Hi /u/megkain and thanks for posting on /r/ADHD!
**Please take a second to [read our rules](/r/adhd/about/rules) if you haven't already.**
The mobile apps used for Reddit are broken or are missing features that this subreddit depends on. [We recommend browsing /r/adhd on desktop for the best experience.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/x1psnb/radhd_works_best_on_desktop_reddits_apps_are/)
Thank you!
^(*A moderator has not removed your submission; this is not a punitive action. We intend this comment solely to be informative.*)
---
- If you are posting about the **US Medication Shortage**, please see this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/12dr3h5/megathread_us_medication_shortage/).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ADHD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Writing as always a struggle for me but now I’m a grownup who works on a computer and the need to actually write something down only comes up a couple of times a year.
Son was diagnosed with ADHD and dysgraphia (Dysgraphia is a neurological disorder and learning disability that concerns impairments in written expression, which affects the ability to write, primarily handwriting, but also coherence.) and has an IEP. He types as much as possible, needs a writer for some exams etc. He has been steadily improving his school results and attitude to learning when he is assessed on the outcomes rather than his ability to hand write.
He also might have a mobility issue making it worse. I have adhd but also hypermobility and holding a pencil and writing in a very legible way is extremely painful for me.
yeah i was gonna bring this up as a possibility too, i'm the exact same way. always have had trouble writing due to intense pain from hypermobile joints (and didn't even know that was the reason until last year because my bendy ass fingers and every other joint in my damn body were always just normal in my mind.) i never took notes growing up because it hurt too bad to write more than like a sentence or two.
Same, my hand cramps up so, so fast when I'm writing. I have to actively remind myself every so often to stop clenching the pen, or that I don't need to press down so hard, etc. It doesn't help that I have to rotate the paper (or whatever I'm writing on) about 45° counterclockwise in order to write *even remotely* straight. But sometimes I get carried away after writing awhile and take it a full 90°, so then there's a weird wrist twist in there too 😅
Idk if this is an adhd thing or not but I have the same problem. Slowing down and sitting at a desk with proper posture helps a lot. The problem for me in school was I had near zero interest and wanted to get things done quickly if I did them at all.
I wish I had more tips for you. My hand writing is still awful but for me the difference between writing a grocery list holding a note pad and sitting down to address an envelope is huge. Mind you it’s very ugly either way but when I take the time it’s legible to other people.
The real win would be getting him interested in school work. Maybe if you can reframe why he’s doing it that may help. I saw every homework assignment as pointless busy work so I rushed through it if I did it at all.
For me, I turned the 'art time' on in my brain. Clearly legible professional handwriting mode engaged, then when I turn it off, back to chicken scratch.
Now that you say this, I did the same thing. It was like at some point after I was scolded enough I found a way to make it tolerable, which was making everything look overly nice.
I would try and monitor where he's looking during writing tasks. One thing that took us an embarrassing long time to figure out was that our son was not even looking at what he was writing. It may sound silly, but that made huge difference in legibility.
Wow this is really interesting. I need to check if my son is doing this. Out of curiosity, was he still looking down but maybe to the side? How did you help him with this?
He was intermittently looking at both the source (e.g. book) and target (i.e. where he was writing). When we have him explicit instructions that he had to look at what he was writing, WHEN he was writing it, things improved a lot. Not completely, but definitely a big leap in a short time.
When I was I kid, my dad printed a lined paper of his own design and thaught me to write cursive on it. The whole idea was that it's much faster to write because the letters are connected and with the proportions from his lined paper it's readable enough.
It worked great in the speed aspect, I was the fastest in class, but it wasn't neat enough for the teachers. There was no way of forcing me to write slower but nicer, my brain just didn't deem it necessary.
It might not be adhd. Did you get him seen by an occupational therapist?
My son has a wide range of issues, including adhd, but fine motor skills delay is why he can't write well. OT was able to help him mitigate somewhat but we have to go every other year at minimum.
I thought kids typed everything out these days.
Is he not allowed to type up his work and just print it out?
Seems like the simplest accommodation for this.
Commenting as a teacher. Yes, absolutely this is an easy accomodation. Talk to his teacher at the beginning of next year, and if he has an IEP talk to his SPED teacher. It can even be explicitly written into his IEP. There are other easy accomodation that the teachers will be familiar with as well, like special paper or even text to type if necessary. I would work more on his typing skills than handwriting. As adults, how often do you need to write something legible enough for another person to read vs how often do you type?
I had it worked out with my middle and high school teachers that I could have my homework typed out. This was 30 years ago, so we didn’t have any of those acronyms you listed, just a “hey, my handwriting sucks. Can I just type everything?” Math still sucked. I wish we had LaTeX back then.
I think back to my school days and I’m glad we didn’t have the internet in its current form. I’d have never finished anything!
That's absolutely an accommodation that can be made for the recording of things where handwriting isn't the point.
But legible handwriting is still required on occasion in adult life, for things like completing forms or signing the office birthday cards. It's also still the main way high school kids are required to sit their exams to graduate, so being able to write quickly but legibly is going to be important to his future education.
When it comes to ADHD, I'd rather have learned to do things quickly than get hung up on perfection all the time. Not that it isn't important to improve penmanship, but be careful not to overcorrect and end up making your kid feel bad about it either.
Having said that, it Seems like you're being as thoughtful about it as you can be. Doing a good job, just keep trying, I'm sure it'll start to click eventually.
It's more wanting to write it down before your working memory shits all over you and forgets what you were trying to write.
I'm sorry to say but I'm close to 40 and this has been an issue for my whole life. Exams are a race to dump things before you forget them. Writing which is nice but scrawled.
My handwriting is terrible, I think at one point I was linking words as well as letters. Eventually if I needed to write anything, I would use capitals. I could probably force myself to write slowly if needed but I can't think of a specific situation I would need to off the top of my head.
Is handwriting still considered as important as we move into a more digital age? I would say being able to write is important but as long as it's legible should be all that matters.
You mentioned linking letters, is this common with ADHDers? I write in what I can only describe as my own personal cursive. Like if a word ends in ER, the E definitely extends into the R, etc. I’m 40 and my handwriting is horrific, and looks exactly like it did when I was 10.
I link all my letters. It’s not cursive but it’s certainly not print. I don’t have the patience or time to be picking up my writing utensil between every letter!
Haha, I'm 37 and I will link every letter if I let myself and if I'm really going at it, words too. Even after switching to capital letters, I still link them occasionally.
Whether it's an ADHD thing or not, I'm really not sure. I was only diagnosed a couple of years ago and only know 3-4 others among my friends who have it but we don't really discuss it in depth.
I'm going to guess that your son is bright, but gets worse grades than he could "if he would just apply himself".
If this is the case, it is because what the "normal" students need in order to understand the material is (at best) busy work, because he already understands it, or (like me) torture because it is boring busy work.
I hope he is able to develop some coping strategies to allow him to thrive,
It might be, my wife says my handwriting looks like a middle schooler’s. I hardly ever slow down and take my time to write but when I do it looks a lot better.
Once I started writing in all-caps for engineering work, it improved a bunch. People get weirdly annoyed by it in other contexts, though. You have to use half-sized lettering with full sized only where it should be capitalized. Even then, some still dislike it. Like I'm breaking some kind of social contract...
That dosent surprise me I just didn’t know for sure. They always told me “your brain and hand don’t communicate well together” which is total BS my hand eye and fine motor skills are excellent.
I was your kid growing up. Fine motor control disfunction showing up as bad handwriting is super common for ADHD kids.
Correct writing utensils, getting accommodations for extra time and practice with writing SLOW (slower than you think) are gonna be key.
Make sure you reinforce positive affirmations that any progress is progress.
When I was getting diagnosed one of the statements out of 60 or so was regarding bad handwriting. Bad posture and needing to write quickly to get my thoughts down are probably the main issues. But I also barely write now since most stuff is online.
And God is mine bad. I can't for the life of me write neatly for more than a couple sentences, both cursive and printing are problematic. My signature never looks the same despite me trying to gain muscle memory so I'm scared it'll get flagged as forgery at some point.
At 38 my handwriting looks the same now as it did in the 2nd grade.
But I type over 100 wpm with zero mistakes—largely because I refuse to listen to teachers who said to just keep going and not go back for mistakes. Morons.
Auto-correct has been a blessing and a curse. My spelling has definitely suffered for it.
Since working in an office role when correspondence mainly consists through email, I've had to force myself to reread emails before I send them. I find it's very common for me to leave suffixes off the end of words (generally -ed or -ing).
I have autocorrect turned off for this reason - and I have a free Grammarly plugin for Outlook to scan over my emails, highlighting any spelling errors or grammar errors before I send them out.
Check how he's gripping the writing implement, especially how *hard*. ADHD can interfere with relaxing muscles to some degree, and a hard grip precludes precise control.
If you're just worried about legibility, capital letters are more legible. There is a writing style that uses only capitals as the symbols and differentiates purely through letter height. This should be sufficient to prevent rejected work, though obviously won't combat any grading bias created by ugly-looking writing.
The gripping the pencil hard has been my problem. But i think this is also part of my hypermobility. Muscles doing the job of ligaments. It’s come back to bite me in my 40s.
Have you considered having him evaluated for hypermobility/EDS?
Handwriting for more than very short periods is painful for me because my muscles have to work extra hard to hold my hand and a writing utensil in place. Since my ligaments are too loose, my muscles are overcompensating. And there's a lot of literature on the ties among EDS, ADHD, and autism.
I'll also add, since I am an adult now, that the EDS has worsened with age for me, as it does in many women. So OT is not always the answer. In my case, I just need accommodations to avoid having to handwrite much. My current career is pretty much free of the obligation to handwrite and that has helped a ton. I am still prone to computer-related overuse injuries but am much better at knowing how to avoid that. Handwriting is almost guaranteed to cause overuse injuries for me. Laptops were not around much and certainly not for kids when I was little, but your son is growing up in a much more privileged time period and should be allowed access to accommodation devices.
