At the parent-teacher conferences this year I heard the same thing three times: your son is very smart and he has terrible handwriting.
It didn't surprise me because their father is also very smart with terrible handwriting. It didn't worry me because hey, it's the third millennium. Typing practice is going to serve them better than handwriting drills.
But for one of my sons, the handwriting issue began to interfere with his schoolwork. His wonderful and accommodating teacher would return assignments to him, saying she couldn't read them. I couldn't read them either. "What does this say?" I would ask him. He didn't know.
I requested an OT screen. When we met to talk about the results, the OT said, "Your son is very smart and he has terrible handwriting." She said something new, too. She talked about his reluctance to write, even for untimed tasks, even given permission to write whatever he wanted about whatever interested him. She said, "I think he may have dysgraphia."
Dysgraphia is akin to dyslexia-- both disorders involve struggles with written language. With dysgraphia it's not just a motor issue; there's a problem with funneling ideas into writing and a conspicuous mismatch between verbal and written output. Apparently it's not unusual for dysgraphia and giftedness to co-occur. As I was sitting in the meeting listening to them talk about next steps, I wasn't thinking so much about the child whose file was on the table. I was thinking about my husband.
He never took lecture notes in college. I always thought he was so smart he didn't need to, but what if there was another explanation? [He says, "I prefer the explanation about being so smart I didn't need to." Love that man.] He was a legendary procrastinator when it came to writing papers. He failed a class we took together rather than write a ten-page paper for it. He finished a dissertation, yes, but his advisor commented that it was the shortest dissertation he'd ever seen. I was always surprised at the effort that writing seemed to require for him, the way he would spend hours on a single paragraph.
Elwood was two years ahead of me in school and he went into the Navy after my sophomore year. I never expected to see him again, but that summer he sent me a 47-page letter. Honestly, I could not have been more astonished if he had flown himself to my parents' house in one of these contraptions. It was the first time I waded through pages of his cramped distinctive writing, but his suit was successful and so it was not the last. In those days before email, letters were our only option while he was at sea. And he spent months at sea in the build-up to the first Gulf War, writing me faithfully, day after day. I have our letters all boxed up in the office closet: from Elwood P. Gladly, USS Independence, to Jamie Most, 724 Simpson, and vice versa. Because I knew how much he hated to write, those letters said "I love you" loud and clear.
I pulled myself out of this reverie to give my consent for a more complete eval for my son. Ever since, I've been wondering about his older brother. The psychologist was trying to explain the ramifications of dysgraphia to me. "We often see these kids doing fine in grade school," she said, "and then they tank in junior high because so much more writing is demanded of them." I nodded, and I thought to myself, "That's it. That's the problem we've been having this year."
I have some ambivalence about pursuing these assessments, though. I need to find out more about possible outcomes. What happens if they apply this label? What if they don't? Melissa Wiley's experience with attempting to decline services is sobering and I'm not sure what's best here.
Since the meeting ended I've been thinking about Elwood and his terrible penmanship. I never see his handwriting anymore, because hey, it's the third millennium. A glimpse of it always triggers a rush of tender feelings for him-- of appreciation for his tenacity, gratitude for the years since college, fond memories of clattering downstairs in hopes of finding a letter from him in the mailbox. The internet has done a number on letter-writing and my children may never know the frisson of happiness that comes with seeing a loved one's writing on a nice fat envelope and unfolding a newsy letter. They might not even get that flash of recognition that comes at the sight of a favorite hand. (Is it archaic yet to use "hand" in that sense? It will be soon if it's not already.) The handwriting of the people I love always prompts an inner exclamation, "Oh, it's you!" You with your dear face, you with your quirks, you with your struggles -- struggles we can find a way to manage, together.
Recent Comments