Dysgraphia

According to Psychology Today, Dysgraphia is a childhood disorder that results in impaired handwriting, impaired spelling, or both in a child of normal intelligence. It is not a mental health disorder, but rather a learning disability marked by difficulty forming letters, spelling words correctly, staying within lines, writing legibly, or expressing thoughts and ideas in writing.

Dysgraphia is frustrating for the child and can cause great emotional difficulty and distress. A child with dysgraphia may have trouble learning to spell written words and also have trouble writing at a normal speed, but will not necessarily have problems reading or speaking.

Dysgraphia can occur on its own or with dyslexia, which is an impaired ability to read and comprehend written words, or with other selective language impairments that cause problems with learning written and oral language skills. 

Symptoms of dysgraphia may include:

• omitting words from sentences
• poor sentence organization
• incorrect word usage
• poorly formed individual letters
• skipping letters when writing words
• lack of or incorrect punctuation and capitalization
• awkward pencil grip or wrist position when writing
• difficulty writing and thinking at the same time
• attempts to avoid writing altogether

Because they have no difficulty reading or speaking, children who have dysgraphia but no other learning disorder are sometimes mistakenly thought to be lazy or unmotivated when it comes to handwriting. While ADHD is not a cause of dysgraphia, children with ADHD are at higher than average risk of developing dysgraphia, and girls with ADHD appear to be at higher risk than boys with ADHD.

Work Cited: Psychology Today
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/dysgraphia

If your child shows symptoms of dysgraphia, Training Gifted Minds offers the Davis® Dyslexia program.

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