November 5, 2025 • 43 mins
When writing becomes a daily battle, it’s not about laziness or lack of effort. It’s about overwhelm. Writing is one of the most complex tasks our brains can do. For kids with dysgraphia or other writing challenges, that cognitive load can feel crushing. In this episode, I talk with occupational therapist and handwriting expert Kelli Fetter about how to spot writing struggles early, what dysgraphia really looks like, and how you can support your child in simple, practical ways right now.
Kelli shares her own journey — from an OT who hadn’t even heard of dysgraphia to a mom on a mission to help her daughter — and the powerful lessons she learned along the way. Together, we unpack five key strategies for helping kids build the foundations of writing without frustration or shame, from multisensory learning to quality practice and collaborative school partnerships.
If your child avoids writing, melts down over assignments, or feels “stuck,” this conversation will bring both clarity and relief. It’s never too late to help your child feel capable and confident in expressing their ideas.
Tune in to learn practical tools, empowering mindset shifts, and how to build success one letter at a time.
You can find additional resources at parentingadhdandautism.com and Regulated Kids.com — because it’s not just about the struggles, it’s about progress, one step at a time.
Show notes and more resources at parentingadhdandautism.com/333
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beautifully-complex--6137613/support.
Kelli shares her own journey — from an OT who hadn’t even heard of dysgraphia to a mom on a mission to help her daughter — and the powerful lessons she learned along the way. Together, we unpack five key strategies for helping kids build the foundations of writing without frustration or shame, from multisensory learning to quality practice and collaborative school partnerships.
If your child avoids writing, melts down over assignments, or feels “stuck,” this conversation will bring both clarity and relief. It’s never too late to help your child feel capable and confident in expressing their ideas.
Tune in to learn practical tools, empowering mindset shifts, and how to build success one letter at a time.
You can find additional resources at parentingadhdandautism.com and Regulated Kids.com — because it’s not just about the struggles, it’s about progress, one step at a time.
Show notes and more resources at parentingadhdandautism.com/333
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beautifully-complex--6137613/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Handwriting is so complex, and so when a student is
having to think about how to form a letter, remember
to how to place it on the line and the
correct spacing. Oh but yeah, then we also have to
think about how to spell the word and what makes
a good sentence again and what did I want to
write about anyway?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
And what was the topic.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
And then you can just see you can see the
spiral because every part of it is challenging.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Welcome to Beautifully Complex, where we unpack what it really
means to parent neurodivergent kids with dignity and clarity. I'm
Penny Williams, and I know firsthand how tough and transformative
this journey can be. Let's dive in and discover how
to raise regulated, resilient, beautifully complex kids together. Oh and
(00:51):
if you want more support, join our free community at
hub dot beautifully complex dot life us. Welcome back to
(03:20):
Beautifully Complex everyone. I'm so glad you're here, and I
have with me today Kelly Fetter of Handwriting Solutions, and
we're going to talk about writing challenges dysgraphia, but also
other challenges and how I hope to kind of identify
when this might be what's going on with your kid
(03:42):
when it might be more of a learning disability. And
also five things that you can do right now that
are going to help a kid who's struggling with writing. Kelly,
thank you for being here. Will you start by sharing
who you are and what you do?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Absolutely? Yeah, thanks for having me, Penny, so again, Yeah,
my name's Kelly. I am the Elder of Handwriting Solutions,
and I'll start kind of at the beginning because I
think it helps knowing where I came from. So I
originally went down the path of I'm a pediatric occupational therapist,
and so I worked in pediatrics for many years, seeing
(04:18):
a variety of students in their schools, outpatient early intervention,
and so I had a pretty good broad exposure to
a variety of kiddos. And then I had my own
and then shifted over to an adjunct professor position, also
teaching kinesiology and pediatrics. So I loved that academia world
(04:43):
and that research world. But life pretty much shifted when
my daughter was five and started to struggle with reading
and writing, and my OT brain said, what is going on?
How can I help? How did this even happened? But
I came at it from a very medical model, and
(05:04):
I was like, well, her motor skills are fine, her
fine motor skills are great. I don't understand her visual
spatial skills were through the roof. I don't understand what's
going on. And so of course I go to the
school and I'm like, I'm seeing a disconnect and they're like,
she's fine, We're going to wait and see.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
You know, all typical response that we get.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
But given what I knew, I knew early intervention matters,
and so we started tutoring when she was between kindergarten
and first grade that summer and really focusing on the
reading skills because I knew we had to make some
gains there before we started first grade. And she was
just things were not connecting, they were not clicking into place.
(05:47):
First grade rolls around, and then the school says, oh,
my goodness, we've got to get all these evaluations done
and she needs to do OT and she needs to
do speech, and she needs to do get under O psyche.
And then I hit the parent overwhelmed, which I know
some of our listeners made me familiar with this so
many h and I just I still could not get
(06:12):
my head wrapped around you know. And obviously during this
whole time too, I was really honing in on how
I can help her with her handwriting skills, because that
was something that I at least knew a little bit
about as a no tee.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So I said, I just.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Need to get her evaluated first. I need to know
what we're working with because all of this other stuff
just I can't wrap my head around. And we need
to go about this in a way that makes sense.
So I am the biggest proponent of evaluations. I think
it just gives family so much useful information about how
a child learned. And so that was my first step.
(06:49):
It was probably like November of her first grade year.
And turns out, yes, dyslexia dysgraphia. So get this, Penny.
I had never heard of dysgraphia before. I was an
OT practicing in pediatrics, and I had never heard of
dysgraphia before. That's crazy, and so it is right. It's
(07:12):
very alarming, and I would venture to say most of
her teachers in her school didn't really understand it either,
And so I said, I've got to figure this out.
I've got I was on a mission. Meanwhile, we went
ahead and started her in a very intensive dyslexia remediation
programming that spring of her first grade, which also happened
(07:33):
to coincide with COVID, so.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
That was fun.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
But I was like, let's tackle this. I'm going to research,
I'm going to learn, I'm going to take any course,
any training. I just did a huge deep dive in
the dysgraphia piece and then was able to support her
and started building her skills and coming at it from
a different model than what I was used to as
an OT. And here we are today. She's in seventh
(08:00):
grade and no longer qualifies for dyslexia or dysgraphia diagnosis,
so we have come full circle.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, but all of.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
That to say, you know, as the years went by
and I was able to help her and see her progress,
and I thought, why is nobody else doing this and
these kids need help. Maybe I should help bridge the
gap for these students.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
And so what.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Started as a very small two afternoons a week, that's
going to be just like a little a little like
side gig that I was going to help some friends
out here. We are fully virtual providing dysgraphia and dyslexia
remediation worldwide.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
So big, big, one story.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Isn't the Internet amazing?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
It really is.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Yeah, And I came into this work the same way.
I never thought about any of these things. What I
came to know is that I knew nothing about ADHD.
I knew nothing about autism because I only knew what
the general public understand standing was. I knew nothing about dysgraphia.
I didn't even hadn't even heard it before either. Oh,
I don't have any formal training where it might have
been helpful, and I should have learned it, but like,
(09:09):
I just didn't know anything. Executive function didn't know that
term either. And I've run across over the years so
many educators who don't know these things also have never
heard of them, also because they don't have to take
any training in special education in any form or fashion
in order to become a teacher. So it's not that
(09:30):
they don't care, it's that they don't know that they
need to know. Right And then, Yeah, and so like
we went to OT for dysgraphia. So it does sort
of boggle my mind that you were in OT and
didn't know what dysgraphia was. I guess we lucked out
and we went somewhere where they knew what dysgraphia was,
but I found it really challenging all the way through
(09:53):
my son's school career because people didn't understand it, and
because they didn't like a lot of the accommodations that
we're going to be helpful, they don't want to go there.
They still wanted to force him to hand right things
a lot, and so it was really challenging. But I
think we need to start with making sure that everybody
(10:16):
listening understands what is dysgraphia?