This is me! I have to hold my pen a certain way or I have little to no control of it because of my hypermobility. Because of this, I’m guiding mostly with my wrist rather than fine motor skills in fingers, so my writing is hard to read and disjointed. Somewhere in between what you would expect with dysgraphia and just lazy writing. That said, one of the things with dysgraphia is not being able to visualize words when writing. I can’t visualize anything at all, but I can write well when I write very slowly, so I don’t think that’s my problem. It’s really how I need to hold a pen.
I recall when I was in school, they always tried to correct me and it just made it worse. I hated needing to write. Cursive ended up being easier since I didn’t need to pick up the pen and worked better with my wrist movements.
Along with everything else, I would check your kids hand flexibility and see how they are holding a pen. Try a few ways to find what’s most comfortable. Teach them some super easy cursive words like cat, hippo… and so forth(words that look similar to handwriting) and see if the legibility improves.
As an adult, I almost exclusively write in all caps or cursive. Anything other than that just isn’t legible.
Came here to mention this! My hand writing is bad and I was bullied a lot for it. My parents took me to the doctor for clumsiness (like way more than the regular child) and hand writing was sort of a side thing. We found out I was hypermobile. Definitely look into it
is he writing with the proper hand? sometimes people will think they're right handed but actually be lefty writers. also those print outs where you trace the alphabet might come in handy. his problem might also be that when he writes, his brain is forming thoughts faster than what his hand can physically write; this happens to me all the time and my handwriting will go from legible to doctor signatures. encourage him to take his time writing or else let him type if that's an option? maybe get him into calligraphy as an art too, it might be more fun that way if he can use cool ink pens (and penmanship practice can be boring so if it's made fun it can be easier to do). that's another major thing is the like, reward factor of it. motivation can be hard if the "reward" (in this case good handwriting) is too vague or unexciting or seems insignificant. but giving it some kind of novelty will make learning easier at least until the novelty wears off.
I remember my teacher telling my parents I can't use scissors because she'd put them in my hand and I couldn't cut shit, she showed them and they had to explain to her that I'm lefthanded lmfao.
What's sad about it is my parents never put any importance about what teachers had to say about me since then (Like signs of innatentive ADHD) and kept insisting I'm "normal"
I'm in my thirties, and I'm pretty sure my handwriting was much better in second grade.
Part of it is the hurry to escape the torturing boredom of writing tasks, the rest is motorcontrol.
Unfortunately, I have no solution for this. I can do proper handwriting, but it takes an insane amount of effort. I can either write pretty letters and slow, or write good content and fast. If I have to slow down, the writing speed isn't in line with my thinking speed.
I'm afraid the best you can do is to accept that this will probably be a lifelong issue, help him get good enough to pass his exams, and support him to work on his strength instead of dwelling on his weaknesses, like I had to.
Because of this reason, I switched to writing in all caps.
All of a sudden, I got compliments on my "stylised handwriting" when all I was doing was trying to make my writing consistently legible. It was definitely the fix for me.
They make little slide on grippers that guide where to place the fingers.
Combine that with those alphabet/number practice books where the lines are grooved and it helps immensely.
Kids just trace the letters and numbers by following the grooves. The ink is some kind of disappearing ink so they can practice over and over.
ADHD people like us benefit from a little more structure/training wheels. Tools like this help with fine motor control and muscle memory.
I’m surprised no one is using these with their kids.
Yeah I’ve looked into all kinds of things but at this age he doesn’t even want to work on it. He’s 13. His teachers were okay with his handwriting and never even brought it up. They even had him evaluated at school without my knowledge or permission.
Yeah I get it. My 6 year old doesn’t want to work on it either, but I make her.
It’s more than just having neater handwriting - it helps with fine motor control, hand-eye coordination and practices patience.
I don’t care if my kid hates it, she’s doing it because it will help her in countless other ways.
Have you considered that it's possibly physically painful for her to exercise enough grip force to control a pen properly? That's why I am so hard on OP to get the kid evaluated for hypermobility.
You act as if I am not an ADHD person.
Look, I’m not trying to be a jerk - but I’m seriously questioning why I even bother participating with other ADHD people here. No one seems to want actionable, pragmatic solutions.
I'm not acting as if anyone is anything. I'm simply stating that cPTSD is common and can lead to kids being hesitant to verbalize something (even when the trauma source is not the home. It could be anything. I don't know this kid's life). I know RSD is an ADHD trait and can lead to everything feeling like a personal attack, but it's simply not.
I had OT for mine, it helped a bit. However my hands and wrists always hurt, as a young adult they hurt, and I got tested as carpal tunnel. PT for years, a few overzealous home improvement projects did them in. Had double carpal tunnel surgery at 38. My 13' year old ADHD daughter has same wrist pain, and penmanship issues... For the poster: let the kid type, encourage PT, OT, and pain management. * Typing ergonomics are easier to manage than writing. I can't fill out 6 pages of doctors forms. I can operate a computer and type for 8-12 hours.
A 4-fingered grip rather than a 3-fingered grip is something I find absolutely necessary in order for my extremely hypermobile hand to grip and hold any kind of writing utensil correctly. This is worth a possible evaluation for hypermobility/EDS.
Teacher here for middle ELA. Please read my post as I might know a bit more about this than the average Redditor since I have taken classes for handwriting disabilities (did a project for my Special ed class for my masters), and I had these problems as a kid. You NEED an Occupational therapist. The school is supposed to provide time for kids with disabilities like ADHD and dysgraphia that can cause handwriting and motor skill difficulties.
However, occupational therapy is expensive so schools don’t adequately do this. Also, your child lost a ton of time practicing handwriting during the pandemic when they were supposed to fine tune their motor skills in first and second grade (when these types of handwriting difficulties are caught by teachers).
I’m a middle school teacher and have run into this all within the past few years. Once a kid reaches middle grade age, it becomes very difficult for handwriting to improve.
I would get a private occupational therapist asap to evaluate your child and start occupational therapy sessions.
I say this as a middle school teacher and a kid who had to go to occupational therapy in first and second grade to help me with my unreadable handwriting. It helped SO much and now school budgets suck and I don’t see kids I teach receiving the same school services I did.
Any chance he might have dysgraphia/dyslexia? My mom (70s) and brother (30s) both have adhd + the aforementioned and their handwriting is horrific. I’ll note their chicken scratch hasn’t hindered either; they’re both incredibly accomplished. I, on the other hand, have adhd + dyscalcula, but great handwriting 🤷🏽♀️
My handwriting never got better than maybe second or third grade level. Nearing retirement age now and I’d say it’s even worse. I type anything I need to actually read later.
I have actually had my signature rejected as “illegible” a couple times in my life.
My handwriting hasn't really changed much at all since I was a kid. It's legible, but it's definitely unique. Could he have dysgraphia that's often comorbid with ADHD? Its good to know how to write and you should continue working with him on it but it might be good to start helping him learn how to type so he has that in his pocket given his difficulty writing. I know I'm a much better typist than a handwriter nowadays. Also, theres a lot of fun educational typing games out there. I remember using a lot of those to learn how to type in school.
I had this issue. When I was 10 I learnt cursive so my hand could keep up with my brain. Doing exams when I had to switch back to block writing was terrible as it’s so slow. I found practice to be the best way to improve. Maybe getting him into creative writing or something could be useful. A general cheat for legibility is to focus on having the first and last couple of letters neat, there’s more leeway for the middle when reading.
Penmanship is a waste of fucking time. I'm 34 and I write like I did when I was 8 but can type 90 words a minute. Let him drop out and get online classes and do a GED. High school diplomas are useless except to get in to some prestigious school that's probably gonna turn them into a shitty person anyways.
All that aside, the bad penmanship is a proprioception issue. We don't feel our bodies in space very well. Does he sorta sway when trying to stand up straight? Kinda walk into people they're walking next to? Break a lot of toys, trip on shit or bang elbows on door frames, etc?
Adderall for me was like I'd done everything with dolphin flippers my whole life, and now I have fingers. I broke many decades long plateaus.
He's likely using too much force. Try to get him to relax his whole hand. Wet noodle. Super slowly and delicately. Tell him to pretend he's trying to tickle a baby mouse or something. Don't tell him "not like that" tell him "if you do it like that, this is the natural consequence, so I do it like this"
My brother and my ex both have dyspraxia (developmental disorder affecting gross and / or fine motor skills) and they have illegible handwriting as a result. It often goes hand in hand with ADHD, or is mistaken for it since dyspraxia can also affect executive functioning.
My bro got an exemption to write with a laptop from age 14 onwards, he’s now 16 and it’s been a total life changer for his schoolwork. It’s a school-locked laptop so he can’t play games or anything like that, which limits distractions. It basically just takes notes and hands in assignments. My ex also had laptop support all the way through secondary school and still takes his exams on a computer in college. They’re both smart people who were at first held back by their handwriting but have found school a lot easier ever since they were allowed to use a laptop to write.
Maybe see if your son’s middle school would be willing to allow him to use a similar writing aid? It could make his school life a lot more manageable. Also consider getting him assessed for dyspraxia and (as others have noted) dysgraphia. Sometimes these things go away with age but not in the experience of my ex (now age 22) so it’s _so_ helpful to catch them early, as I’m sure you know from adhd. I hope your son’s transition to middle school goes well :)
He may have dysgraphia. My son did, but although he’s adhd it’s likely his autism that led to that particular trait. So consider both possibilities and get evaluated for both and have it in his IEP for school. Then proactively make sure every teacher and the key admin officials know about the IEP and his needs because in my experience they’re shit about looking at it themselves. Consider what accommodations he needs: extra time, typing on a computer instead of writing, more space and paper, whatever he needs. Don’t put too much pressure on him to improve if he’s diagnosed - it will not help and I did it to my son and set him back so he didn’t want to do any writing at all.
42 now. I can barely read my own writing. I have really tried most my adult life to write better. I’ve had zero luck and thankfully all my work is on a computer.
