Where do we go now?

October 14th, 2008

Hi,
I have 2 boys – 11 and 9yrs old. The oldest one has had no developmental or learning difficulties at all. The youngest has had speech therapy and occupational therapy starting from 4yrs of age (speech). The school they attend has copies of all of his therapy. His writing is atrocious, he has excellent spelling and mathematical skills. He transposes letters, can’t write in/on lines, writes in a mix of capitals and lower case, all different size letters, takes forever to write anything and tidy just does not exist in his work books. He also gets severely frustrated especially at school when given a writing task – snapping pencils and crying at times. He failed his yr 3 statewide core skills test for writing (surprise surprise) and I have been unable to find any tutors on the list given out by the gov dept that organises the tutoring to do with the skills tests. So I am at a stage now where I will have to arrange for his tutoring to be done through the school he attends. My issue is this – they have been aware of his diffulties from day dot and have from what I can see just ignored them or put them in the too hard basket. My son is extremely intelligent and inquisitive and tries hard to please as long as he doesn’t have to write anything. I presently have him working on a touch typing CD rom hoping that if I can improve his typing I can convince the school to allow him to do his ‘writing’ on the computer.

My son is not diagnosed as anything but after reading this site the ‘labels’ that come to mind are dysgraphia and DMD dyspaxia.

I have recently attended a child psychologist with my son to see if his behavoural problems at school (inattentive, class clown, anger, frustration) and social difficulties to an extent are caused by his ongoing writing diffculties(which I believe is the case) or whether there are underlying problems. I am almost positive that food additives are not an issue as I cook from scratch and do not buy processed foods and on the rare occassions that we have soft drink, lollies, bought bread, chips etc I see no marked changes in my son.

I constantly and am telling the teachers (he has two teachers that work split weeks) that I want him to use the computer to do his writing but it is like banging my head against a brick wall. Then I get a call saying he has done such and such, and when I ask him what he was doing just before he did it he tells me it was “stupid bloody writing”. My primary concern is for my child and I don’t seem to be getting anywhere.

Any help or advice on where to go from here would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for the long winded message.

thanks for your email. your story is far too familiar. firstly he should be typing . writing is a skill no longer needed. work processing is the way to go but schools in Australia nowadays uses sheets and gaps to be filled in all the time that can’t be filled in on a word processor.

have you done the tick box tests for both dyslexia and dyspraxic – on my site. if so get back to me with the scores.

i took on 19 extra pupils and now teach all weekends in order to fit in all the kids in my area who failed in any area and so far they have all turned out to be simply dyslexic.

the more he word processes the better his hand writing will become. i know this sounds odd but i it is right. i sell a funny game that encourages kids to word process. he doesn’t have to know how to touch type just get used to where the keys are. if you think he is dyspraxic my dyspraxic book will help you a lot with coordination games and explaining why he has the problems etc etc.

i live near perth if you are anywhere near me i can asses him and advice better.

stick to your instincts. you know your son best.

Cheers
Dawn

Entry Filed under: Dyslexia,General