Speaker 1 (10:19):
M M, yeah, yeah, because that's you. You can't address
it unless you understand it. And so yeah, so dysgraphia,
what I like to think of is specific learning disabilities
are It's an umbrella term, and so you have the
specific learning disability in reading and so that's dyslexia. You
(10:40):
have the specific learning disability in writing, so that's dysgraphia,
and then you have it in math and that's the
dysc calcula. So most people know about the dyslexia one
the SLB and reading, but the other two not so much, right,
and so what does dysgraphia actually look like? You know,
This is where it gets really tricky and really challenging
(11:02):
because there is not a gold standard tool to evaluate
for dysgraphia, and there is not really great diagnostic criteria
for dysgraphia. So if you were to say, look at
the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, you're going to see
a very broad definition. Same thing with the IDEA or
(11:25):
the ICD ten. Those are all diagnostic criteria in tools
that someone like a psychologist would look at when giving
a diagnosis, but they're all very broad and there's not
a clear tool or assessment tool to use. So that's
(11:45):
tricky because then kids either slip through the cracks or
maybe be misdiagnosed. There's just there's a lack of understanding
with that. So with all of that said, the biggest
thing that I personally look forward now, we do not
do diagnostics. Sots are it's not in our scope of
practice to diagnose, so we refer out to that, but
(12:07):
we can certainly say if your child is showing some
red flags and so some of those might be the
obvious one, the messy, illegible handwriting. That's the one we
see often on those Facebook groups where parents are in
there and they're like, does this look like my kid
has dysgraphia? And they show a picture and if only
that was that easy. Yes, it is helpful for us
(12:29):
to see a child's output, but even more helpful is
to see them as they're completing that output and to
kind of get a more holistic view of their learning.
But yes, definitely that messy, illegible writing. Maybe it's the
formation of their letters or the sizing or the spacing
that can be challenging for them. A big one is
(12:52):
that difficulty translating their thoughts to paper, So there's that
barrier there. Some of our disgraphic students actually have really nice,
neat handwriting, and it's that written expression piece that getting
our thoughts out that's the most challenging part. Some students
might struggle with sentenced skills, capitalization, punctuation, grammar. Some dysgraphic
(13:14):
students struggle with spelling. So there's a bit of an
overlap there with dyslexia and dysgraphia and the spelling part,
which again is why I want to see that holistic
learning profile of a student. And then one of the
bigger red flags that I see is frustration around writing
and avoidance of writing. If your child is really frustrated
(13:38):
ripping up the paper, this was my child ripping up
the paper and crumpling it and throwing it at you.
There might be something going on, maybe not dysgraphia, but
something that you would want to further explore. And then
that avoidance too, we see that sometimes in schools, the
avoidance of anything, the meltdowns around writing. That's not a behavior.
(13:59):
I know, you know we talk a lot about behavior,
and I know you do in this podcast, but it
is telling us that there's something more that's going on.
And then there's those soft skills, you know, the pencil grasp.
We're looking at that because that can sometimes be tricky.
If the child is experiencing fatigue or discomfort with writing,
that is something we want to look at too. So
you can see a disgraphic student is going to look
(14:21):
very different from another disgraphic student because the signs and
symptoms there are a lot. There's a lot going on
and there's a lot going on in the brain when
we do right right Writing by hand is so complex,
and so it's figuring out where that breakdown and barrier
is happening for the student so that then we can build.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Up their skills.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Yeah, and really understanding, like really having somebody help me
to sit back and think about all the things that
are going on in the brain and the body when
we are writing something down. Really helped me understand the
fact that for some it's completely just automatic. We don't
think about it, we just do it. And for others
(15:01):
it's too much. It's too many things at one time
we can't manage. And as you mentioned with your daughter earlier,
my son also has amazing fine motor skills, which I
assumed as we were walking into this journey his motor
skills were gonna be terrible, and I was shocked to
find that they were not. And hand eye coordination is unbelievable.
(15:27):
He now plays he likes to play rhythm games, like
video games with rhythm, and there is one that he's
been playing for years and when I watch him play, like,
I just I'm in shock in awe. When he plays
these games, he can go so fast. You have to
hit different keys for different things that are going right,
and he will get ninety nine percent of these things
(15:50):
with hundreds of them just blasting through really fast, and
I'm like, holy cow. And then I'm like, what can
we do with the skill which we have not figured
out yet? But like it's not affecting everything the way
you would think it would write like, it really is
more about the writing, either the physical act of writing
(16:10):
or that written expression piece, putting your thoughts together, getting
them on paper, expanding on them. Like my son wouldn't
necessarily avoid writing altogether, but he would write as little
as he thought he could possibly get away with, and
then he would always be asked to edit, and then
he would get really upset and he would not edit right.
And so that was a real signal yep yep, and
(16:33):
then there's that spiral and so yeah, a lot of
assist of technology came in for us. But what I
noticed was that he was never taught letter formation. And
I feel like if he had been taught letter formation
at the beginning, it wouldn't be as bad as it
has been bingo, because every single letter that he writes,
(16:57):
I'm like, huh, that's an interesting way to do that,
write all of them. And he did a lot of
handwriting without tears at ot. He did a lot of
practicing trying to change the letter for me, and it
just wouldn't stick. What stuck is what he made up
at the beginning. Because he wasn't taught and I don't
(17:18):
know why we're not teaching that in school now.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Oh, I know, I could really get on my soapbox here,
But the biggest thing I want to point out is, yes,
handwriting is more than a fine motor skill, and we
have got to understand that from a teacher perspective, from
an OT perspective, and from a parent perspective. And something
I talk a lot about is that cognitive load of writing.
So I love that you brought that up. Is handwriting
(17:42):
is so complex and so when a student is having
to think about how to form a letter, remember to
how to place it on the line in the correct spacing.
Oh but yeah, then we also have to think about
how to spell the word and what makes a good
sentence again and what did I want to write about anyway?
Speaker 2 (18:01):
And what was the topic.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
And then you can just see you can see the
spiral because every part of it is challenging. The cognitive
load is too heavy for them. And so yes, if
we could front load it and have good, high quality,
explicit and systematic instruction in school, embedded in the school day,
it does not take much time. I think that's the
(18:24):
key there is the research supports it is does not
take a ton of time in that classroom day to
provide this good quality handwriting instruction. All students are going
to benefit, but particularly our dist graphics students, and sure
they may need a little bit more even beyond that
instructional that tier one approach, if you will, if you're
(18:47):
in public school systems. But it's kind of like with dyslexia.
You know, the pendulum have swung back to more of
a phonics based instruction and reading, and it's benefiting all students,
and it's especially enough fitting students with aslexia, and students
with dyslexia still probably need some outside support too to
really spend more time on the phonological awareness or the
(19:09):
phonemic proficiency. Same thing with dysgraphia. Ideally we're getting that
really quality instruction in the school, and then yes, we
may need some outside support to help bridge the gaps
and help kind of eliminate some of those barriers for
the child.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
M Yeah, I mean eighteen years ago my kid entered kindergarten.
Then they expected him to already know how to form
all of his letters. They assume that kids are going
to preschool and they're learning it there, And I'm like,
what like, that doesn't make sense to me. You know,
that's not a requirement, That doesn't make sense. So anyway,
these things happen, and I think it's really hard to
(19:49):
identify early, Like if your kid is foreign, they're not
writing yet, you don't know that they have dysgraphia, to
go ahead and start working on letter formations with them
right before they go to school. Really tricky timing there,
And I think just a lot of kids end up
in school then we realize, okay, there's a problem here.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, yeah, or it's late elementary before we realize it,
because the demands are then above what they kind of
they fake their way through, they've masked a little bit,
they've compensated, they've avoided, and so then you hit fourth
fifth grade and the expectations have just really grown and
(20:30):
then it all starts crumbling and falling apart. And I
see this a lot with spelling and that written expression
piece too, because they these kids, some of these kids.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Are really good memorizers.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah, and so then you get to longer passages that
you need to write and more complex words, and it
just it falls apart. And then we have to go
back to those foundations because those foundations were just never
built or not for long enough.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Yeah. I just a little aha. And you said that
because my kid is a great speller, but he had
to do it verbally, And now I'm thinking, no, he
was a great memorizer. He learned how to spell it
and it's stuck and he could repeat it right, and
so maybe he wasn't the best speller. We always thought, well,
you just couldn't read it to tell if he had
(21:20):
spelled it right or not. And he had the most
amazing first grade teacher who would let him take the
test like everybody else did, but then if there was
something she wasn't sure about, she wouldn't just mark it wrong.