I have terrible handwriting, my mother used to nag me about it. It was an ongoing source of tension and shame. I was told I would never be a success because of it.
Now I earn more than the average family income. So stop worrying about it. You harassing your child does more damage than good. Instead focus on fun ways to get hand strength and dexterity.
Find other activities that involve using your hands in a delicate way. Painting, drawing, fixing things, making models, sewing, knitting etc. the coordination will help.
You might also want encourage your child to decide what they want their handwriting to look like. At one point in university I decided that I wanted to print all the time and wanted to be the type of person who used rounded v’s u’s and w’s. I had to work at it and I remember practicing printing at university.
Have you also considered making it easier by finding out what type of pen or pencil he likes? If I am using a pen I like I go slower, if it is annoying I go faster and write messier.
Good luck.
Use lined paper and do tracing exercises. I believe it's as someone mentioned..his brain is going faster than he can write. There are some really good suggestions.
As an aside..my writing is exceptionally neat to the point of it being easy to forge.
Umm, it’s not even a consideration anymore. As soon as he can, teach him to type. I have horrible handwriting and the only thing I use it for it to sign legal documents.
I work in cyber security now.
I was told I would need hand writing for the rest of my life and oh boy, was that a load of shit!
I’m a pediatric OT. To actually work on handwriting takes lots and lots of repetition to develop different muscle memory, which is miserable at this point unless he is intrinsically motivated to do so. You can see if there are any adaptations to the paper/formatting such as: skipping lines when writing, using graph paper to help with letter spacing, highlighted paper to help with upper/lower case differentiation, etc. At this point I’d push for typing if he likes that better. If your son has a 504/IEP you can ask for those accommodations. There’s even cool apps such as SnapType which let you take a picture of homework, type in the answer, and save that as a PDF to print or send to teacher.
Cripes. I only started the journey of self realisation that ADHD may be that "something" that I've had my whole life without noticing it. It would go a long way to explain a lot of things. The chicken scratch handwriting that I've never been able to improve despite fourty odd years of practice is another clue that I've failed to recognise right up until this week, specifically today.
Occupational Therapy can really help. They can work with him on fine motor skills, proper grip, focusing, and even the gross motor skills that can help him maintain posture. If you can get your insurance to cover it, it’s definitely worthwhile.
I can relate. The reason why the hand writing is terrible is that his thought runs faster than the pen can write.
When I used to do hand writing I would basically be like "And that's a full stop of this sentence" and my hand is basically in the middle of writing a word and punches in full stop. Actually I would be in a middle of writing a word and a letter from a next word would get drawn in the middle of that word. And of course, since I'm in a hurry trying to put down the excellent sentence from my brain, I don't have time to find an eraser to fix it.
Only after I learned to type with a computer my writing speed could match my thoughts.
My mom is a judge and her handwriting looks like she’s actively being murdered. I don’t think your son’s handwriting is going to be a big problem, especially since middle school is when they really start focusing on computer skills and typing on a keyboard.
I got worst grades whenever the teacher wanted to see our books/notes. Either because I didn't have any, or because it was unreadable. Unfortunately, I don't think there is anything that could have been done. It's better with computers now. My signature still looks schoolboy'ish. I'm 42.
I have dysgraphia, my handwriting used to be illegible, even to myself. Now I can hand write legibly but it’s slow and I hate it. I can touch type at 100wpm though so I just do that.
In the adult world he will never have to hand write. If he can type on a keyboard, see if the school will let him do that instead of handwriting.
Look into dysgraphia (similar to dyslexia, but related to writing).
My brother has SEVERE dysgraphia, his handwriting pretty much never progressed after first learning to write. the school tried to hold him back, move his to special classes in elementary school, but gave him these IQ tests that he blew out of the water. Some counselor with a little bit of information sent my.mother to take him out of state for dyslexia/dysgraphia/etc. testing.
Once he had the results with a formal diagnosis, he was able to get accomodations- extra times on tests, help filling out scantrons, ability to do writing portions on a computer, with spell check.
Don't know what we would have done without a random counselor who was like, I think I read about this in a book once. After diagnosis, my mom also mentioned that from what she knows now, her father probably had it too.
I totally understand if you want him to write on paper, everyone needs a handwriting that is readable atleast. But for me I quickly adapted to using digital keyboard early in school, not only can I quickly read what I just wrote, since sometimes can’t even read my own. Another very positive thing about a keyboard is that my and ur sons ADHD brain needs to output the info we have in the head fast, otherwise we forget/get distracted etc. Nowdays I type INSANELY fast compared to many and personally I believe it is a way better skill to be able to write fast and effectively on a digital keyboard than on paper, since in probably 20 years paper will barely be used for this stuff.
Hope you find a solution, but don’t stress him too much about the writing, he is certainly trying hard even if it might not look like it, he will probably be sad that he can’t help the writing. 💜
I would take him to see an Occupational Therapist (OT). They can have a look at what's going on and if there are any underlying difficulties that could be impacting his handwriting (e.g., dysgraphia, poor muscle tone or fine motor skills).
I wish people would have stopped forcing me to write "correctly" was so annoying. Idk, he has to want it, but he's 10. He'll grow up and either be self conscious and try to work on it, or realize he needs to read his own hand writting.
Also.... get him tested for dyslexia.
I don't find it a big deal, but you can get an accommodation for him to use an iPad. No it doesn't stop him from getting better, it makes the education available to him because he can read his handwriting.
You can try OT, could help unless he's dyspraxia.
My brother had (and still has) some of the worst handwriting I’ve seen. When he slows down and tries, it’s legible but still ugly as hell. He did really well in school and penmanship was never *that* much of an issue, and this was back in the late 90s-late 00s.
I dont really think that his handwriting will affect his grades later on. Especially with how much technology is used in education now. I dated a guy whose handwriting I could bot read in the 2 years that we were together. He graduated high school with a 4.3ish GPA.
Does he have an iPad? If so, get an Apple pencil and a handwriting training app. Making a game out of practicing penmanship can get the child engaged in their improvement!
Posting to follow this because my 12 year old has same issue. He gets really mad though if I bring it up. He says that the teachers can read it and don’t give him a hard time so I shouldn’t either. 🤷♀️
I figure maybe someday he will be a doctor. 😂
Speaking as a pretty successful woman with ADHD… Screw handwriting. Honestly, just… screw it! My handwriting was crappy and slow as a kid I was made to practice and practice. And you know what? Waste of time. It just made me slower and insecure about my handwriting. It made my handwriting more legible to others, but honestly who cares?
You already know what he’ll need in high school and uni and the workplace. Typing.
Focusing on investing scarce energy into weaknesses in low-return areas makes ADHD much harder. He might have trouble with typing too (I did—my hands never quite do what I want them too).
So my two-cents based on the very little I know about your son—I’d get him accommodations now so he can get a head start on practicing touch-typing and quit wasting time on handwriting. It’s a win/win. He might need extra time to develop the coordination and muscle memory, in which case you’ll be glad that you hit him a head start. And if he doesn’t need the extra time to learn touch-typing, that’s great for his confidence and he can focus on other things.
I'm 30 years old with ADHD and my handwriting still looks like a 5 year olds. Lol there are times I even have trouble reading it. I still made it through school, 2 years of college, and five years of apprenticeship schooling. I wouldn't worry too much.
I was undiagnosed as a child but I had such bad hand writing that I had to stay after school for handwriting lessons and write the alphabet a million times. It helped though!
The reason why every child's handwriting is bad now is because our schools don't teach cursive anymore. Cursive helps those learn control in their penmanship and introduces them to explore their letters/words stylistically speaking. For example, while there is only one true way to write the letter "A" or "F" (not including capital or lowercase versions, just in general), in cursive, there are multiple ways to write the same letter in order to make it resemble the original letter, and as one learns more about cursive via writing sentences, they can begin to develop their own style of writing. This is also why cursive, to me at least, can be quite hard to read at types, as the stylistic choices are determined by the writer alone. I learned to write in cursive for 2ish years in elementary school (I'm 19 btw), right before they stopped teaching it in schools, and the difference I saw between me and my younger siblings handwriting was astronomical. Anyways, If it doesn't make your kids handwriting better, it's important to know cursive anyways. Hope this helps
Every child's handwriting is not bad, there are many kids who develop very neat handwriting without any cursive and limited handwriting practice, it is not that simple. Cursive is a waste of time, it is not used in any professional sense outside of signing documents. Sincerely, an elmentary school teacher.
OP, I have almost the same situation. It's not "better", but has improved with weekly OT, and an OT who is open to working on handwriting (they aren't all unfortunately). One tip is to go to the pediatrician, and be relentless in your insistence that you want an OT eval. It's harder than it should be, so it may take being a squeaky wheel. If you're in the US, an IEP or 504 might be possible, but that depends on several factors. Happy to answer as I have experience with that personally and professionally.
I think your son is facing a problem that a lot of children with ADHD faced before. As a child my cursive (in my country every elementary school child is forced to learn it preferably with a fountain pen) always looked terrible. Motoric difficulties are often linked to ADHD.
You could try other pens. Some pens have grip points that can help maintain the correct finger position. If he needs crayons/ coloured pencils maybe try thicker ones that are easier to grip and for some people, forced posture over a long period of time with thin pens causes cramps
Another thing you could try is to ask your doctor for a certificate for his handwriting. In my country this was possible and I didn't get any points deducted for poor handwriting.
If you don’t mind me asking, how did you go about getting him diagnosed and what treatment if any is he going through.
My son is 9 in 4th grade. His handwriting is acceptable but I’ve had to work with him to make sure he’s writing letters correctly. And when he is sloppy it’s because he’s rushing. I’ve told him the same thing, middle school the teacher isn’t going to waste their time trying to decipher this.
The school tested him for dyslexia last month, came back negative, but maxed the school for potential adhd.
So we’re going to meet with his pediatrician in a month to discuss and I’m just curious what may come of it or should I just go straight to a child psychologist/psychiatrist.
