Dysgraphia – a problem with writing

This came through as an email but I thought it may be useful for others.

Hi there,

Recently my partner, heard about dysgraphia while watching a documentary, and explained to me that he thinks he has it. He has struggled with hand writing ever since he was a child, and I know that dyslexia runs strongly in his extended family. He little trouble reading, but when he is writing has trouble forming letters, he swaps letters around in every word, and misspells words even though verbally he can spell them absolutely perfectly. He will run all the letters he writes together unless there are lines on the paper to guide the writing. His biggest trouble is taking notes and copying things down which he has to do a lot for work, and if he forces himself to write neatly it is slow and he forgets what word he is writing. So he basically avoids writing at all costs. I’ve always thought it’s odd how rarely he writes things down, and why he gets annoyed at me when I ask him to write in a birthday card to his mum or jot down a phone number! He also said that when he is reading often the lines of text “bend” or jump, which I’ve heard some people with dyslexia have?

I was wondering what sort of help is available to help him, and how he can go about getting that help? It’s something that has impacted on his life for so long without him realising and has affected his confidence. Now he’s got a feeling about what it might be, and that he’s not the only one out there with this problem, he wants to do something about it. Any advice you have would be of great help! Your website is terrific.

hi,
he obviously has dysgraphia as that only actually means “problems with writing”. what is important is in finding out why.
do the tick box tests for older students in both dyslexia and dyspraxia and see if either of them fit.

in the mean time stop writing and word process. you don’t actually have to write nowadays and most people who find writing hard find word processing easy once they get good at it.
cheers
dawn

1 comment October 8th, 2008