She would ask him to spell it verbally, and he
would get one hundreds on every spelling test until they
stopped doing spelling tests, like because he was able to
just memorize it.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Wow, yep. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
The kids are just they are master like compensators. It's
so interesting. But I do like that strategy. I think
that's a great accommodation that schools can make. And then
even at home that you can make is that verbal
versus written to see if they truly understand the skill
or if it's just that writing component. And then you know,
(22:03):
I think a good test of spelling is like to
throw in those nonsense words and that really is your
good sign of are they truly able to decode and
encode those words or are they just taking that little
snapshot in their brain and yeah, verberating it.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
And kids who are extremely verbally fluent, like my kid
is off the chart verbally fluent can sit down at
a piece of paper and have no capability of writing something.
And those two things can coexist at the same time,
which I think was really part of his struggle in
school was when I talked to him about this, Oh
(22:42):
my gosh, he blows me away. But then when he
writes about it, it feels like he's being lazy because
he's just not living up to that standard that he
showed me verbally, right, we would always have those comparisons
or intelligence. You know, kids who are gifted can struggle
to write something. Those two things can coexist. I think
it's really important that everybody understand that. And so if
(23:06):
you're met with educators, professionals, people who are saying no,
you know, they're showing us this ability over here. You
have the knowledge to push back on that you have
the knowledge to keep asking questions, to go to the
next person to get it figured out for your kid.
I'm not saying don't believe everyone, but kind of like,
if you feel it in your gut, then keep going.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I think, yeah, yeah, the mismatch is very common. I
think in children with dysgraphia, the mismatch of ability and performance,
and that's where the frustration comes in. So when I
mentioned earlier that frustrating. That is so frustrating. Yeah, to
be able to verbally communicate and share your amazing ideas
and then just come up to this like brick wall
(23:50):
of when you go to write, like, I can't even
imagine how frustrating that would be. And I love that you.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Mentioned that you know schools too.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
I think something that I've observed over the years as
well is sometimes in the school systems they take a
zoomed out approach, and so on average, your child might
be performing okay because we're zoomed out, but we have
to zoom in to see the big picture. Same thing
with even just interpreting different assessments. If your child has
(24:20):
had an assessment through the school, outside of the school,
if we look at that composite score that's not always
going to give us great information, but I want to
zoom in to these individual scores and see exactly what
is happening, and likely you're going to see that spiky
profile of strength and then barrier strength and barrier.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah. Yeah, very asynchronous. So let's dive into five things
that parents or educators can do. Right now, we are
(25:05):
starting to run up against our time limit here for
folks to be able to have enough time to listen
in between all of the busy stuff they're doing. So
do you want to start with the first one?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Absolutely?
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah, the first one I think we've alluded to. So
be aware if you are a parent, be aware, if
you're the teacher, be aware. If we can be empowered
as parents especially and monitor our child's development as best
as possible. I mean, we all don't have to be
writing experts or desgraphia experts, but just being aware and
(25:37):
monitoring and noticing any gaps or noticing any frustrations, that's
going to be huge. And so part of that I
can absolutely share with the listeners is that we've created
sort of an expectations because again, most parents, we're not
going to know what to even expect at each grade level.
So we created just a super easy PDF basically that's
(26:00):
parents exactly what to expect at each grade level so
that they can ensure that their child is able to
keep up and if they're not knowing what to do again,
I think we know that early intervention is best and
best practice. So I think knowing when progress is just
not happening, or it's lower than we expect, or just
(26:21):
that gut, you know, that gut feeling that I felt that,
I'm sure you felt, Penny, that a lot of our
parents can relate to. I like, just something is not clicking.
That awareness will be huge. The second I would say
is go ahead and start building those foundations. If you're
a parent of a younger child, this is a perfect time.
(26:42):
But even if your child is in middle school, it's
not too late to go back to the foundations. I
like to think of writing as kind of the tip
of the iceberg. So what you see at the top
of the iceberg is that output, right, But there's so
many foundational skills that have to happen to get to
that tip of the iceberg. So really digging in, you know,
(27:03):
maybe maybe it is a fine motor concern or maybe
it's a visual concern or sensory or attention or executive function.
All of these skills can certainly impact that writing eventually,
so really working on building out those foundations is helpful.
Number three would be as much as we can bring
(27:24):
in multisensory learning, because chances are your disgraphic child, the
comorbidity of ADHD or another SLD is significantly high. And
so we know that when we can engage students and
really get them excited about learning and light up multiple
senses while we're learning, while we're having that explicit systematic
(27:49):
instruction and practice, that's going to be when like things
start to click into place that is going to get
better gains and better out comes in better progress. The
research is very very clear on that. So and I'm
happy to share more ideas with your listeners as well
for what multisensory really looks like because that could be
(28:11):
a whole other podcast.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
That we do.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Yeah, yeah, what is quality instruction and what is multisensory?
So I'll leave my information at the end and your
listeners can certainly follow up to learn more about that too. Yeah,
and then number four would be that quality practice. So
quality practice is not copywork, and I think sometimes we
forget that.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Our education system forgets it for sure.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Huh Yeah, quality practice looks very systematic, and we're explicitly
teaching a child how to form a letter where it
sits on the line, what spacing, what sizing, what you know, capitalization,
punk with all of those again that come kind of
automatic to us as adults. Kids have to be explicitly taught.
(29:00):
I think I was reading a research article the other
day and it said handwriting has to be taught, not caught,
and I'm like, yes, their kids are just gonna I mean,
if they do, it will be like your son, where Okay,
we'll figure this out. Then let me draw. So you'll
see students draw the letter instead of fluently automatically write
a letter. And if we don't have that foundational transcription skills,
(29:25):
these higher cognitive level writing and written expression skills, it's
just going to be ten times harder on that student.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Because they're putting it all into that mechanical part, right,
and then they don't have room for that written expression piece.
Maybe yeah, I think executive function challenges play a huge
role in writing challenges.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
It does, It really really does. And I think part
of it too is that automaticity. You know, it's when
we can automate the physical act of handwriting, then we
don't have to think about it, and then we can
think about what we're writing and have yeah, kind of
freeze up some of our executive function abilities.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
And in that number four piece that you were just
talking about, like, we had tools that we also added
when we were trying to work on those mechanics, like
raised line paper, pencil grips. There's a million different kind
of pencil grips now and we probably tried ten or
twelve before we found one that he felt comfortable with.
So there's lots of things out there that can help
(30:25):
you to facilitate highlighted every other line paper was another one,
and graph paper, Like we really leaned into some different
papers to try to help with that and it does
some And then he got old enough where he didn't
want to have different paper, and then that became a thing, right,
So you know, there's always some sort of challenge and
ebb and flow to what will work and changing things
(30:48):
as you go.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Yeah, but I love those low tech accommodations. And I
was just on a call with a parent right before
this and she asked that same question because she has
a kiddo going into middle school and like, he doesn't
want to look different. And I get that, and I said,
what I've done is I take ten of them to
the classroom and so everybody gets, you know, access.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
To this, so it's not so exclusive.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
And let's be honest, if your kid is struggling, they're
not the only kid in that classroom in strug Yeah,
and so I educate teachers a lot on like, have
a variety of these tools, have a variety of paper types,
because what works for one kid is not going to
work for another kid as well. So it just makes
for a nice, accessible classroom environment that's free from stereotypes
(31:39):
and and awkwardness for our students.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
I love that. Yeah, I'm just thinking back, like how
many times could I have taken extra stuff in and
made it easier. But also it has to be received.