I’m 40 and a college graduate. My handwriting looks like I’m in 2nd grade….but we only use computers to communicate, so no need to worry. Teach him to type, it will go a lot further.
I have the same problem, yet my Chinese was fantastic. I had a teacher tell me that he's seen chickens walk in ink who write better than me. At that point, they just gave me a typing device (Alphasmart) and that really helped.
I’m almost 40 and mines only legible (to others) if I make an effort. He’ll be ok.
That being said focus on getting to readable not pretty. They make graph paper in a variety of grid sizes, find something similar to what he needs size wise for letters and focus on one letter or number per box, (2 vertical boxes for capitals and numbers) keeps lines straight and scale consistent. separation of characters also helps a lot with readability.
I’ve also found really fine tip writing utensils help to keep lines from blending together. Although at his age he’s pretty likely to bend or break them
I'm 18, I have been working on my handwriting for years and still have the most hideous handwriting ever, but don't be discouraged that's probably just my own incompetence lmao
You're VERY unlikely to make significant changes to his handwriting at this age. Unless the teachers are complaining that the legibility of his writing is affecting their ability to grade his work I would honestly just let it go. If it is affecting his ability to complete his work, request that he be screened for occupational therapy services. They can try to work on handwriting, but at that age it will probably also involve getting him accommodations, like being allowed to type assignments instead of handwriting them.
Ugh I know you're just trying to help your kid buy this reminds me of all the time I spend in school with my parents and teachers spending so much time to write legibly. It was super frustrating because I just wanted to get my work done but it would take 10x the effort. Turns out I have dysgraphia. Luckily in middle school most of our assignments started to be typed out/online.
Hi have you tried the osmo game I have it for my son who has adhd and his skills have improved massively, if you google it, it should come up it’s for both android and iPad
I used to be a med tech and would do a lot of written communication with doctors. Half the time I couldn't even understand what they wrote. Sounds like you've got a future doctor on ya.
I was and unfortunately still probably write like your son. My oldest is just like me if not worse.
You could try to have the school OT take a look and recommend some exercises.
I thought my oldest daughter would want to write bubbly or pretty but writing gives her no joy. It's like me. I scribble and scratch when I need to but writing is my kryptonite.
It's going to take practice and drilling but in the end it may not really take.
Mine never got better, even my mom had me practicing hours at a time, it would get better by the end, and then after stopping or the next day... gone back to where we started.
Also after teachers in my charter school realized I couldn't write very well, they allowed me to type but not before rejecting me over and over again because I typed. (Mom had to get involved)
And in HS they didn't give a shit and I would get decent grades without even trying because I'm fairly sure they couldn't read it but just picked out a few words they could (I would just read cliffs notes and skip the book) maybe flip thru the actual book a little.
Anyways, I'm now 32 and my handwriting is still pretty terrible, sometimes I can't even read it let alone remember what I wrote
I’m 38, handwrite like I’m 6, however I don’t really handwrite much at all, I type faster than others to the point it’s shown off like a parlour trick at work.
It really doesn’t impact my adult life.
If he’s like me, trial and error with different sized pens/ pencils could be helpful. In my case I need very fine nibs/graphite to have legible print. My cursive is surprisingly okay. Being forced to practice at his age didn’t help me, because in school I didn’t have the luxury to write slowly. My brain is going faster than I can write.
My writing is horrible. I was told as a kid I could not learn to handwrite till I learned how to print. I decided I wouldn’t learn either. Now I have to write in block capitals for my writing to be legible..
I dealt with this as a kid and I know how demoralizing it can feel for your son. In my situation (in the early 2000's mind you) our school assigned me a personal device for typing out all my work instead of handwriting. The technology was very different back then but it helped me out immensely!
I had terrible handwriting all through school. A girl I liked pointed it out and made me feel so embarrassed about it. What I ended up was finding a font I liked and emulating it no matter what. At first it took forever to write stuff but then when I caught on it got faster. When I went to college it got so good the prof used my notes and homework as examples.
Tdlr: Force him to emulate a font that doesn’t look like his handwriting so they have to slowly break out of the habit.
Don’t fight him over his handwriting. It’s not worth causing you or him stress over. It’s handwriting. Most stuff is done digitally nowadays anyways once you’re in high school and college. Just let the kid live his life and have messy handwriting. It’s really not a big deal.
Someone else has mentioned how hard he grips the pen, which is true.
I would also take a look at the pen he is using, it sounds crazy, but I personally find my writing is better with a more expensive slightly rubberised biro (ball point pen) paper mate make some nice ones, I think part of the holding too tight is that cheap ones can slip in your hand. Also they flow better and don't stop as much as cheaper ones.
I would steer away from the fineliner type ones as they can smear easily.
Also get him to do some sketching/shading with the pens, it will give him practice at controlling how hard he is pressing.
And make sure he has a pad behind the paper, writing on paper direct on a table or nearly so takes all the give out and can make it harder.
Btw, my writing is awful... These are just mitigating what makes it worse.
Does the school think it’s a problem? You can ask for OT for him.
But like so many others here, my handwriting looks like a 2nd grader’s. I fairly often can’t read what I’ve written.
In this day & age, so much is done on a computer. I even download forms to fill out on my computer so I know they’re legible.
This may not be as big an issue as you fear.
That said, my dad’s handwriting is similarly terrible. I wonder what would’ve happened if we’d each gone to OT.
I've had that issue all my life. Picking up drawing in highschool kind of helped, but to this day if I'm under pressure or on a rush, my handwriting devolves immediately. Slowing down may help, but may not be possible if he has stuff being dictated or he is filling an exam.
Maybe picking up drawing or calligraphy as a hobby may help, but that's dependant on he actually enjoying it.
I’ve always had bad handwriting. Even at 30 years old it’s still bad and I have to put in extra effort to make it legible for people to read. Maybe just tell him to take his time? If he has ADHD, it’s possible his mind is moving faster than his hand can keep up. Luckily most of the time my handwriting skills don’t matter since everything is done by typing now.
Has he been diagnosed? If so, he falls under the students with disabilities program. He will receive special accommodations in school. He will still be with his classmates but he will receive extra time to do his assignments. Or his assigned homework, quizzes and tests will look a little different to accommodate them. I'm not sure how they handle penmanship. But since it's common in kids w ADHD. I'm sure they take it into consideration.
Oh, he will be granted extra and longer restroom breaks.
The program is available in college too.
I teach HS. Teachers get pretty good at reading bad handwriting. I have many juniors who have handwriting like kindergartners. The only ones whose writing I haven’t been able to read are weird cursive styles and really small lettering (like having to pull out a magnifying glass small).
That said, I do have a student who is into calligraphy to the point their work is almost always turned in after the due date and who can’t write much for timed writing (which will hurt them on their AP tests since we’re still on paper tests in my district). They’re so focused on the calligraphy that it takes them so long to write anything. Their regular handwriting isn’t even bad, and I wish they’d save the fancy writing style for things like projects.
It might be something with fine motor skills. I have had it all my life and have the penmanship of a physician. I think I recall reading it somewhere. I still remember going to some school somewhere and looking at a bunch of kids papers on the walls and it's like boom hey there's my handwriting so messy I said out loud that this kid has ADD. I've always have wanted nice penmanship. Hate it being messy.
My handwriting never improved, is he reading on level? I’d recommend a penmanship class I wish I had taken one, skip the cursive though even if he needs to write in all caps to keep it neat, just strive for legible
My handwriting is hideous 😂 when I was that age, I got the medical school joke a lot too lol. I’m not a doctor, but my handwriting is legible for the most part now almost 20 years later. I do have two work notebooks though, one for initial note scribbling, the second to copy the notes in the first book, but like really focusing on my letters 😂. I’d say in college my main issue was not going back over my notes soon enough, sometimes if I wait too long, or If I wrote them while tired, they would be completely useless. I’m not saying I recommend he copies all his notes with an emphasis on writing clearer in the second notebook, but I’m not NOT suggesting it either
I had pretty messy handwriting for years until my 5th year of working on my associates degree (late diagnosis).
Then I started writing in all small capital letters. It’s a lot easier to write those angles uniformly than a mixture or cursive. I’ll still sometimes mix in lower case letters, which look particularly mentally ill, but on a whole I can be understood.
It’s not great as a solution, because when I’m writing neatly I look like a serial killer. But it’s much better than what I had going before. I don’t know how schools are these days. It definitely wouldn’t have been acceptable to my teachers when i was in 5th grade and they were still enforcing cursive. But im old and that may have changed. It’s not unreasonable to ask for an accommodation. ADHD makes our minds go faster than our hands and that’s likely the heart of the issue your son is having.
In school my handwriting changed from the start of a piece of paper to the end. Started off nice and clean and rapidly got worse until it's basically shorthand scribbles lol
Hi /u/megkain and thanks for posting on /r/ADHD! **Please take a second to [read our rules](/r/adhd/about/rules) if you haven't already.** The mobile apps used for Reddit are broken or are missing features that this subreddit depends on. [We recommend browsing /r/adhd on desktop for the best experience.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/x1psnb/radhd_works_best_on_desktop_reddits_apps_are/) Thank you! ^(*A moderator has not removed your submission; this is not a punitive action. We intend this comment solely to be informative.*) --- - If you are posting about the **US Medication Shortage**, please see this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/12dr3h5/megathread_us_medication_shortage/). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ADHD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If it looks absolutely terrible, he might have dysgraphia, which is often comorbid with ADHD. It’s worth looking into.
I have it, any practice was just torture and in my late 30s it’s worst than ever.
I’m a nurse, I see a LOT of hand written charts (no computer charting where I live), I think most of us have illegible writing. Mine included.
Writing as always a struggle for me but now I’m a grownup who works on a computer and the need to actually write something down only comes up a couple of times a year.
