The Ins and Outs of Dysgraphia

Dysgraphia is a neurological condition that affects a child’s ability to write coherently. It is, in essence, a “writing dyslexia”.

If your child has dysgraphia, then it is difficult to coordinate writing with thinking. Some common factors that play into this condition are poor gross motor skills, weak fine motor skills, spatial problems, and the inability to organize and process thoughts and ideas in a way that translates to legible, organized words, sentences, and paragraphs.

In addition, it is common for a student who has dyslexia to have dysgraphia, as both deal with processing language.

What You Need to Know About This Common Learning Problem

Dysgraphia is a common learning problem! Since writing is a multi-pronged process, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. For instance, at Bravo! Tutoring, we have found that students with dysgraphia have a difficult time thinking and writing at the same time. Of course, this interferes with the whole writing process!

Usually, children who strugggle with dysgraphia are bright, verbal, and have many stories to tell. But something happens along the way, and they can’t seem to get these wonderful ideas written down on paper in an organized, legible way. 

For kids with dysgraphia, it’s just too difficult to think, make the pencil move across paper, and to organize thoughts in a meaningful way. And because this problem usually isn’t dealt with in early years, emotional baggage adds into the mix.

Because of all these factors, children and teens with dysgraphia will often avoid writing like the plague! Many kids who struggle to write would rather miss recess, get a poor grade, or face embarrassment rather than construct an easy sentencece or paragraph.

When You Find Out What’s on Your Child’s Plate…

Writing might seem easy to you. But if you look at what’s on a dysgraphia student’s plate, there’s no mystery why writing is a difficult process.

To start with, kids with dysgraphia often struggle with focusing, have ADD/ADHD, or have brains that process information quickly. In addition, they’re usually quite verbal and intelligent. Because of this, it’s simply too difficult for their writing hand (or typing hands) to keep up with racing thoughts or fast flying words.

When asked to perform a writing assignment, it’s as if they were asked to climb Mt. Everest. 

Or worse!

Children with dysgraphia will stall, delay, ask to go to the bathroom, remember something that must be done right now, or will sit quietly, telling you they are “thinking” when given a writing assignment.  Minutes tick by and nothing is put down on paper.

Another problem that crops up is poor motor control. Too often, children with dysgraphia have a hard time with fine motor skills or muscle control in the hands and wrist. They are often uncoordinated in general.

This makes it more difficult to get the task of writing done. Just writing one word might take a child with poor motor control twice as long as another child.That’s because one of the three main writing steps isn’t being dealt with in a way that resonates with the student.

At Bravo! Reading, we start at square one and build on writing skills in a logical, sequential way. We work on coordinating the body with the brain as a starting point then branch out into more refined skills like word and sentence structure after these skills are set in.

One of our best kept writing secrets is our Magic Eights activity! By coordinating the left and right hemispheres of the brain in a fun, flowing way, kids start to make gross motor skills strides right away.

Ricky’s Writing Before Using Our Magic Eights Activity:

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Ricky’s Writing After Using Our Magic Eights Activity:

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Why Dysgraphia is Hard to Overcome

By definition, dysgraphia is a neurological disorder and interferes with your child’s ability to process written information. Dysgraphia causes writing fatigue, which interferes with the communication of ideas from the brain to the hand. When your child has dysgraphia, it’s difficult to write information that is legible and coherent on paper or on the computer, especially when original ideas need to be formed at the same time.

Children with dysgraphia struggle to keep up with the rapid demands of school assignments and writing expectations. Since writing carries over to all subjects in school, low grades, poor test taking skills, and inferior self-esteem can crop up.

Most educators try to help kids with dysgraphia by primarily dealing with the writing component. Others deal with penmanship, thinking that’s the best fix. Many will focus only on the visual processing skills involved. It’s rare to find someone who can effectively deal with all three.

But here’s the good news. It’s not difficult to help your child develop these skills. The secret is in how the skills are taught and the order in which they are learned. At Bravo! Tutoring, we know that when these three writing skills have been taught correctly, kids can write with confidence and clarity!

Did You Know There are Three Types of Dysgraphia?

There are three main types of dysgraphia, and all three must be treated in the following order for lasting writing results to take place.

  •  Motor dysgraphia
  • Spatial dysgraphia
  • Processing dysgraphia

Make the Start by Fixing Motor Dysgraphia​

 Motor dysgraphia is the first type of dysgraphia that needs to be dealt with. It is the most basic level of all three types. Kids with motor dysgraphia usually struggle with letter formation, letter spacing, and overall handwriting legibility. They may also experience difficulties with pencil grip, hand fatigue, and awkward body postures while writing. 