Teachers have to be open to that, to allowing kids
to choose what they want to do and use, and
that is an all is the case.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
But we can try to educate, yes, exactly, educate, advocate. Yeah,
it certainly has to be an approachable environment for sure.
And one thing I tell parents a lot of times too,
because I think there's this this this nervousness going into
a new school year of is this teacher going to
get it? And there's this fear. And so I think
(32:23):
every school that I've ever been in, because we have
shuffled around some schools, I meet with the teachers before
school even starts, and I set the stage for what
would be a collaborative environment. I come at it from
a here is how my child learns best. Here are
her strengths, Here are her areas that might be challenging
(32:46):
for her, Here's what has worked in the past. I
am on this team as well. I want to collaborate.
How can I support you as the teacher?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
And man, it just.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Makes a big difference in this difference. Yeah, setting the
stage for the whole school year again, will everybody be
a receptive No, But I would say given that little
extra effort before the school year even starts, then they're
not like blindsided or they're not like, you know, my
child also has anxiety, so like we need to catch
that before it, you know, even it comes to be
(33:18):
a problem. So yeah, I think the collaboration piece can
be really, really helpful. And I guess that would kind
of just segue into number five, which is get outside
help when you need it. So of course we want
to utilize you know, especially for families who are in
the public school systems, but even if you're in a
private school, if you homeschool, we want to utilize as
(33:40):
many resources as possible. But I will be the first
to tell you that, as you alluded to, oftentimes teachers
are not trained in dysgraphia or handwriting instruction. Most schools
have removed handwriting instruction from curriculum, and most ots in
the school system are so bombarded with caseloads that you know,
(34:03):
your student, especially these gifted kiddos, these two E kiddos,
see these dysgraphic kids, they're not qualifying for services in
school oftentimes because when we zoom out, we see that
high IQ and you know, they're they're scraped and bad,
they're you know, academically. So you know, sometimes it is
(34:24):
worth getting extra outside support whenever your child hits that
frustration point. And so what that looks like It could
look like a variety of things. It could look like therapy,
ot psychological therapy, and mental health therapy. It could look
like tutoring specipically forehandwriting or reading or spelling or written composition.
(34:44):
It could look like vision therapy. It could look like
executive function coaching. It could look like support for you
as a parent. It can look like a lot of
different things. But I promise that getting that outside support,
you'll never regret that in the earlier you get it,
truly the better, because I've seen cases where you know,
we put it off and we think the school is
going to handle it, and we think, just give them time,
(35:06):
And I just have never seen a research article that
supports that approach. So all of the research says, you know,
early intervention makes a world of difference for these students,
not only for their academic outcomes, but also for their
mental health and their confidence.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Yeah. Yeah, But on the flip side too, it's never
too late, never too late. Who have older kids, yes,
and teenagers, like, it's never too late. I get this
question all the time as a parent coach. They will
respond to something like a tip or a strategy or
anything and say, well, my kid is this age? Is
it too late? It's never too late. We talk so
(35:43):
much about early intervention that I think sometimes parents take
away from that the message that it has to be
early or it's not going to be useful, and that's
not true. It's just ideal. If it's early, it will
be different that way.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Yeah, yeah, I'm so glad you said this because I
literally want a bumper sticker that says it's never too
late to remediate.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yes, it's like my slogan, and it's not.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
And so what I share is a pretty extreme example,
but sometimes we need those extreme examples. Is it's like
an adult, let's say an elder adult and they have
a strike.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Are we going to just.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Say, oh, sorry, you know you had that brain damage
and no, We're going to put them in therapy. We're
going to teach them how to write again. Now, obviously,
developmental dysgraphia is not an acquired brain injury. But our
brains are plastic, and so we have worked with students
in college, We've worked with students in high school and
(36:44):
middle school.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
I love that you.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Mentioned it is never too late, because it truly isn't
you know. Do we take a different approach. Perhaps we
want to make it meaningful and we want to have
their buy in and their motivation because obviously that will
impact outcomes. But with the right approach, we can make
(37:06):
gains in adults.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
So amazing.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Absolutely, So I have one last question for you before
we wrap, which is when do you add or shift
to assistive technology? Because you're talking a lot about learning
the skills or relearning the skills, learning those foundations, changing
the way they're doing things mechanically. Maybe when is it
(37:32):
appropriate to add or shift to assistive technology?
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (37:39):
I get this question a lot. Same thing with the
remediate too.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
It's like third grade if your kid has not learned
handwriting by third grade, and I'm like, no, why third grade?
So what else is there's not a magic age for accommodation.
And what I view accommodations because I know that is like, well,
if they haven't whatever mastered handwriting, we have to move
them to a keyboard. That's like the blanket statement. And
(38:04):
oh my goodness, that is so false because keyboarding is
also equally challenging.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
For our discographic kids.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
So we can't just give them a keyboard and wish
them good luck because they're probably going to struggle with
that too, and they probably haven't had explicit and systematic
instruction in keyboarding. So I view accommodations as we can
pull them in at any time. We can pull them
in for the youngest learners if it bridges the gap
(38:31):
for that student. So if we can pull in an
accommodation that will take them from where they are now
to accessing that education and that learning, that's when we're
going to bring that accommodation in, whether it's a low
tech accommodation or a high tech accommodation like speech to
text or predictive text or scribe or again the keyboarding piece.
(38:53):
There's not so much a magic age as when do
we need it to bridge that gap to help that
student show their learning, demonstrate their learning, and access the
education environment, which means that accommodations have to be so individualized.
There is not one blanket accommodation that works for all
(39:13):
this graphics students. That's why I like to really dig
into their learning profile and see what is going to work,
and maybe trial a few different accommodation tools and strategies
for that student, because what works for one is just
may not work for the other one. But yeah, hopefully
that answers.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Yeah, And you know, I always think about how can
we help this child feel successful? We need successes for
kids to keep trying. So while we're working on skills,
is there something we can do to make them feel successful? Yes,
And again not everybody is going to get on board
with that all the time. You know, I had to
fight for before kids had computers in school, not dating
(39:56):
myself for my kids, but I had to fight for
an iPad. I had to fight for years for an
iPad for him because of a lot of executive function stuff. Really,
like he would complete a worksheet and he would lose
it four times. He was doing assignments four or five
times before he got credit for them. Like this is
not okay. We have to do something different here. But
(40:17):
I think that's the key, Like, is there something we
can do different that is going to help this child
feel successful, feel like this is doable at least in
the interim. Maybe it's not a long term thing. But
a lot of adults use voice to text. A lot
of adults use you know that we type things now
instead of handwriting everything, so avoiding that I don't find
(40:40):
useful either. You know, for a long time we couldn't
get anything because it was well there's the study where
if you write it by hand, you remember it better,
it does all these wonderful things for your brain, Like, yeah,
if writing is easy for you. Sure, did they have
kids with the scraphy in that study?
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (40:59):
No, Right, but that was like the understanding, the basis
there foundation that I was fighting against for so long.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yes, yes, I think too that that makes me think
of like we don't have to pick one like, it
can be both, it can be all, it can be
all the things we can be remediating and accommodating and modifying,
and we don't just have to pick one path, which
I feel like sometimes in that like IEP. Five O four,
it feels very much like you have to. But yeah,
I advocate for all all the things when the child needs.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
It perfect well of it. Tell everybody where they can
find you online so that they can connect and potentially
learn more.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Our website is Handwriting Solutions dot org. My email is
also k E. L. L I at Handwriting solutions dot org.