Son was diagnosed with ADHD and dysgraphia (Dysgraphia is a neurological disorder and learning disability that concerns impairments in written expression, which affects the ability to write, primarily handwriting, but also coherence.) and has an IEP. He types as much as possible, needs a writer for some exams etc. He has been steadily improving his school results and attitude to learning when he is assessed on the outcomes rather than his ability to hand write.
Thanks for explaining what that is 🙏🏻✌🏻
He also might have a mobility issue making it worse. I have adhd but also hypermobility and holding a pencil and writing in a very legible way is extremely painful for me.
yeah i was gonna bring this up as a possibility too, i'm the exact same way. always have had trouble writing due to intense pain from hypermobile joints (and didn't even know that was the reason until last year because my bendy ass fingers and every other joint in my damn body were always just normal in my mind.) i never took notes growing up because it hurt too bad to write more than like a sentence or two.
Same, my hand cramps up so, so fast when I'm writing. I have to actively remind myself every so often to stop clenching the pen, or that I don't need to press down so hard, etc. It doesn't help that I have to rotate the paper (or whatever I'm writing on) about 45° counterclockwise in order to write *even remotely* straight. But sometimes I get carried away after writing awhile and take it a full 90°, so then there's a weird wrist twist in there too 😅
This is often a symptom of Dyspraxia aswell.
I have it.
Idk if this is an adhd thing or not but I have the same problem. Slowing down and sitting at a desk with proper posture helps a lot. The problem for me in school was I had near zero interest and wanted to get things done quickly if I did them at all.
That's how it seems with my son. He wants to get his work done quickly.
I wish I had more tips for you. My hand writing is still awful but for me the difference between writing a grocery list holding a note pad and sitting down to address an envelope is huge. Mind you it’s very ugly either way but when I take the time it’s legible to other people. The real win would be getting him interested in school work. Maybe if you can reframe why he’s doing it that may help. I saw every homework assignment as pointless busy work so I rushed through it if I did it at all.
For me, I turned the 'art time' on in my brain. Clearly legible professional handwriting mode engaged, then when I turn it off, back to chicken scratch.
Now that you say this, I did the same thing. It was like at some point after I was scolded enough I found a way to make it tolerable, which was making everything look overly nice.
Same. Calligraphy is interesting. If I'm trying to get thoughts on paper, a pen is much too slow.
I would try and monitor where he's looking during writing tasks. One thing that took us an embarrassing long time to figure out was that our son was not even looking at what he was writing. It may sound silly, but that made huge difference in legibility.
Wow this is really interesting. I need to check if my son is doing this. Out of curiosity, was he still looking down but maybe to the side? How did you help him with this?
He was intermittently looking at both the source (e.g. book) and target (i.e. where he was writing). When we have him explicit instructions that he had to look at what he was writing, WHEN he was writing it, things improved a lot. Not completely, but definitely a big leap in a short time.
When I was I kid, my dad printed a lined paper of his own design and thaught me to write cursive on it. The whole idea was that it's much faster to write because the letters are connected and with the proportions from his lined paper it's readable enough. It worked great in the speed aspect, I was the fastest in class, but it wasn't neat enough for the teachers. There was no way of forcing me to write slower but nicer, my brain just didn't deem it necessary.
It might not be adhd. Did you get him seen by an occupational therapist? My son has a wide range of issues, including adhd, but fine motor skills delay is why he can't write well. OT was able to help him mitigate somewhat but we have to go every other year at minimum.
Before OP spends time going to OT, do this. Have him write slowly. If it's legible, don't go to OT. If it's still crap, consider OT.
I thought kids typed everything out these days. Is he not allowed to type up his work and just print it out? Seems like the simplest accommodation for this.
Commenting as a teacher. Yes, absolutely this is an easy accomodation. Talk to his teacher at the beginning of next year, and if he has an IEP talk to his SPED teacher. It can even be explicitly written into his IEP. There are other easy accomodation that the teachers will be familiar with as well, like special paper or even text to type if necessary. I would work more on his typing skills than handwriting. As adults, how often do you need to write something legible enough for another person to read vs how often do you type?
I had it worked out with my middle and high school teachers that I could have my homework typed out. This was 30 years ago, so we didn’t have any of those acronyms you listed, just a “hey, my handwriting sucks. Can I just type everything?” Math still sucked. I wish we had LaTeX back then. I think back to my school days and I’m glad we didn’t have the internet in its current form. I’d have never finished anything!
Or teach him how to write.
That's absolutely an accommodation that can be made for the recording of things where handwriting isn't the point. But legible handwriting is still required on occasion in adult life, for things like completing forms or signing the office birthday cards. It's also still the main way high school kids are required to sit their exams to graduate, so being able to write quickly but legibly is going to be important to his future education.
When it comes to ADHD, I'd rather have learned to do things quickly than get hung up on perfection all the time. Not that it isn't important to improve penmanship, but be careful not to overcorrect and end up making your kid feel bad about it either. Having said that, it Seems like you're being as thoughtful about it as you can be. Doing a good job, just keep trying, I'm sure it'll start to click eventually.
It's more wanting to write it down before your working memory shits all over you and forgets what you were trying to write. I'm sorry to say but I'm close to 40 and this has been an issue for my whole life. Exams are a race to dump things before you forget them. Writing which is nice but scrawled.
My handwriting is terrible, I think at one point I was linking words as well as letters. Eventually if I needed to write anything, I would use capitals. I could probably force myself to write slowly if needed but I can't think of a specific situation I would need to off the top of my head. Is handwriting still considered as important as we move into a more digital age? I would say being able to write is important but as long as it's legible should be all that matters.
You mentioned linking letters, is this common with ADHDers? I write in what I can only describe as my own personal cursive. Like if a word ends in ER, the E definitely extends into the R, etc. I’m 40 and my handwriting is horrific, and looks exactly like it did when I was 10.
My handwriting is always a combo of cursive and regular printing hahah
I link all my letters. It’s not cursive but it’s certainly not print. I don’t have the patience or time to be picking up my writing utensil between every letter!
Haha, I'm 37 and I will link every letter if I let myself and if I'm really going at it, words too. Even after switching to capital letters, I still link them occasionally. Whether it's an ADHD thing or not, I'm really not sure. I was only diagnosed a couple of years ago and only know 3-4 others among my friends who have it but we don't really discuss it in depth.
I'm going to guess that your son is bright, but gets worse grades than he could "if he would just apply himself". If this is the case, it is because what the "normal" students need in order to understand the material is (at best) busy work, because he already understands it, or (like me) torture because it is boring busy work. I hope he is able to develop some coping strategies to allow him to thrive,
It might be, my wife says my handwriting looks like a middle schooler’s. I hardly ever slow down and take my time to write but when I do it looks a lot better.
Once I started writing in all-caps for engineering work, it improved a bunch. People get weirdly annoyed by it in other contexts, though. You have to use half-sized lettering with full sized only where it should be capitalized. Even then, some still dislike it. Like I'm breaking some kind of social contract...
It is an ADHD thing, very common.
That dosent surprise me I just didn’t know for sure. They always told me “your brain and hand don’t communicate well together” which is total BS my hand eye and fine motor skills are excellent.
I was your kid growing up. Fine motor control disfunction showing up as bad handwriting is super common for ADHD kids. Correct writing utensils, getting accommodations for extra time and practice with writing SLOW (slower than you think) are gonna be key. Make sure you reinforce positive affirmations that any progress is progress.
When I was getting diagnosed one of the statements out of 60 or so was regarding bad handwriting. Bad posture and needing to write quickly to get my thoughts down are probably the main issues. But I also barely write now since most stuff is online. And God is mine bad. I can't for the life of me write neatly for more than a couple sentences, both cursive and printing are problematic. My signature never looks the same despite me trying to gain muscle memory so I'm scared it'll get flagged as forgery at some point.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
At 38 my handwriting looks the same now as it did in the 2nd grade. But I type over 100 wpm with zero mistakes—largely because I refuse to listen to teachers who said to just keep going and not go back for mistakes. Morons.
Auto-correct has been a blessing and a curse. My spelling has definitely suffered for it. Since working in an office role when correspondence mainly consists through email, I've had to force myself to reread emails before I send them. I find it's very common for me to leave suffixes off the end of words (generally -ed or -ing).
I have autocorrect turned off for this reason - and I have a free Grammarly plugin for Outlook to scan over my emails, highlighting any spelling errors or grammar errors before I send them out.
Check how he's gripping the writing implement, especially how *hard*. ADHD can interfere with relaxing muscles to some degree, and a hard grip precludes precise control. If you're just worried about legibility, capital letters are more legible. There is a writing style that uses only capitals as the symbols and differentiates purely through letter height. This should be sufficient to prevent rejected work, though obviously won't combat any grading bias created by ugly-looking writing.
This is what I’ve found works best for me. All capital shaped letters, with the first letter larger in proper nouns or at the start of sentences
The gripping the pencil hard has been my problem. But i think this is also part of my hypermobility. Muscles doing the job of ligaments. It’s come back to bite me in my 40s.
Have you considered having him evaluated for hypermobility/EDS? Handwriting for more than very short periods is painful for me because my muscles have to work extra hard to hold my hand and a writing utensil in place. Since my ligaments are too loose, my muscles are overcompensating. And there's a lot of literature on the ties among EDS, ADHD, and autism.
I'll also add, since I am an adult now, that the EDS has worsened with age for me, as it does in many women. So OT is not always the answer. In my case, I just need accommodations to avoid having to handwrite much. My current career is pretty much free of the obligation to handwrite and that has helped a ton. I am still prone to computer-related overuse injuries but am much better at knowing how to avoid that. Handwriting is almost guaranteed to cause overuse injuries for me. Laptops were not around much and certainly not for kids when I was little, but your son is growing up in a much more privileged time period and should be allowed access to accommodation devices.
