What Is Writing Disorder? ? An Overview | Speech Therapy

My younger brother has always had trouble writing. He never liked writing and even today he prefers to use a keyboard or asks his manager to write things for him. Only recently did we come to know that he has Writing Disorder when my psychologist friend visited us. Dad always blamed him for being too lazy, though he is the smartest of us all. Spelling errors, word space is random, suddenly writes in uppercase, the slanting of the letters is inconsistent, and he feels totally exhausted and tired after writing a single paragraph.

What Is Writing Disorder?
It is a neurological disorder that affects a child?s writing abilities and he or she finds it difficult to form and write words in correct form even after sufficient time and training. Writing becomes a difficult and laborious task for these children. It is also called as Dysgraphia.
This disorder does not interfere with a child?s ability to understand, read, speak, or process the information. The child?s intelligence is also not affected by this impaired ability.

Causes:
Following are some of the reasons this disorder could be a result of, but in adults it is usually due to some damage to the parietal lobe of the brain.

• Weak muscle coordination while writing.
• Problem with fine motor skills.
• Injury to the part of the brain that controls motor skills.
• In some cases it could be hereditary.
• Strokes.
• Illness or damage to the brain.

Symptoms:
Following are the signs that may help one understand and identify a child with dysgraphia problem.

• The handwriting is cursive, not very clear and is hard to read and understand.
• It is full of spelling errors, wrong spaces, and the shape, size of the letters varies drastically.
• Introduces upper case and lower case in the writing randomly.
• Has trouble with punctuation.
• Words are wrongly spelt, spaced, or are left unfinished.
• They face a difficulty gripping pen or pencil while writing and usually complain about wrist pain.
• Very oddly they place the pen, paper, and position the body while writing.
• Writing is slow, and it is tedious for them to copy things from black board.

Help For This Disorder:
It would be of immense help for the children with this disorder if they are not labeled as being lazy and be allowed to use some writing aid like a keyboard.

• Allow the child to use a word processor to write.
• Provide some writing aid or pencil gripping tool for better writing.
• Let the child use a tape recorder to learn the lessons.
• Do not burden the child with assignments to write. Take oral tests or video tests instead.
• Give them printed notes to prepare from, instead of asking them to copy from the board.
• Though the normal intelligence of the child remains unaffected, it could be depressing for the child and enough motivation, and counseling should be provided.

These are a few signs, causes, and suggestions on writing disorder which can be followed to help the child overcome the problem. If you feel your child is suffering from this problem take the help of a therapist.

Source: http://speechtherapy.ygoy.com/2012/10/29/what-is-writing-disorder-an-overview/

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