We're on Instagram and really all the social media platforms,
but probably most active on the good old Instagram. But
certainly sign up for our emails because we have a
very active weekly email newsletter that is just absolutely full
(42:00):
of information for parents and for teachers and for therapists.
If you're a therapist listening to we really want to
support the entire team.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Amazing. I know so many people are going to stop
listening and next time they're at the computer or their phone,
right the computer, their phone, they're going to look it
out for right and find what you offer and see
if it might be helpful for their kid. Thank you
for being here. I appreciate you coming on and sharing
some of your expertise and some of your sort of
(42:30):
been there, done that wisdom that I find so useful
for parents especially. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Thank you, Penny. I love what you do. Keep doing it.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Thank you. I will see everybody in the next episode.
Take good care. I see you. You're doing hard and
meaningful work and you don't have to do it alone.
If you found this episode helpful, share it with someone
who needs it and leave a quick review so others
can find this support too. When you're ready for next step,
(43:00):
the Regulated Kid's Project is here with the tools, coaching,
and community to help you raise a more regulated, resilient child.
Get more info at regulated kids dot com.
Handwriting is so complex, and so when a student is
having to think about how to form a letter, remember
to how to place it on the line and the
correct spacing. Oh but yeah, then we also have to
think about how to spell the word and what makes
a good sentence again and what did I want to
write about anyway?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
And what was the topic.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
And then you can just see you can see the
spiral because every part of it is challenging.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Welcome to Beautifully Complex, where we unpack what it really
means to parent neurodivergent kids with dignity and clarity. I'm
Penny Williams, and I know firsthand how tough and transformative
this journey can be. Let's dive in and discover how
to raise regulated, resilient, beautifully complex kids together. Oh and
(00:51):
if you want more support, join our free community at
hub dot beautifully complex dot life us. Welcome back to
(03:20):
Beautifully Complex everyone. I'm so glad you're here, and I
have with me today Kelly Fetter of Handwriting Solutions, and
we're going to talk about writing challenges dysgraphia, but also
other challenges and how I hope to kind of identify
when this might be what's going on with your kid
(03:42):
when it might be more of a learning disability. And
also five things that you can do right now that
are going to help a kid who's struggling with writing. Kelly,
thank you for being here. Will you start by sharing
who you are and what you do?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Absolutely? Yeah, thanks for having me, Penny, so again, Yeah,
my name's Kelly. I am the Elder of Handwriting Solutions,
and I'll start kind of at the beginning because I
think it helps knowing where I came from. So I
originally went down the path of I'm a pediatric occupational therapist,
and so I worked in pediatrics for many years, seeing
(04:18):
a variety of students in their schools, outpatient early intervention,
and so I had a pretty good broad exposure to
a variety of kiddos. And then I had my own
and then shifted over to an adjunct professor position, also
teaching kinesiology and pediatrics. So I loved that academia world
(04:43):
and that research world. But life pretty much shifted when
my daughter was five and started to struggle with reading
and writing, and my OT brain said, what is going on?
How can I help? How did this even happened? But
I came at it from a very medical model, and
(05:04):
I was like, well, her motor skills are fine, her
fine motor skills are great. I don't understand her visual
spatial skills were through the roof. I don't understand what's
going on. And so of course I go to the
school and I'm like, I'm seeing a disconnect and they're like,
she's fine, We're going to wait and see.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
You know, all typical response that we get.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
But given what I knew, I knew early intervention matters,
and so we started tutoring when she was between kindergarten
and first grade that summer and really focusing on the
reading skills because I knew we had to make some
gains there before we started first grade. And she was
just things were not connecting, they were not clicking into place.
(05:47):
First grade rolls around, and then the school says, oh,
my goodness, we've got to get all these evaluations done
and she needs to do OT and she needs to
do speech, and she needs to do get under O psyche.
And then I hit the parent overwhelmed, which I know
some of our listeners made me familiar with this so
many h and I just I still could not get
(06:12):
my head wrapped around you know. And obviously during this
whole time too, I was really honing in on how
I can help her with her handwriting skills, because that
was something that I at least knew a little bit
about as a no tee.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So I said, I just.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Need to get her evaluated first. I need to know
what we're working with because all of this other stuff
just I can't wrap my head around. And we need
to go about this in a way that makes sense.
So I am the biggest proponent of evaluations. I think
it just gives family so much useful information about how
a child learned. And so that was my first step.
(06:49):
It was probably like November of her first grade year.
And turns out, yes, dyslexia dysgraphia. So get this, Penny.
I had never heard of dysgraphia before. I was an
OT practicing in pediatrics, and I had never heard of
dysgraphia before. That's crazy, and so it is right. It's
(07:12):
very alarming, and I would venture to say most of
her teachers in her school didn't really understand it either,
And so I said, I've got to figure this out.
I've got I was on a mission. Meanwhile, we went
ahead and started her in a very intensive dyslexia remediation
programming that spring of her first grade, which also happened
(07:33):
to coincide with COVID, so.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
That was fun.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
But I was like, let's tackle this. I'm going to research,
I'm going to learn, I'm going to take any course,
any training. I just did a huge deep dive in
the dysgraphia piece and then was able to support her
and started building her skills and coming at it from
a different model than what I was used to as
an OT. And here we are today. She's in seventh
(08:00):
grade and no longer qualifies for dyslexia or dysgraphia diagnosis,
so we have come full circle.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, but all of.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
That to say, you know, as the years went by
and I was able to help her and see her progress,
and I thought, why is nobody else doing this and
these kids need help. Maybe I should help bridge the
gap for these students.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
And so what.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Started as a very small two afternoons a week, that's
going to be just like a little a little like
side gig that I was going to help some friends
out here. We are fully virtual providing dysgraphia and dyslexia
remediation worldwide.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
So big, big, one story.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Isn't the Internet amazing?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
It really is.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Yeah, And I came into this work the same way.
I never thought about any of these things. What I
came to know is that I knew nothing about ADHD.
I knew nothing about autism because I only knew what
the general public understand standing was. I knew nothing about dysgraphia.
I didn't even hadn't even heard it before either. Oh,
I don't have any formal training where it might have
been helpful, and I should have learned it, but like,
(09:09):
I just didn't know anything. Executive function didn't know that
term either. And I've run across over the years so
many educators who don't know these things also have never
heard of them, also because they don't have to take
any training in special education in any form or fashion
in order to become a teacher. So it's not that
(09:30):
they don't care, it's that they don't know that they
need to know. Right And then, Yeah, and so like
we went to OT for dysgraphia. So it does sort
of boggle my mind that you were in OT and
didn't know what dysgraphia was. I guess we lucked out
and we went somewhere where they knew what dysgraphia was,
but I found it really challenging all the way through
(09:53):
my son's school career because people didn't understand it, and
because they didn't like a lot of the accommodations that
we're going to be helpful, they don't want to go there.
They still wanted to force him to hand right things
a lot, and so it was really challenging. But I
think we need to start with making sure that everybody
(10:16):
listening understands what is dysgraphia?
Speaker 1 (10:19):
M M, yeah, yeah, because that's you. You can't address
it unless you understand it. And so yeah, so dysgraphia,
what I like to think of is specific learning disabilities
are It's an umbrella term, and so you have the
specific learning disability in reading and so that's dyslexia. You
(10:40):
have the specific learning disability in writing, so that's dysgraphia,
and then you have it in math and that's the
dysc calcula. So most people know about the dyslexia one
the SLB and reading, but the other two not so much, right,
and so what does dysgraphia actually look like? You know,
This is where it gets really tricky and really challenging
(11:02):
because there is not a gold standard tool to evaluate
for dysgraphia, and there is not really great diagnostic criteria
for dysgraphia. So if you were to say, look at
the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, you're going to see
a very broad definition. Same thing with the IDEA or
(11:25):
the ICD ten. Those are all diagnostic criteria in tools
that someone like a psychologist would look at when giving
a diagnosis, but they're all very broad and there's not
a clear tool or assessment tool to use. So that's
(11:45):
tricky because then kids either slip through the cracks or
maybe be misdiagnosed. There's just there's a lack of understanding
with that. So with all of that said, the biggest
thing that I personally look forward now, we do not
do diagnostics. Sots are it's not in our scope of
practice to diagnose, so we refer out to that, but
(12:07):
we can certainly say if your child is showing some
red flags and so some of those might be the
obvious one, the messy, illegible handwriting. That's the one we
see often on those Facebook groups where parents are in
there and they're like, does this look like my kid
has dysgraphia? And they show a picture and if only
that was that easy. Yes, it is helpful for us
(12:29):
to see a child's output, but even more helpful is
to see them as they're completing that output and to
kind of get a more holistic view of their learning.