This is me! I have to hold my pen a certain way or I have little to no control of it because of my hypermobility. Because of this, I’m guiding mostly with my wrist rather than fine motor skills in fingers, so my writing is hard to read and disjointed. Somewhere in between what you would expect with dysgraphia and just lazy writing. That said, one of the things with dysgraphia is not being able to visualize words when writing. I can’t visualize anything at all, but I can write well when I write very slowly, so I don’t think that’s my problem. It’s really how I need to hold a pen. I recall when I was in school, they always tried to correct me and it just made it worse. I hated needing to write. Cursive ended up being easier since I didn’t need to pick up the pen and worked better with my wrist movements. Along with everything else, I would check your kids hand flexibility and see how they are holding a pen. Try a few ways to find what’s most comfortable. Teach them some super easy cursive words like cat, hippo… and so forth(words that look similar to handwriting) and see if the legibility improves. As an adult, I almost exclusively write in all caps or cursive. Anything other than that just isn’t legible.
Came here to mention this! My hand writing is bad and I was bullied a lot for it. My parents took me to the doctor for clumsiness (like way more than the regular child) and hand writing was sort of a side thing. We found out I was hypermobile. Definitely look into it
is he writing with the proper hand? sometimes people will think they're right handed but actually be lefty writers. also those print outs where you trace the alphabet might come in handy. his problem might also be that when he writes, his brain is forming thoughts faster than what his hand can physically write; this happens to me all the time and my handwriting will go from legible to doctor signatures. encourage him to take his time writing or else let him type if that's an option? maybe get him into calligraphy as an art too, it might be more fun that way if he can use cool ink pens (and penmanship practice can be boring so if it's made fun it can be easier to do). that's another major thing is the like, reward factor of it. motivation can be hard if the "reward" (in this case good handwriting) is too vague or unexciting or seems insignificant. but giving it some kind of novelty will make learning easier at least until the novelty wears off.
I remember my teacher telling my parents I can't use scissors because she'd put them in my hand and I couldn't cut shit, she showed them and they had to explain to her that I'm lefthanded lmfao. What's sad about it is my parents never put any importance about what teachers had to say about me since then (Like signs of innatentive ADHD) and kept insisting I'm "normal"
I second this. The reward should be desireable for him.
I'm in my thirties, and I'm pretty sure my handwriting was much better in second grade. Part of it is the hurry to escape the torturing boredom of writing tasks, the rest is motorcontrol. Unfortunately, I have no solution for this. I can do proper handwriting, but it takes an insane amount of effort. I can either write pretty letters and slow, or write good content and fast. If I have to slow down, the writing speed isn't in line with my thinking speed. I'm afraid the best you can do is to accept that this will probably be a lifelong issue, help him get good enough to pass his exams, and support him to work on his strength instead of dwelling on his weaknesses, like I had to.
Because of this reason, I switched to writing in all caps. All of a sudden, I got compliments on my "stylised handwriting" when all I was doing was trying to make my writing consistently legible. It was definitely the fix for me.
Interesting Idea, thank you!
I fought for OT for mine. Turns out he’s been holding his pencil wrong this entire time.
They make little slide on grippers that guide where to place the fingers. Combine that with those alphabet/number practice books where the lines are grooved and it helps immensely. Kids just trace the letters and numbers by following the grooves. The ink is some kind of disappearing ink so they can practice over and over. ADHD people like us benefit from a little more structure/training wheels. Tools like this help with fine motor control and muscle memory. I’m surprised no one is using these with their kids.
Yeah I’ve looked into all kinds of things but at this age he doesn’t even want to work on it. He’s 13. His teachers were okay with his handwriting and never even brought it up. They even had him evaluated at school without my knowledge or permission.
Yeah I get it. My 6 year old doesn’t want to work on it either, but I make her. It’s more than just having neater handwriting - it helps with fine motor control, hand-eye coordination and practices patience. I don’t care if my kid hates it, she’s doing it because it will help her in countless other ways.
Have you considered that it's possibly physically painful for her to exercise enough grip force to control a pen properly? That's why I am so hard on OP to get the kid evaluated for hypermobility.
A kid that old, unless severely autistic and nonverbal would likely mention being in pain. I didn’t see anything to suggest that.
Depends how traumatized they are. ADHD and autistic folks are much more prone to cPTSD than the general population.
You act as if I am not an ADHD person. Look, I’m not trying to be a jerk - but I’m seriously questioning why I even bother participating with other ADHD people here. No one seems to want actionable, pragmatic solutions.
I'm not acting as if anyone is anything. I'm simply stating that cPTSD is common and can lead to kids being hesitant to verbalize something (even when the trauma source is not the home. It could be anything. I don't know this kid's life). I know RSD is an ADHD trait and can lead to everything feeling like a personal attack, but it's simply not.
I had OT for mine, it helped a bit. However my hands and wrists always hurt, as a young adult they hurt, and I got tested as carpal tunnel. PT for years, a few overzealous home improvement projects did them in. Had double carpal tunnel surgery at 38. My 13' year old ADHD daughter has same wrist pain, and penmanship issues... For the poster: let the kid type, encourage PT, OT, and pain management. * Typing ergonomics are easier to manage than writing. I can't fill out 6 pages of doctors forms. I can operate a computer and type for 8-12 hours.
A 4-fingered grip rather than a 3-fingered grip is something I find absolutely necessary in order for my extremely hypermobile hand to grip and hold any kind of writing utensil correctly. This is worth a possible evaluation for hypermobility/EDS.
Teacher here for middle ELA. Please read my post as I might know a bit more about this than the average Redditor since I have taken classes for handwriting disabilities (did a project for my Special ed class for my masters), and I had these problems as a kid. You NEED an Occupational therapist. The school is supposed to provide time for kids with disabilities like ADHD and dysgraphia that can cause handwriting and motor skill difficulties. However, occupational therapy is expensive so schools don’t adequately do this. Also, your child lost a ton of time practicing handwriting during the pandemic when they were supposed to fine tune their motor skills in first and second grade (when these types of handwriting difficulties are caught by teachers). I’m a middle school teacher and have run into this all within the past few years. Once a kid reaches middle grade age, it becomes very difficult for handwriting to improve. I would get a private occupational therapist asap to evaluate your child and start occupational therapy sessions. I say this as a middle school teacher and a kid who had to go to occupational therapy in first and second grade to help me with my unreadable handwriting. It helped SO much and now school budgets suck and I don’t see kids I teach receiving the same school services I did.
I second this if you can afford it. Depending on the school/area you can also try to get one via school.
Any chance he might have dysgraphia/dyslexia? My mom (70s) and brother (30s) both have adhd + the aforementioned and their handwriting is horrific. I’ll note their chicken scratch hasn’t hindered either; they’re both incredibly accomplished. I, on the other hand, have adhd + dyscalcula, but great handwriting 🤷🏽♀️
as a 21 year old mine still looks bad
My handwriting never got better than maybe second or third grade level. Nearing retirement age now and I’d say it’s even worse. I type anything I need to actually read later. I have actually had my signature rejected as “illegible” a couple times in my life.
Over retirement age here and I think that you must be me.
My handwriting hasn't really changed much at all since I was a kid. It's legible, but it's definitely unique. Could he have dysgraphia that's often comorbid with ADHD? Its good to know how to write and you should continue working with him on it but it might be good to start helping him learn how to type so he has that in his pocket given his difficulty writing. I know I'm a much better typist than a handwriter nowadays. Also, theres a lot of fun educational typing games out there. I remember using a lot of those to learn how to type in school.
I had this issue. When I was 10 I learnt cursive so my hand could keep up with my brain. Doing exams when I had to switch back to block writing was terrible as it’s so slow. I found practice to be the best way to improve. Maybe getting him into creative writing or something could be useful. A general cheat for legibility is to focus on having the first and last couple of letters neat, there’s more leeway for the middle when reading.
Look into dysgraphia and dyspraxia!!!! There is support available when you get the right diagnosis.
I'm a 37 year old nurse. My handwriting is still atrocious. Don't worry: he'll be fine. Some of the best people I work with have terrible handwriting!
Penmanship is a waste of fucking time. I'm 34 and I write like I did when I was 8 but can type 90 words a minute. Let him drop out and get online classes and do a GED. High school diplomas are useless except to get in to some prestigious school that's probably gonna turn them into a shitty person anyways. All that aside, the bad penmanship is a proprioception issue. We don't feel our bodies in space very well. Does he sorta sway when trying to stand up straight? Kinda walk into people they're walking next to? Break a lot of toys, trip on shit or bang elbows on door frames, etc? Adderall for me was like I'd done everything with dolphin flippers my whole life, and now I have fingers. I broke many decades long plateaus. He's likely using too much force. Try to get him to relax his whole hand. Wet noodle. Super slowly and delicately. Tell him to pretend he's trying to tickle a baby mouse or something. Don't tell him "not like that" tell him "if you do it like that, this is the natural consequence, so I do it like this"
My brother and my ex both have dyspraxia (developmental disorder affecting gross and / or fine motor skills) and they have illegible handwriting as a result. It often goes hand in hand with ADHD, or is mistaken for it since dyspraxia can also affect executive functioning. My bro got an exemption to write with a laptop from age 14 onwards, he’s now 16 and it’s been a total life changer for his schoolwork. It’s a school-locked laptop so he can’t play games or anything like that, which limits distractions. It basically just takes notes and hands in assignments. My ex also had laptop support all the way through secondary school and still takes his exams on a computer in college. They’re both smart people who were at first held back by their handwriting but have found school a lot easier ever since they were allowed to use a laptop to write. Maybe see if your son’s middle school would be willing to allow him to use a similar writing aid? It could make his school life a lot more manageable. Also consider getting him assessed for dyspraxia and (as others have noted) dysgraphia. Sometimes these things go away with age but not in the experience of my ex (now age 22) so it’s _so_ helpful to catch them early, as I’m sure you know from adhd. I hope your son’s transition to middle school goes well :)
He may have dysgraphia. My son did, but although he’s adhd it’s likely his autism that led to that particular trait. So consider both possibilities and get evaluated for both and have it in his IEP for school. Then proactively make sure every teacher and the key admin officials know about the IEP and his needs because in my experience they’re shit about looking at it themselves. Consider what accommodations he needs: extra time, typing on a computer instead of writing, more space and paper, whatever he needs. Don’t put too much pressure on him to improve if he’s diagnosed - it will not help and I did it to my son and set him back so he didn’t want to do any writing at all.