When your child has motor dysgfraphia, the connections between the brain and the hands aren’t working well. In addition, muscles in the hands and wrists might be weak. Poor fine motor skills are the end result.

In addition, the inability to move fingers and the hand /wrist with dexterity comes into play. These kids usually have a poor or incorrect pencil grip due to inadequate muscle control. They have a difficult time cutting with scissors. Writing simple letters is usually difficult for them, and they especially struggle with writing curved letter, like o, a, b, c, d, g, p, q, s, and u.  

One common thing that happens with kids who struggle with motor dysgraphia is mixing cursive and print together. Also, spacing between letters is either non-existent or the letters are all bunched together. Penmanship is usually terrible, resulting in illegible writing. Words are often misspelled and grammar is incorrect because it’s too laborious to simply get letters on paper.

It is important that these students are exposed to activities that strengthen muscle control before being asked to do more difficult writing assignments such as sentences or paragraphs. If your hand or finger muscles are weak, then writing a paragraph is like asking someone with broken legs to run a marathon! 

Occupational therapists can help your child with poor motor control or you can use programs like those at Bravo! Tutoring that deal with strengthening fine motor skills along with finger/wrist control to make the mechanics of writing easier. It’s also important to have brain integration activities so your child can begin the communication process with the hands and fingers in the right way.

At Bravo! Tutoring, we know and understand that writing and muscle control start with gross motor skills before refining them into fine motor skills. People learn from the outside in. That means that large muscle movements must be in place before small, fine motor skills can be mastered.

The body/brain connection is importamnt for building the foundation for this and other learning skills. Like building a house, the foundation is the most important part, and this starts with the above mentioned skills.

Make Space for Spatial Dysgraphia

The second type of dysgraphia is spatial dysgraphia, which is your child’s ability to interpret what is seen. Spatial skills are crucially important for writing. After all, if you aren’t perceiving information correctly, it’s hard to write it correctly!

If your child doesn’t know where to put a letter on an assighment, writing is going to be confusing, especially on a “busy” worksheet. In addition, if the letters, words, or numbers jumble in your child’s mind, (a symptom of dyslexia) writing can be difficult because it’s too hard to distinguish letters and words from each other.

Spatial skills deal with how objects are positioned relative to each other in space.  Tied closely to this skill is visual discrimination, which is the ability to tell the difference between different symbols, letters, numbers, or words.

​The Icing on the Cake: Processing Dysgraphia

The third type of dysgraphia is processing dysgraphia.  This is usually the most difficult of all three types to put into place. It’s also extremely important that kids have strong motor and spatial skills before attempting to strenghten writing processing skills. To do so would be like asking a baby who only knows how to crawl to walk or run! It just won’t work because the lower skills aren’t in place yet.

Processing dysgraphia is caused by issues with the orthographic loop – that part of the brain dealing with working memory and the permanent memory of letters, numbers, words, and sentences. When a child with dysgraphia struggles in this area, there is a missing component between working memory and sequencing of muscle movements of the fingers and hands. 

Automaticity is an important part of the writing processing. This is when the activity becomes automatic instead of having to use concscious thought to get it done. Writing needs to have automaticity or it will be too difficult to get paragraphs written with organization and uniformity.

If a child is struggling with a processing issue, there is a glitch in the system. Ideas don’t get to the hands with ease. There is a block holding back the smooth flow and automaticity of writing. In addition, kids who struggle with writing processing issues have a difficult time organizing their thoughts and ideas. These are the kids whose writing rambles on and on. Sentences and paragraphs don’t flow.

Dysgraphia Doesn’t Have to be a Death Sentence!

If your child struggles with dysgraphia, you don’t have to lose sleep. Yes, it takes time and energy to put the writing pieces together. but with the right approach, writing can be a fun, easy proces for your child.

At Bravo! Tutoring, we start your child with large muscle movements in order to build a strong writing foundation. Your child plays games and performs activities that strengthen visual motor integration, spatial skills, perceptual skills, fine motor skills, and hand/finger muscle building.

At the same time, your child strengthens both visual and auditory memory skills while at Bravo! Tutoring. Students must be able to “see” and “hear” sounds, sounds of letters, words, and sentences for successful writing to occur. This helps your child recall facts and information that is being written as well as makes the organization component more fluid.

Your child might have one, two, or all three types of dysgraphia. Unless detailed testing is done, it’s best to start by treating motor dysgraphia, then advance to spatial and writing processing.