But yes, definitely that messy, illegible writing. Maybe it's the
formation of their letters or the sizing or the spacing
that can be challenging for them. A big one is
(12:52):
that difficulty translating their thoughts to paper, So there's that
barrier there. Some of our disgraphic students actually have really nice,
neat handwriting, and it's that written expression piece that getting
our thoughts out that's the most challenging part. Some students
might struggle with sentenced skills, capitalization, punctuation, grammar. Some dysgraphic
(13:14):
students struggle with spelling. So there's a bit of an
overlap there with dyslexia and dysgraphia and the spelling part,
which again is why I want to see that holistic
learning profile of a student. And then one of the
bigger red flags that I see is frustration around writing
and avoidance of writing. If your child is really frustrated
(13:38):
ripping up the paper, this was my child ripping up
the paper and crumpling it and throwing it at you.
There might be something going on, maybe not dysgraphia, but
something that you would want to further explore. And then
that avoidance too, we see that sometimes in schools, the
avoidance of anything, the meltdowns around writing. That's not a behavior.
(13:59):
I know, you know we talk a lot about behavior,
and I know you do in this podcast, but it
is telling us that there's something more that's going on.
And then there's those soft skills, you know, the pencil grasp.
We're looking at that because that can sometimes be tricky.
If the child is experiencing fatigue or discomfort with writing,
that is something we want to look at too. So
you can see a disgraphic student is going to look
(14:21):
very different from another disgraphic student because the signs and
symptoms there are a lot. There's a lot going on
and there's a lot going on in the brain when
we do right right Writing by hand is so complex,
and so it's figuring out where that breakdown and barrier
is happening for the student so that then we can build.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Up their skills.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Yeah, and really understanding, like really having somebody help me
to sit back and think about all the things that
are going on in the brain and the body when
we are writing something down. Really helped me understand the
fact that for some it's completely just automatic. We don't
think about it, we just do it. And for others
(15:01):
it's too much. It's too many things at one time
we can't manage. And as you mentioned with your daughter earlier,
my son also has amazing fine motor skills, which I
assumed as we were walking into this journey his motor
skills were gonna be terrible, and I was shocked to
find that they were not. And hand eye coordination is unbelievable.
(15:27):
He now plays he likes to play rhythm games, like
video games with rhythm, and there is one that he's
been playing for years and when I watch him play, like,
I just I'm in shock in awe. When he plays
these games, he can go so fast. You have to
hit different keys for different things that are going right,
and he will get ninety nine percent of these things
(15:50):
with hundreds of them just blasting through really fast, and
I'm like, holy cow. And then I'm like, what can
we do with the skill which we have not figured
out yet? But like it's not affecting everything the way
you would think it would write like, it really is
more about the writing, either the physical act of writing
(16:10):
or that written expression piece, putting your thoughts together, getting
them on paper, expanding on them. Like my son wouldn't
necessarily avoid writing altogether, but he would write as little
as he thought he could possibly get away with, and
then he would always be asked to edit, and then
he would get really upset and he would not edit right.
And so that was a real signal yep yep, and
(16:33):
then there's that spiral and so yeah, a lot of
assist of technology came in for us. But what I
noticed was that he was never taught letter formation. And
I feel like if he had been taught letter formation
at the beginning, it wouldn't be as bad as it
has been bingo, because every single letter that he writes,
(16:57):
I'm like, huh, that's an interesting way to do that,
write all of them. And he did a lot of
handwriting without tears at ot. He did a lot of
practicing trying to change the letter for me, and it
just wouldn't stick. What stuck is what he made up
at the beginning. Because he wasn't taught and I don't
(17:18):
know why we're not teaching that in school now.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Oh, I know, I could really get on my soapbox here,
But the biggest thing I want to point out is, yes,
handwriting is more than a fine motor skill, and we
have got to understand that from a teacher perspective, from
an OT perspective, and from a parent perspective. And something
I talk a lot about is that cognitive load of writing.
So I love that you brought that up. Is handwriting
(17:42):
is so complex and so when a student is having
to think about how to form a letter, remember to
how to place it on the line in the correct spacing.
Oh but yeah, then we also have to think about
how to spell the word and what makes a good
sentence again and what did I want to write about anyway?
Speaker 2 (18:01):
And what was the topic.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
And then you can just see you can see the
spiral because every part of it is challenging. The cognitive
load is too heavy for them. And so yes, if
we could front load it and have good, high quality,
explicit and systematic instruction in school, embedded in the school day,
it does not take much time. I think that's the
(18:24):
key there is the research supports it is does not
take a ton of time in that classroom day to
provide this good quality handwriting instruction. All students are going
to benefit, but particularly our dist graphics students, and sure
they may need a little bit more even beyond that
instructional that tier one approach, if you will, if you're
(18:47):
in public school systems. But it's kind of like with dyslexia.
You know, the pendulum have swung back to more of
a phonics based instruction and reading, and it's benefiting all students,
and it's especially enough fitting students with aslexia, and students
with dyslexia still probably need some outside support too to
really spend more time on the phonological awareness or the
(19:09):
phonemic proficiency. Same thing with dysgraphia. Ideally we're getting that
really quality instruction in the school, and then yes, we
may need some outside support to help bridge the gaps
and help kind of eliminate some of those barriers for
the child.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
M Yeah, I mean eighteen years ago my kid entered kindergarten.
Then they expected him to already know how to form
all of his letters. They assume that kids are going
to preschool and they're learning it there, And I'm like,
what like, that doesn't make sense to me. You know,
that's not a requirement, That doesn't make sense. So anyway,
these things happen, and I think it's really hard to
(19:49):
identify early, Like if your kid is foreign, they're not
writing yet, you don't know that they have dysgraphia, to
go ahead and start working on letter formations with them
right before they go to school. Really tricky timing there,
And I think just a lot of kids end up
in school then we realize, okay, there's a problem here.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, yeah, or it's late elementary before we realize it,
because the demands are then above what they kind of
they fake their way through, they've masked a little bit,
they've compensated, they've avoided, and so then you hit fourth
fifth grade and the expectations have just really grown and
(20:30):
then it all starts crumbling and falling apart. And I
see this a lot with spelling and that written expression
piece too, because they these kids, some of these kids.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Are really good memorizers.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah, and so then you get to longer passages that
you need to write and more complex words, and it
just it falls apart. And then we have to go
back to those foundations because those foundations were just never
built or not for long enough.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Yeah. I just a little aha. And you said that
because my kid is a great speller, but he had
to do it verbally, And now I'm thinking, no, he
was a great memorizer. He learned how to spell it
and it's stuck and he could repeat it right, and
so maybe he wasn't the best speller. We always thought, well,
you just couldn't read it to tell if he had
(21:20):
spelled it right or not. And he had the most
amazing first grade teacher who would let him take the
test like everybody else did, but then if there was
something she wasn't sure about, she wouldn't just mark it wrong.