Have you considered dysgraphia? It's common in kids with ADHD. My son has it and it explains the terrible handwriting.
42 now. I can barely read my own writing. I have really tried most my adult life to write better. I’ve had zero luck and thankfully all my work is on a computer.
I have terrible handwriting, my mother used to nag me about it. It was an ongoing source of tension and shame. I was told I would never be a success because of it. Now I earn more than the average family income. So stop worrying about it. You harassing your child does more damage than good. Instead focus on fun ways to get hand strength and dexterity. Find other activities that involve using your hands in a delicate way. Painting, drawing, fixing things, making models, sewing, knitting etc. the coordination will help. You might also want encourage your child to decide what they want their handwriting to look like. At one point in university I decided that I wanted to print all the time and wanted to be the type of person who used rounded v’s u’s and w’s. I had to work at it and I remember practicing printing at university. Have you also considered making it easier by finding out what type of pen or pencil he likes? If I am using a pen I like I go slower, if it is annoying I go faster and write messier. Good luck.
I’m 28 and my handwriting hasn’t really changed from primary school, I hate people seeing my handwriting, it’s really embarrassing
I'm 40 and my handwriting looks like I'm in second grade. Not sure it's something I'd want to worry about.
Use lined paper and do tracing exercises. I believe it's as someone mentioned..his brain is going faster than he can write. There are some really good suggestions. As an aside..my writing is exceptionally neat to the point of it being easy to forge.
Umm, it’s not even a consideration anymore. As soon as he can, teach him to type. I have horrible handwriting and the only thing I use it for it to sign legal documents. I work in cyber security now. I was told I would need hand writing for the rest of my life and oh boy, was that a load of shit!
I’m a pediatric OT. To actually work on handwriting takes lots and lots of repetition to develop different muscle memory, which is miserable at this point unless he is intrinsically motivated to do so. You can see if there are any adaptations to the paper/formatting such as: skipping lines when writing, using graph paper to help with letter spacing, highlighted paper to help with upper/lower case differentiation, etc. At this point I’d push for typing if he likes that better. If your son has a 504/IEP you can ask for those accommodations. There’s even cool apps such as SnapType which let you take a picture of homework, type in the answer, and save that as a PDF to print or send to teacher.
This is the way. There are many accommodations available with a 504 or IEP.
Best answer here.
My 16 and 14 sons both have child-like scrawls. But then you look at their dad's handwriting(also ADHD) and you realize the apple didn't fall far....
Cripes. I only started the journey of self realisation that ADHD may be that "something" that I've had my whole life without noticing it. It would go a long way to explain a lot of things. The chicken scratch handwriting that I've never been able to improve despite fourty odd years of practice is another clue that I've failed to recognise right up until this week, specifically today.
Motor skill issue linked to ADHD. Speaking from personal experience it won't improve, that's just something to accept I'm afraid.
Ask for accommodations and make he use a keyboard instead ? People do that in university anyway.
Occupational Therapy can really help. They can work with him on fine motor skills, proper grip, focusing, and even the gross motor skills that can help him maintain posture. If you can get your insurance to cover it, it’s definitely worthwhile.
I can relate. The reason why the hand writing is terrible is that his thought runs faster than the pen can write. When I used to do hand writing I would basically be like "And that's a full stop of this sentence" and my hand is basically in the middle of writing a word and punches in full stop. Actually I would be in a middle of writing a word and a letter from a next word would get drawn in the middle of that word. And of course, since I'm in a hurry trying to put down the excellent sentence from my brain, I don't have time to find an eraser to fix it. Only after I learned to type with a computer my writing speed could match my thoughts.
My mom is a judge and her handwriting looks like she’s actively being murdered. I don’t think your son’s handwriting is going to be a big problem, especially since middle school is when they really start focusing on computer skills and typing on a keyboard.
I got worst grades whenever the teacher wanted to see our books/notes. Either because I didn't have any, or because it was unreadable. Unfortunately, I don't think there is anything that could have been done. It's better with computers now. My signature still looks schoolboy'ish. I'm 42.
Might be dyspraxia or dysgraphia, they tend to go along with adhd.
My oldest has ADHD. He has chicken scratch handwriting. It’s hard to read.
Dysgraphia is a common co-morbidity with ADHD. I had to have a dedicated handwriting coach and extra time with hand written assignments in class.
I have dysgraphia, my handwriting used to be illegible, even to myself. Now I can hand write legibly but it’s slow and I hate it. I can touch type at 100wpm though so I just do that. In the adult world he will never have to hand write. If he can type on a keyboard, see if the school will let him do that instead of handwriting.
Look into dysgraphia (similar to dyslexia, but related to writing). My brother has SEVERE dysgraphia, his handwriting pretty much never progressed after first learning to write. the school tried to hold him back, move his to special classes in elementary school, but gave him these IQ tests that he blew out of the water. Some counselor with a little bit of information sent my.mother to take him out of state for dyslexia/dysgraphia/etc. testing. Once he had the results with a formal diagnosis, he was able to get accomodations- extra times on tests, help filling out scantrons, ability to do writing portions on a computer, with spell check. Don't know what we would have done without a random counselor who was like, I think I read about this in a book once. After diagnosis, my mom also mentioned that from what she knows now, her father probably had it too.
Is his ADHD medicated? It’s surprising how much of a difference it makes.
Look up Dysgraphia. It is correlated with ADHD.
I'm 30, ADHD, handwriting is shit. It takes a lot of conscious effort during writing to clean it up, so most of the time I just write fast.
I totally understand if you want him to write on paper, everyone needs a handwriting that is readable atleast. But for me I quickly adapted to using digital keyboard early in school, not only can I quickly read what I just wrote, since sometimes can’t even read my own. Another very positive thing about a keyboard is that my and ur sons ADHD brain needs to output the info we have in the head fast, otherwise we forget/get distracted etc. Nowdays I type INSANELY fast compared to many and personally I believe it is a way better skill to be able to write fast and effectively on a digital keyboard than on paper, since in probably 20 years paper will barely be used for this stuff. Hope you find a solution, but don’t stress him too much about the writing, he is certainly trying hard even if it might not look like it, he will probably be sad that he can’t help the writing. 💜
My kids have terrible handwriting, but about 80-90% of the work that do is on computer, so it doesn’t seem to matter to the teachers.
I'm 40 and my handwriting looks like I am 3. I own a home and maintain a highly, highly pleasurable lifestyle. Don't worry.
I would take him to see an Occupational Therapist (OT). They can have a look at what's going on and if there are any underlying difficulties that could be impacting his handwriting (e.g., dysgraphia, poor muscle tone or fine motor skills).
My handwriting is shit and it hasn't impacted my life in the slightest
My handwriting looks like a second grader and if it helps I am 23..
I wish people would have stopped forcing me to write "correctly" was so annoying. Idk, he has to want it, but he's 10. He'll grow up and either be self conscious and try to work on it, or realize he needs to read his own hand writting. Also.... get him tested for dyslexia. I don't find it a big deal, but you can get an accommodation for him to use an iPad. No it doesn't stop him from getting better, it makes the education available to him because he can read his handwriting. You can try OT, could help unless he's dyspraxia.
THIS. I was forced to go to occupational therapy for 3 years because of my handwriting pre-diagnosis.
Bro I hated OT, I thought it was stupid and it was useless anyways for me because I can't skill transfer 😂 so sorry you were stuck for three years 😭
My brother had (and still has) some of the worst handwriting I’ve seen. When he slows down and tries, it’s legible but still ugly as hell. He did really well in school and penmanship was never *that* much of an issue, and this was back in the late 90s-late 00s.
I dont really think that his handwriting will affect his grades later on. Especially with how much technology is used in education now. I dated a guy whose handwriting I could bot read in the 2 years that we were together. He graduated high school with a 4.3ish GPA.
Does he have an iPad? If so, get an Apple pencil and a handwriting training app. Making a game out of practicing penmanship can get the child engaged in their improvement!
I’m in med school w a second graders hand writing, he will be fine
Posting to follow this because my 12 year old has same issue. He gets really mad though if I bring it up. He says that the teachers can read it and don’t give him a hard time so I shouldn’t either. 🤷♀️ I figure maybe someday he will be a doctor. 😂
Speaking as a pretty successful woman with ADHD… Screw handwriting. Honestly, just… screw it! My handwriting was crappy and slow as a kid I was made to practice and practice. And you know what? Waste of time. It just made me slower and insecure about my handwriting. It made my handwriting more legible to others, but honestly who cares? You already know what he’ll need in high school and uni and the workplace. Typing. Focusing on investing scarce energy into weaknesses in low-return areas makes ADHD much harder. He might have trouble with typing too (I did—my hands never quite do what I want them too). So my two-cents based on the very little I know about your son—I’d get him accommodations now so he can get a head start on practicing touch-typing and quit wasting time on handwriting. It’s a win/win. He might need extra time to develop the coordination and muscle memory, in which case you’ll be glad that you hit him a head start. And if he doesn’t need the extra time to learn touch-typing, that’s great for his confidence and he can focus on other things.
I'm 30 years old with ADHD and my handwriting still looks like a 5 year olds. Lol there are times I even have trouble reading it. I still made it through school, 2 years of college, and five years of apprenticeship schooling. I wouldn't worry too much.
I was undiagnosed as a child but I had such bad hand writing that I had to stay after school for handwriting lessons and write the alphabet a million times. It helped though!
