Helping a child with handwriting
Ben Robinson, OTR/L
Helping a child with handwriting can sometimes be worked on with parents at home with the child, and there are other times with it’s best to get an occupational therapist involved. IN this post, Ben Robison OTR/L discusses the red flags for handwriting, and when intervention is a good idea.
Milestones for Handwriting:
Before we start talking about red flags let me help you identify at what level your child should be performing. Each age has its own milestone for prewriting strokes your child should be able to accomplish. Let me break them down.
Age 2: They start to imitate drawing a horizontal line, vertical line, and circle.
Age 3: They start to master drawing a horizontal line, vertical line, and circle independently. They should now be able to imitate cross shapes like a lowercase letter t.
Age 4: They can copy cross shapes such as a t, square, and start to draw diagonal lines.
Age 5: They can draw slanted lines to make shapes such as a triangle and they can draw crossing slanted lines to form letters like X.
This can be an easy guild to see if your child is performing at age-appropriate milestone. If your child is appropriately hitting each milestone then you may not have any need to worry. However, if you are still worried the best thing to do is to have your child evaluated by an occupational therapist.
Potential Red Flags for Handwriting:
There are many indications that your child may need some added help when it comes to handwriting skills. It’s always best to be on top of things earlier rather than later. It can also be hard to identify if they need help because many kids have trouble with sloppy handwriting. That’s just a part of learning and growing! However, as your child grows those indications should start to fade. That’s not always the case.
So to help you identify if your child would benefit from handwriting therapy here are some red flags to look for:
Messy or sloppy handwriting.
Holding the pencil incorrectly.
Rushing to get work done.
Poor spacing between words.
Poor formation of letters.
Complaining of hand being tried or hurting when writing or coloring.
Pressing too hard or too light with the pencil or crayon.
Writing is laborious: written work takes forever.
Difficulty getting thoughts on paper even though they have more to say.
Often having to redo work, rewriting over mistakes, or scribbling over mistakes.
Grades are suffering because of poor legibility.
Having difficulty with scissors, clumsy with eating utensils.
Lacking confidence or embarrassed by their handwriting.
Retained primitive reflexes
Hand eye coordination.
Where to Start Helping a Child with Handwriting:
The best place to start is strengthening the core. For your child to independently and efficiently have legible handwriting the best place to start is establishing a stable base of support in their core and upper body. Development occurs from the core to the extremities so the first thing to do is make sure your child has a strong midline. If shoulder stability and core strength aren’t developed from infancy, handwriting and fine motor skills will certainly suffer. Once you have a strong base of support you can then strengthen their writing skills. Occupational therapists can help your child develop a strong base of support and from there help your child develop higher level skills.
Recourses for Helping a Child with Handwriting:
If your child already has good core strength and is still having trouble with their handwriting, there are other tools that can help. There may be other problems influencing their difficulty with writing such as grip strength, letter recognition deficits, spacing trouble, or motor coordination difficulties. There are a lot of tools that can help with these issues. Such as: pencil grips, wide ruled paper, word spacers, and more!
Conclusion:
If you notice any red flags that indicate your child could have difficulty with handwriting or they are not currently performing at their identified milestone, bring them in for an evaluation. An Occupational therapist would be able to help you identify the areas where your child could improve and assist them in reaching their full potential.