She would ask him to spell it verbally, and he
would get one hundreds on every spelling test until they
stopped doing spelling tests, like because he was able to
just memorize it.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Wow, yep. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
The kids are just they are master like compensators. It's
so interesting. But I do like that strategy. I think
that's a great accommodation that schools can make. And then
even at home that you can make is that verbal
versus written to see if they truly understand the skill
or if it's just that writing component. And then you know,
(22:03):
I think a good test of spelling is like to
throw in those nonsense words and that really is your
good sign of are they truly able to decode and
encode those words or are they just taking that little
snapshot in their brain and yeah, verberating it.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
And kids who are extremely verbally fluent, like my kid
is off the chart verbally fluent can sit down at
a piece of paper and have no capability of writing something.
And those two things can coexist at the same time,
which I think was really part of his struggle in
school was when I talked to him about this, Oh
(22:42):
my gosh, he blows me away. But then when he
writes about it, it feels like he's being lazy because
he's just not living up to that standard that he
showed me verbally, right, we would always have those comparisons
or intelligence. You know, kids who are gifted can struggle
to write something. Those two things can coexist. I think
it's really important that everybody understand that. And so if
(23:06):
you're met with educators, professionals, people who are saying no,
you know, they're showing us this ability over here. You
have the knowledge to push back on that you have
the knowledge to keep asking questions, to go to the
next person to get it figured out for your kid.
I'm not saying don't believe everyone, but kind of like,
if you feel it in your gut, then keep going.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I think, yeah, yeah, the mismatch is very common. I
think in children with dysgraphia, the mismatch of ability and performance,
and that's where the frustration comes in. So when I
mentioned earlier that frustrating. That is so frustrating. Yeah, to
be able to verbally communicate and share your amazing ideas
and then just come up to this like brick wall
(23:50):
of when you go to write, like, I can't even
imagine how frustrating that would be. And I love that you.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Mentioned that you know schools too.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
I think something that I've observed over the years as
well is sometimes in the school systems they take a
zoomed out approach, and so on average, your child might
be performing okay because we're zoomed out, but we have
to zoom in to see the big picture. Same thing
with even just interpreting different assessments. If your child has
(24:20):
had an assessment through the school, outside of the school,
if we look at that composite score that's not always
going to give us great information, but I want to
zoom in to these individual scores and see exactly what
is happening, and likely you're going to see that spiky
profile of strength and then barrier strength and barrier.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah. Yeah, very asynchronous. So let's dive into five things
that parents or educators can do. Right now, we are
(25:05):
starting to run up against our time limit here for
folks to be able to have enough time to listen
in between all of the busy stuff they're doing. So
do you want to start with the first one?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Absolutely?
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah, the first one I think we've alluded to. So
be aware if you are a parent, be aware, if
you're the teacher, be aware. If we can be empowered
as parents especially and monitor our child's development as best
as possible. I mean, we all don't have to be
writing experts or desgraphia experts, but just being aware and
(25:37):
monitoring and noticing any gaps or noticing any frustrations, that's
going to be huge. And so part of that I
can absolutely share with the listeners is that we've created
sort of an expectations because again, most parents, we're not
going to know what to even expect at each grade level.
So we created just a super easy PDF basically that's
(26:00):
parents exactly what to expect at each grade level so
that they can ensure that their child is able to
keep up and if they're not knowing what to do again,
I think we know that early intervention is best and
best practice. So I think knowing when progress is just
not happening, or it's lower than we expect, or just
(26:21):
that gut, you know, that gut feeling that I felt that,
I'm sure you felt, Penny, that a lot of our
parents can relate to. I like, just something is not clicking.
That awareness will be huge. The second I would say
is go ahead and start building those foundations. If you're
a parent of a younger child, this is a perfect time.
(26:42):
But even if your child is in middle school, it's
not too late to go back to the foundations. I
like to think of writing as kind of the tip
of the iceberg. So what you see at the top
of the iceberg is that output, right, But there's so
many foundational skills that have to happen to get to
that tip of the iceberg. So really digging in, you know,
(27:03):
maybe maybe it is a fine motor concern or maybe
it's a visual concern or sensory or attention or executive function.
All of these skills can certainly impact that writing eventually,
so really working on building out those foundations is helpful.
Number three would be as much as we can bring
(27:24):
in multisensory learning, because chances are your disgraphic child, the
comorbidity of ADHD or another SLD is significantly high. And
so we know that when we can engage students and
really get them excited about learning and light up multiple
senses while we're learning, while we're having that explicit systematic
(27:49):
instruction and practice, that's going to be when like things
start to click into place that is going to get
better gains and better out comes in better progress. The
research is very very clear on that. So and I'm
happy to share more ideas with your listeners as well
for what multisensory really looks like because that could be
(28:11):
a whole other podcast.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
That we do.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Yeah, yeah, what is quality instruction and what is multisensory?
So I'll leave my information at the end and your
listeners can certainly follow up to learn more about that too. Yeah,
and then number four would be that quality practice. So
quality practice is not copywork, and I think sometimes we
forget that.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Our education system forgets it for sure.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Huh Yeah, quality practice looks very systematic, and we're explicitly
teaching a child how to form a letter where it
sits on the line, what spacing, what sizing, what you know, capitalization,
punk with all of those again that come kind of
automatic to us as adults. Kids have to be explicitly taught.
(29:00):
I think I was reading a research article the other
day and it said handwriting has to be taught, not caught,
and I'm like, yes, their kids are just gonna I mean,
if they do, it will be like your son, where Okay,
we'll figure this out. Then let me draw. So you'll
see students draw the letter instead of fluently automatically write
a letter. And if we don't have that foundational transcription skills,
(29:25):
these higher cognitive level writing and written expression skills, it's
just going to be ten times harder on that student.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Because they're putting it all into that mechanical part, right,
and then they don't have room for that written expression piece.
Maybe yeah, I think executive function challenges play a huge
role in writing challenges.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
It does, It really really does. And I think part
of it too is that automaticity. You know, it's when
we can automate the physical act of handwriting, then we
don't have to think about it, and then we can
think about what we're writing and have yeah, kind of
freeze up some of our executive function abilities.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
And in that number four piece that you were just
talking about, like, we had tools that we also added
when we were trying to work on those mechanics, like
raised line paper, pencil grips. There's a million different kind
of pencil grips now and we probably tried ten or
twelve before we found one that he felt comfortable with.
So there's lots of things out there that can help
(30:25):
you to facilitate highlighted every other line paper was another one,
and graph paper, Like we really leaned into some different
papers to try to help with that and it does
some And then he got old enough where he didn't
want to have different paper, and then that became a thing, right,
So you know, there's always some sort of challenge and
ebb and flow to what will work and changing things
(30:48):
as you go.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Yeah, but I love those low tech accommodations. And I
was just on a call with a parent right before
this and she asked that same question because she has
a kiddo going into middle school and like, he doesn't
want to look different. And I get that, and I said,
what I've done is I take ten of them to
the classroom and so everybody gets, you know, access.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
To this, so it's not so exclusive.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
And let's be honest, if your kid is struggling, they're
not the only kid in that classroom in strug Yeah,
and so I educate teachers a lot on like, have
a variety of these tools, have a variety of paper types,
because what works for one kid is not going to
work for another kid as well. So it just makes
for a nice, accessible classroom environment that's free from stereotypes
(31:39):
and and awkwardness for our students.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
I love that. Yeah, I'm just thinking back, like how
many times could I have taken extra stuff in and
made it easier. But also it has to be received.
Teachers have to be open to that, to allowing kids
to choose what they want to do and use, and
that is an all is the case.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
But we can try to educate, yes, exactly, educate, advocate. Yeah,
it certainly has to be an approachable environment for sure.
And one thing I tell parents a lot of times too,
because I think there's this this this nervousness going into
a new school year of is this teacher going to
get it? And there's this fear. And so I think
(32:23):
every school that I've ever been in, because we have
shuffled around some schools, I meet with the teachers before
school even starts, and I set the stage for what
would be a collaborative environment. I come at it from
a here is how my child learns best. Here are
her strengths, Here are her areas that might be challenging
(32:46):
for her, Here's what has worked in the past. I
am on this team as well. I want to collaborate.
