one uses their thumbs, pointers, & middles and they bounce around the keyboard (surely even that is far faster than fighting letters that don't want to space and form aka writing). Eventually, when they become good enough, they'll get used to doing homerow. For me this upgrade happened when I was 15 and I was in a boisterous BSB chatroom circa 1999 (their highest heyday) trying to keep up before AOL properly made their block feature evident in the mac version of the software. That chatroom was a total madhouse (between there being too many fans in there already talking at the exact same time-- think 5 conversations between 30 people, and the sheer amount of haters flooding the chat with "bsb sux nsync rules!" and ascii art middle fingers pasted by those still stuck in the closet). Shredding away homerow style at 120wpm was the ONLY way to keep up in there and get your whole message seen by someone. And I've never gone back to adaptive since. I'm not sure if I can even find a chatroom that wild anymore. No place I've seen since held a candle to the insane pace of that place. But, if the kid notices that adaptive can't keep up, they're more likely to be encouraged to go homerow.

4. Many a teacher tried to get me to correct my pencil grip. Some people on the group have corrected grips with limited success. But I lack the fine motor coordination and I end up dropping my pencil a lot with the "correct" grip. It's easier yet, to just figure out what kind of pens/pencils your kid has better luck with if they are writing. I'm right-handed, but I prefer finer gel style pens (like the G2 pens) because they flow smoother (obviously, a leftie might not like this, as this will be the biggest handwriting smear in the universe to them), pencil-wise, I generally hate regular pencils, and most mechanical pencils, but I have better luck with (and I'm not even sure if they make them anymore), the "Vibz" mechanical pencils by papermate (they are different colors, have the clear glittery squishy grip, and 0.9 lead, which the grip is great and the lead is thick so it breaks less for us heavy-handed folk).

5. Dominance is definitely an issue. A lot of people, not all, but plenty who are dysgraphic have trouble with picking a dominant hand (i.e. they're ambidextrous and when they start writing as a kid, they'll start on the left hand, get to the middle of the page and switch to right hand). In some ways I'm ambidextrous but not in writing (i.e. some activities I'll do righty and some I'll do lefty-- I blame my father as he's ambidextrous as well lol). It's also been said that people who are ambidextrous tend to struggle a lot with organization issues in a lot of aspects of their life. Also-- in addition to ambidexterity, dominance is different when it comes to different sides in a dysgraphic. i.e. this topic came up in the group I remember when someone was astonished that their kid's writing magically started looking better when they were writing on an upright marker board. Digging deeper, they found out that their kid's dominant hand, and their kid's dominant eye did not match sides. We started holding it up to our own knowledge and experience and found that it was a prevalent reality-- i.e. as an example, I'm right-handed (in a writing sense)-- but I'm left eye dominant. So I'm going to struggle a bit more having to kinda hunch over a desk to see my writing more clearly.

6. it's definitely more than just sloppy writing. There are actually 3 different types of dysgraphia. And a person can have multiple types, but they don't have to have them all for it to be considered dysgraphia. There's one type that has to do with spacial problems (this one where the person has trouble getting word and letter spacing right). There's another type that has to do with the motor issues involved (especially evident in fatigue, grip, and letter formation problems). The third variant has to do with spelling. I have not focused on this variety because I don't have the third spelling-afflicted variant but I have the other two (motor/spacial). Writing is so taxing on the brain, that sometimes we forget words (easy to do when your AS brain goes a million miles an hour, typical of AS, and your crappy writing and the processing involved can't keep up), sometimes the wrong word gets written 3 times in a row, or the letters won't want to form, the spaces wont' get kerned correctly. I cannot tell you how many times a bonehead teacher has scribbed "NEATNESS COUNTS" on my paper and docked my grade for it (sometimes by even a whole letter grade). My 1st grade teacher even went so far to rip up my worksheet, hand me a fresh copy, dictating "Try again, this time neater." As. If.

7. Everyone has a different experience with cursive writing. I personally, when I write, swap around different writing types when I start getting fatigued. So I'm one of the few that learning cursive has been a mild blessing (that, and I was taught by someone in 3rd grade, who was formerly a special ed teacher who went mainstream, so she was open to more methods and variation than other teachers). And by swapping, I mean if I get sick of print, I'll go cursive. Visa-versa. If I get sick of both, I'll do some kind of weird connected print fusion of the two. Even still, after X amount of writing, my writing WILL deteriorate into illegability and fatigue no matter what.

8. Don't be fooled by a kid who slows to a snails pace to put out beautiful writing but has a hard time speeding up, into thinking that they can't be dysgraphic. Writing should be automatic in process and should be fast enough to be used regularly-- if it's not usable at a proper rate, there's something obviously wrong. Going slower (aka drawing it-- and drawing does not use the same processes in the brain as writing) is not feasible for things like taking notes in class or getting ideas out on paper in a timely manner. I can draw it, but it just is not the same. In fact, there was a kid who used to tease me in high school-- he thought his observation that I am very artistically talented at drawing, and the fact that my writing is stinky dysgraphic slop, he thought it was comical. But, like other stoner apathetic idiots I went to school with, he was basically ignorant and unaware of what I was dealing with.

I think I nailed away all the misconceptions that I could think of right off hand. Feel free to ask further question and I'll see if I (or anyone else) can answer it.

Wow, thanks for all that information. I think reading what you've said, she might have spacial dysgraphia. She cannot seem to remember to space her words, and she does get very fatigued writing. I will save your information somewhere in case I need it for her upcoming assessment.