Does Your Child Have Messy Handwriting? He Might Have Dysgraphia

The most common learning disability is one that most people have never heard of - dysgraphia. According to the DSM-IV, its main symptom is "writing skills (that) ...are substantially below those expected given the person's ...age, measured intelligence, and age-appropriate education". The word dysgraphia itself means "writing difficulty," and that is dysgraphia in a nutshell - a difficulty in writing. Many people have messy or sloppy or even illegible writing, but when it remains messy despite copious amounts of practice and effort, dysgraphia is very likely to be the culprit.

How Can I Tell if My Child Has Dysgraphia?

Symptoms of dysgraphia can include poorly spaced and shaped letters; a child's handwriting getting worse instead of better with practice and effort, poor pencil grip, complaints of pain while writing, letter reversal long past age-appropriateness for this (usually by age 7), a strong aversion to writing, and, of course, illegible or very messy handwriting.

An individual with dysgraphia is also very likely to have dyslexia. Because of this, it's long been believed by the medical community that dysgraphia also was caused by the types of visual processing issues that cause the dyslexic brain to see letters incorrectly. However, recent findings tend to support the idea that dysgraphia stems from sequencing delays instead - the brain has a difficult time organizing all the different impulses it needs to send to the muscles in the hand in order for the individual to write.

This theory is supported by the fact that individuals with dysgraphia often have other fine motor delays, such as problems tying their shoes, and is also supported by the fact that dysgraphic persons often can only write well when they slow down considerably.