How can I support you as the teacher?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
And man, it just.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Makes a big difference in this difference. Yeah, setting the
stage for the whole school year again, will everybody be
a receptive No, But I would say given that little
extra effort before the school year even starts, then they're
not like blindsided or they're not like, you know, my
child also has anxiety, so like we need to catch
that before it, you know, even it comes to be
(33:18):
a problem. So yeah, I think the collaboration piece can
be really, really helpful. And I guess that would kind
of just segue into number five, which is get outside
help when you need it. So of course we want
to utilize you know, especially for families who are in
the public school systems, but even if you're in a
private school, if you homeschool, we want to utilize as
(33:40):
many resources as possible. But I will be the first
to tell you that, as you alluded to, oftentimes teachers
are not trained in dysgraphia or handwriting instruction. Most schools
have removed handwriting instruction from curriculum, and most ots in
the school system are so bombarded with caseloads that you know,
(34:03):
your student, especially these gifted kiddos, these two E kiddos,
see these dysgraphic kids, they're not qualifying for services in
school oftentimes because when we zoom out, we see that
high IQ and you know, they're they're scraped and bad,
they're you know, academically. So you know, sometimes it is
(34:24):
worth getting extra outside support whenever your child hits that
frustration point. And so what that looks like It could
look like a variety of things. It could look like therapy,
ot psychological therapy, and mental health therapy. It could look
like tutoring specipically forehandwriting or reading or spelling or written composition.
(34:44):
It could look like vision therapy. It could look like
executive function coaching. It could look like support for you
as a parent. It can look like a lot of
different things. But I promise that getting that outside support,
you'll never regret that in the earlier you get it,
truly the better, because I've seen cases where you know,
we put it off and we think the school is
going to handle it, and we think, just give them time,
(35:06):
And I just have never seen a research article that
supports that approach. So all of the research says, you know,
early intervention makes a world of difference for these students,
not only for their academic outcomes, but also for their
mental health and their confidence.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Yeah. Yeah, But on the flip side too, it's never
too late, never too late. Who have older kids, yes,
and teenagers, like, it's never too late. I get this
question all the time as a parent coach. They will
respond to something like a tip or a strategy or
anything and say, well, my kid is this age? Is
it too late? It's never too late. We talk so
(35:43):
much about early intervention that I think sometimes parents take
away from that the message that it has to be
early or it's not going to be useful, and that's
not true. It's just ideal. If it's early, it will
be different that way.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Yeah, yeah, I'm so glad you said this because I
literally want a bumper sticker that says it's never too
late to remediate.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yes, it's like my slogan, and it's not.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
And so what I share is a pretty extreme example,
but sometimes we need those extreme examples. Is it's like
an adult, let's say an elder adult and they have
a strike.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Are we going to just.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Say, oh, sorry, you know you had that brain damage
and no, We're going to put them in therapy. We're
going to teach them how to write again. Now, obviously,
developmental dysgraphia is not an acquired brain injury. But our
brains are plastic, and so we have worked with students
in college, We've worked with students in high school and
(36:44):
middle school.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
I love that you.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Mentioned it is never too late, because it truly isn't
you know. Do we take a different approach. Perhaps we
want to make it meaningful and we want to have
their buy in and their motivation because obviously that will
impact outcomes. But with the right approach, we can make
(37:06):
gains in adults.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
So amazing.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Absolutely, So I have one last question for you before
we wrap, which is when do you add or shift
to assistive technology? Because you're talking a lot about learning
the skills or relearning the skills, learning those foundations, changing
the way they're doing things mechanically. Maybe when is it
(37:32):
appropriate to add or shift to assistive technology?
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (37:39):
I get this question a lot. Same thing with the
remediate too.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
It's like third grade if your kid has not learned
handwriting by third grade, and I'm like, no, why third grade?
So what else is there's not a magic age for accommodation.
And what I view accommodations because I know that is like, well,
if they haven't whatever mastered handwriting, we have to move
them to a keyboard. That's like the blanket statement. And
(38:04):
oh my goodness, that is so false because keyboarding is
also equally challenging.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
For our discographic kids.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
So we can't just give them a keyboard and wish
them good luck because they're probably going to struggle with
that too, and they probably haven't had explicit and systematic
instruction in keyboarding. So I view accommodations as we can
pull them in at any time. We can pull them
in for the youngest learners if it bridges the gap
(38:31):
for that student. So if we can pull in an
accommodation that will take them from where they are now
to accessing that education and that learning, that's when we're
going to bring that accommodation in, whether it's a low
tech accommodation or a high tech accommodation like speech to
text or predictive text or scribe or again the keyboarding piece.
(38:53):
There's not so much a magic age as when do
we need it to bridge that gap to help that
student show their learning, demonstrate their learning, and access the
education environment, which means that accommodations have to be so individualized.
There is not one blanket accommodation that works for all
(39:13):
this graphics students. That's why I like to really dig
into their learning profile and see what is going to work,
and maybe trial a few different accommodation tools and strategies
for that student, because what works for one is just
may not work for the other one. But yeah, hopefully
that answers.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Yeah, And you know, I always think about how can
we help this child feel successful? We need successes for
kids to keep trying. So while we're working on skills,
is there something we can do to make them feel successful? Yes,
And again not everybody is going to get on board
with that all the time. You know, I had to
fight for before kids had computers in school, not dating
(39:56):
myself for my kids, but I had to fight for
an iPad. I had to fight for years for an
iPad for him because of a lot of executive function stuff. Really,
like he would complete a worksheet and he would lose
it four times. He was doing assignments four or five
times before he got credit for them. Like this is
not okay. We have to do something different here. But
(40:17):
I think that's the key, Like, is there something we
can do different that is going to help this child
feel successful, feel like this is doable at least in
the interim. Maybe it's not a long term thing. But
a lot of adults use voice to text. A lot
of adults use you know that we type things now
instead of handwriting everything, so avoiding that I don't find
(40:40):
useful either. You know, for a long time we couldn't
get anything because it was well there's the study where
if you write it by hand, you remember it better,
it does all these wonderful things for your brain, Like, yeah,
if writing is easy for you. Sure, did they have
kids with the scraphy in that study?
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (40:59):
No, Right, but that was like the understanding, the basis
there foundation that I was fighting against for so long.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yes, yes, I think too that that makes me think
of like we don't have to pick one like, it
can be both, it can be all, it can be
all the things we can be remediating and accommodating and modifying,
and we don't just have to pick one path, which
I feel like sometimes in that like IEP. Five O four,
it feels very much like you have to. But yeah,
I advocate for all all the things when the child needs.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
It perfect well of it. Tell everybody where they can
find you online so that they can connect and potentially
learn more.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Our website is Handwriting Solutions dot org. My email is
also k E. L. L I at Handwriting solutions dot org.
We're on Instagram and really all the social media platforms,
but probably most active on the good old Instagram. But
certainly sign up for our emails because we have a
very active weekly email newsletter that is just absolutely full
(42:00):
of information for parents and for teachers and for therapists.
If you're a therapist listening to we really want to
support the entire team.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Amazing. I know so many people are going to stop
listening and next time they're at the computer or their phone,
right the computer, their phone, they're going to look it
out for right and find what you offer and see
if it might be helpful for their kid. Thank you
for being here. I appreciate you coming on and sharing
some of your expertise and some of your sort of
(42:30):
been there, done that wisdom that I find so useful
for parents especially. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Thank you, Penny. I love what you do. Keep doing it.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Thank you. I will see everybody in the next episode.
Take good care. I see you. You're doing hard and
meaningful work and you don't have to do it alone.
If you found this episode helpful, share it with someone
who needs it and leave a quick review so others
can find this support too. When you're ready for next step,
(43:00):
the Regulated Kid's Project is here with the tools, coaching,
and community to help you raise a more regulated, resilient child.
Get more info at regulated kids dot com.
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