Fw: Recovering fine motor and handwriting

[Guest guest]

I am writing a general post and putting it out to the boards, searching for

answers. Perhaps someone out there has dealt successfully with this issue where

I have struggled.

Mark is 15 and pretty much recovered. Actually, he just came home

last night from a school trip to France for 12 days and did magnificently! He

didn't regress at all and while he was a bit tired from his travels, his eyes

were glowing and he was full of stories of his adventure.

BUT, his handwriting, fine motor and paper management skills remain

atrocious. He has come such a long way in this area but it really is not

enough for higher level education. Mark begins high school next year (grade

10) and I worry that his lack of handwriting fluency is going to be his

doom. At one point, his hands and wrists were extremely weak and frail

along with the rest of his body. We have spent years in improving his tone.

The body came in first and now his hands/wrists are nice and strong. I thought

that in achieving normal hand strength, his fluency would get better.... and it

did, a little, but not very much.

Today, his gross motor is pretty good. He runs regularly, plays on the

football team, wrestles, is currently rowing on crew, skiis (both snow and

water), kneeboards and is extremely

active. This is quite a difference from the young boy who used to fall out

of a chair, his body was so weak!

Pretty much everything associated with his condition has been overcome. We

have great speech, auditory processing is now good, good attention, memory and

the body is nice and

strong. BUT those hands!

For him, it is not just with handwriting. It took him until he was 12 in

order to tie his shoes. He struggles with things like chopping veggies,

folding laundry, opening the Glad garbage bag to place it into the bin

(tactility issue on this one), inserting keys in locks to open doors. He

will often write on his loose leaf paper upside down or insert it into his

binder or duo tang backwards or upside down. His handwriting is sloppy and

pretty much illegible. I don't know how his teachers read it! His writing

is slow and laborious. He brings home ZERO notes from class and writes

notes from his textbook onto the computer each night rather then take notes

from the teacher. He does have a laptop to take to class but refuses to do

so anymore finding it cumbersome and difficult to manage along with the

myriad of textbooks he has to carry around.

Mark is an excellent reader, always has been and his visual memory is quite

acute. He tested out at the college level of decoding and reading

comprehension when languishing in special ed in grade 6! So.... I know he

isn't having issues with dyslexia but does have problems sometimes with

visual scanning for objects, ie. an object can be right in front of him and

he won't see it, he has hyper-peripheral vision which is probably the 'root'

cause of all of this.... or is it visual motor? I just don't know anymore!

I have done every handwriting program out there to no avail. The best,

really, was Handwriting Without Tears and we did get some improvement with

that program along with Form Drawing by Waldoff. We had repeated the HWT

program a few times before Mark refused to do it anymore. He is DONE, DONE,

DONE with therapy and just wants to live a regular life now. And he is

doing this but..... I recognize that his lack of handwriting fluency is

about to catch up with him. Today, our therapy now consists in the form of

'chores' or within the realm of organized sport. While he struggles with

it, I make sure that he participates in cooking dinner, folding laundry,

shoveling the walk, taking out the garbage, making his bed, etc.

I know that for him, it is a visual motor issue but it seems to be more

concentrated with small items or small movements of the hands and fingers.

I feel as though I have exhausted the 'list' of things to do for fine motor,

visual motor and handwriting. I have heard that fencing helps with fine

motor control and know of a club that he could possibly join. Does anyone out

there have

any suggestions of other things we could possibly try within your arsenal of

experience that I may have overlooked?

Looking for therapy and/or biomedical suggestions here....

We are still chelating and 'hoping' that the handwriting will improve but while

everything else has gotten better with chelation, alas, the hands remain a big

problem. It's our last holdout and we won't be DONE with this dreadful

condition until I have recovered his hands completely! I once promised Mark

that I would get 'everything' back for him that was once lost. I am trying very

hard to keep this promise but am getting frustrated in this area....

Does ANYONE out there have an older child who conquered handwriting and fine

motor skills later in life? If so, I am ALL ears!!!

Looking for suggestions,

Janice

Mother of Mark, severe global dyspraxia/apraxia/dysarthria/CAPD, now '90%'

recovered