Symptoms of Dysgraphi

  • poor ability to cut with scissors
  • awkwadifficult time learning/writing the alphabet
  • avoiding or having poor fine motor skills and/or incorrect pencil grip
  • poor letter control, especially with curved letters
  • shutting down when asked to write – avoiding it at all costs
  • fisting a pencil or pen instead of gripping the pencil correctly
  • illegible writing
  • mixing upper- and lower-case letters
  • little or no spacing between words
  • running words off of given lines
  • difficulty composing words on own
  • poor spelling and grammar
  • words that blend together
  • fatigue and tiredness from writing for short periods of time
  • writing rambles with no organization of thoughts
  • mixing print and cursive
  • odd wrist, arm, body, or paper orientations such as bending an arm into an L shape while writing
  • poor posture when writing
  • inconsistent form and size of letters, or unfinished letters
  • inefficient speed of copying
  • inattentiveness over details when writing
  • frequent need of verbal cues or visual stimulation when writing
  • gets extremely close to paper when writing
  • feeling of finger, hand, or wrist pain when writing

Outside activities that can Strengthen Gross Motor Skills

  • horseback riding
  • martial arts
  • yoga and or Pilates for core development
  • exercise with a large workout ball
  • balance board activities
  • jumping rope
  • jumping jacks
  • catching a ball
  • marching
  • balance beam activities
  • rolling down hills
  • crossing the invisible mid-line of the body

Helping Your Child Hold a Pencil Correctly:

  • use fat pencils
  • use fat markers
  • use dot dabbers or bingo markers for most activities until fine motor skills are strengthened
  • use pencil grippers
  • use cursive writing if possible; cursive flows with the students’ ideas and it is difficult to make reversals with cursive
  • use our letter number formation book with dot dabbers to help form letters in a multi-disciplinary fashion
  • go from the outside in – work gross motor skills first then advance to fine motor skills
  • table circles and other cross lateral movement activities are beneficial

The Process of Writing:

  • sitting properly with a straight back
  • fine motor skills
  • flowing thoughts
  • correct pencil grip
  • the ability to organize thoughts into writing
  • dictation
  • using a picture to use as a visual cue and the student writes about just what he sees
  • organizing the paragraph with visual markers so the student knows where to put topic sentence, details, and concluding sentence
  • is sequential – a student must be able to write letters, then words, then sentences, then paragraphs    

Myths About Dysgraphia

  • sitting properly with a straight back
  • fine motor skills
  • flowing thoughts
  • correct pencil grip
  • the ability to organize thoughts into writing
  • dictation
  • using a picture to use as a visual cue and the student writes about just what he sees
  • organizing the paragraph with visual markers so the student knows where to put topic sentence, details, and concluding sentence
  • is sequential – a student must be able to write letters, then words, then sentences, then paragraphs.
  • a student can just type on a computer to compensate for writing with a pen or pencil
  • dysgraphia will go away on its own
  • illegible handwriting is common for boys; they don’t need to learn to write
  • we have so much technology now that writing isn’t important
  • writing more will make my child or student a better writer
  • if I correct my child’s writing enough, he will understand what to
  • if I have my child copy sentences or words five or more times, it will fix the dysgraphia just through repetition alone
  • a correct pencil grip is not important as long as my child’s writing is legible
  • my child has wonderful ideas; he can just tell them to a tape recorder and then he won’t have to write
  • writing is no longer an important skill; with technology students don’t need to write
  • you can outgrow poor writing once you are older
  • it is a sign of intelligence to have poor writing

Truths About Dysgraphia

  • students can be taught to write and to write well
  • practicing handwriting skills is not enough to help a student overcome most types of dysgraphia
  • writing is a process and needs to be dealt with as such
  • writing is sequential – you must have a to get to b; b to get to c; and so forth
  • a student who is holding a pencil incorrectly will fatigue faster than one who is holding it correctly
  • dysgraphia can be overcome
  • the best way to help a student with dysgraphia is to treat all three types
  • typing is just as difficult for most dysgraphic students as writing
  • we need to learn to write in our society still, by using a pen or pencil; although much has turned over to technology, schools and workplaces still demand the ability to write with a pen or pencil
  • once a student is out of school and into the workforce, employers will expect a student to write; there aren’t many accommodations or modifications for employees who can’t do their assigned jobs.  By not being able to write, it limits a person’s ability to get and hold down a job
  • writing can be physically painful for students, and this is often why they avoid it

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