tifi

Posted this over at my old blog too…

ZB has always had bad handwriting. At best, it’s legible and sorta evenly spaced. At worst, its gobbledy gook. He has never had the best fine motor skills. I always attributed the bad handwriting to that and so we let him do things (play with legos, clay, etc) that would help build them. Today, his teacher expressed concern over the anxiety he now has over writing. It’s to the point that sometimes, he’s paralyzed by it. She says he has good ideas and I know he is doing well academically, he just gets so worked up about the writing thing. She sometimes makes him write things over (and he has a stress ball at his desk that he can squeeze if he feels a block), but only when they’re not readable. She doesn’t want him to feel like it’s this big thing that he has to overcome, but it is a little thing. His handwriting is not improving at all and I feel bad for his poor teacher who thinks that maybe he doesn’t like school (no, he loves it) and was on the verge of tears talking to me about this. She even asked if maybe he would like to move out of the cluster class. Personally, I don’t think handwriting is a big deal (mine is awful too), but I want his to be legible and somewhat evenly spaced. Basically, readable. At home and at school, he practices in handwriting workbooks, and over the summer, we tried to keep up his daily journal. I thought about doing Handwriting Without Tears which I heard about from Yo, but never got around to ordering the books. I haven’t done any googling yet, but I think I’m going to go with a simple reward system if all classwork is completed daily and legibly. DH and I are going to schedule a conference with his teacher once I decide what I’d like to do so we can come up with a plan of action for the classroom. So, what say you? Had this problem before? Have any advice? Think I should just quit my whining? LMK!

Here are some shots of him writing this afternoon. Check out the funky grip.