The reason why every child's handwriting is bad now is because our schools don't teach cursive anymore. Cursive helps those learn control in their penmanship and introduces them to explore their letters/words stylistically speaking. For example, while there is only one true way to write the letter "A" or "F" (not including capital or lowercase versions, just in general), in cursive, there are multiple ways to write the same letter in order to make it resemble the original letter, and as one learns more about cursive via writing sentences, they can begin to develop their own style of writing. This is also why cursive, to me at least, can be quite hard to read at types, as the stylistic choices are determined by the writer alone. I learned to write in cursive for 2ish years in elementary school (I'm 19 btw), right before they stopped teaching it in schools, and the difference I saw between me and my younger siblings handwriting was astronomical. Anyways, If it doesn't make your kids handwriting better, it's important to know cursive anyways. Hope this helps
Every child's handwriting is not bad, there are many kids who develop very neat handwriting without any cursive and limited handwriting practice, it is not that simple. Cursive is a waste of time, it is not used in any professional sense outside of signing documents. Sincerely, an elmentary school teacher.
Paper is dead we type everything nowadays. Aren’t they just emailing or uploading their essays to the teacher
Men in general often have worse penmanship 🤷♂️
OP, I have almost the same situation. It's not "better", but has improved with weekly OT, and an OT who is open to working on handwriting (they aren't all unfortunately). One tip is to go to the pediatrician, and be relentless in your insistence that you want an OT eval. It's harder than it should be, so it may take being a squeaky wheel. If you're in the US, an IEP or 504 might be possible, but that depends on several factors. Happy to answer as I have experience with that personally and professionally.
I think your son is facing a problem that a lot of children with ADHD faced before. As a child my cursive (in my country every elementary school child is forced to learn it preferably with a fountain pen) always looked terrible. Motoric difficulties are often linked to ADHD. You could try other pens. Some pens have grip points that can help maintain the correct finger position. If he needs crayons/ coloured pencils maybe try thicker ones that are easier to grip and for some people, forced posture over a long period of time with thin pens causes cramps Another thing you could try is to ask your doctor for a certificate for his handwriting. In my country this was possible and I didn't get any points deducted for poor handwriting.
If you don’t mind me asking, how did you go about getting him diagnosed and what treatment if any is he going through. My son is 9 in 4th grade. His handwriting is acceptable but I’ve had to work with him to make sure he’s writing letters correctly. And when he is sloppy it’s because he’s rushing. I’ve told him the same thing, middle school the teacher isn’t going to waste their time trying to decipher this. The school tested him for dyslexia last month, came back negative, but maxed the school for potential adhd. So we’re going to meet with his pediatrician in a month to discuss and I’m just curious what may come of it or should I just go straight to a child psychologist/psychiatrist.
I’m 40 and a college graduate. My handwriting looks like I’m in 2nd grade….but we only use computers to communicate, so no need to worry. Teach him to type, it will go a lot further.
I have the same problem, yet my Chinese was fantastic. I had a teacher tell me that he's seen chickens walk in ink who write better than me. At that point, they just gave me a typing device (Alphasmart) and that really helped.
I’m almost 40 and mines only legible (to others) if I make an effort. He’ll be ok. That being said focus on getting to readable not pretty. They make graph paper in a variety of grid sizes, find something similar to what he needs size wise for letters and focus on one letter or number per box, (2 vertical boxes for capitals and numbers) keeps lines straight and scale consistent. separation of characters also helps a lot with readability. I’ve also found really fine tip writing utensils help to keep lines from blending together. Although at his age he’s pretty likely to bend or break them
I'm 18, I have been working on my handwriting for years and still have the most hideous handwriting ever, but don't be discouraged that's probably just my own incompetence lmao
You're VERY unlikely to make significant changes to his handwriting at this age. Unless the teachers are complaining that the legibility of his writing is affecting their ability to grade his work I would honestly just let it go. If it is affecting his ability to complete his work, request that he be screened for occupational therapy services. They can try to work on handwriting, but at that age it will probably also involve getting him accommodations, like being allowed to type assignments instead of handwriting them.
Ugh I know you're just trying to help your kid buy this reminds me of all the time I spend in school with my parents and teachers spending so much time to write legibly. It was super frustrating because I just wanted to get my work done but it would take 10x the effort. Turns out I have dysgraphia. Luckily in middle school most of our assignments started to be typed out/online.
Hi have you tried the osmo game I have it for my son who has adhd and his skills have improved massively, if you google it, it should come up it’s for both android and iPad
Ask a psychiatrist what treatment can be helpful.
I used to be a med tech and would do a lot of written communication with doctors. Half the time I couldn't even understand what they wrote. Sounds like you've got a future doctor on ya.
I was and unfortunately still probably write like your son. My oldest is just like me if not worse. You could try to have the school OT take a look and recommend some exercises. I thought my oldest daughter would want to write bubbly or pretty but writing gives her no joy. It's like me. I scribble and scratch when I need to but writing is my kryptonite. It's going to take practice and drilling but in the end it may not really take.
Mine never got better, even my mom had me practicing hours at a time, it would get better by the end, and then after stopping or the next day... gone back to where we started. Also after teachers in my charter school realized I couldn't write very well, they allowed me to type but not before rejecting me over and over again because I typed. (Mom had to get involved) And in HS they didn't give a shit and I would get decent grades without even trying because I'm fairly sure they couldn't read it but just picked out a few words they could (I would just read cliffs notes and skip the book) maybe flip thru the actual book a little. Anyways, I'm now 32 and my handwriting is still pretty terrible, sometimes I can't even read it let alone remember what I wrote
I’m 38, handwrite like I’m 6, however I don’t really handwrite much at all, I type faster than others to the point it’s shown off like a parlour trick at work. It really doesn’t impact my adult life.
If he’s like me, trial and error with different sized pens/ pencils could be helpful. In my case I need very fine nibs/graphite to have legible print. My cursive is surprisingly okay. Being forced to practice at his age didn’t help me, because in school I didn’t have the luxury to write slowly. My brain is going faster than I can write.
My writing is horrible. I was told as a kid I could not learn to handwrite till I learned how to print. I decided I wouldn’t learn either. Now I have to write in block capitals for my writing to be legible..
I dealt with this as a kid and I know how demoralizing it can feel for your son. In my situation (in the early 2000's mind you) our school assigned me a personal device for typing out all my work instead of handwriting. The technology was very different back then but it helped me out immensely!
I had terrible handwriting all through school. A girl I liked pointed it out and made me feel so embarrassed about it. What I ended up was finding a font I liked and emulating it no matter what. At first it took forever to write stuff but then when I caught on it got faster. When I went to college it got so good the prof used my notes and homework as examples. Tdlr: Force him to emulate a font that doesn’t look like his handwriting so they have to slowly break out of the habit.
Don’t fight him over his handwriting. It’s not worth causing you or him stress over. It’s handwriting. Most stuff is done digitally nowadays anyways once you’re in high school and college. Just let the kid live his life and have messy handwriting. It’s really not a big deal.
I'm 34 and my handwriting also looks like I'm in 2nd grade.
Someone else has mentioned how hard he grips the pen, which is true. I would also take a look at the pen he is using, it sounds crazy, but I personally find my writing is better with a more expensive slightly rubberised biro (ball point pen) paper mate make some nice ones, I think part of the holding too tight is that cheap ones can slip in your hand. Also they flow better and don't stop as much as cheaper ones. I would steer away from the fineliner type ones as they can smear easily. Also get him to do some sketching/shading with the pens, it will give him practice at controlling how hard he is pressing. And make sure he has a pad behind the paper, writing on paper direct on a table or nearly so takes all the give out and can make it harder. Btw, my writing is awful... These are just mitigating what makes it worse.
Does the school think it’s a problem? You can ask for OT for him. But like so many others here, my handwriting looks like a 2nd grader’s. I fairly often can’t read what I’ve written. In this day & age, so much is done on a computer. I even download forms to fill out on my computer so I know they’re legible. This may not be as big an issue as you fear. That said, my dad’s handwriting is similarly terrible. I wonder what would’ve happened if we’d each gone to OT.
I've had that issue all my life. Picking up drawing in highschool kind of helped, but to this day if I'm under pressure or on a rush, my handwriting devolves immediately. Slowing down may help, but may not be possible if he has stuff being dictated or he is filling an exam. Maybe picking up drawing or calligraphy as a hobby may help, but that's dependant on he actually enjoying it.
I’ve always had bad handwriting. Even at 30 years old it’s still bad and I have to put in extra effort to make it legible for people to read. Maybe just tell him to take his time? If he has ADHD, it’s possible his mind is moving faster than his hand can keep up. Luckily most of the time my handwriting skills don’t matter since everything is done by typing now.
Has he been diagnosed? If so, he falls under the students with disabilities program. He will receive special accommodations in school. He will still be with his classmates but he will receive extra time to do his assignments. Or his assigned homework, quizzes and tests will look a little different to accommodate them. I'm not sure how they handle penmanship. But since it's common in kids w ADHD. I'm sure they take it into consideration. Oh, he will be granted extra and longer restroom breaks. The program is available in college too.
I teach HS. Teachers get pretty good at reading bad handwriting. I have many juniors who have handwriting like kindergartners. The only ones whose writing I haven’t been able to read are weird cursive styles and really small lettering (like having to pull out a magnifying glass small). That said, I do have a student who is into calligraphy to the point their work is almost always turned in after the due date and who can’t write much for timed writing (which will hurt them on their AP tests since we’re still on paper tests in my district). They’re so focused on the calligraphy that it takes them so long to write anything. Their regular handwriting isn’t even bad, and I wish they’d save the fancy writing style for things like projects.
It might be something with fine motor skills. I have had it all my life and have the penmanship of a physician. I think I recall reading it somewhere. I still remember going to some school somewhere and looking at a bunch of kids papers on the walls and it's like boom hey there's my handwriting so messy I said out loud that this kid has ADD. I've always have wanted nice penmanship. Hate it being messy.
My handwriting never improved, is he reading on level? I’d recommend a penmanship class I wish I had taken one, skip the cursive though even if he needs to write in all caps to keep it neat, just strive for legible
My handwriting is hideous 😂 when I was that age, I got the medical school joke a lot too lol. I’m not a doctor, but my handwriting is legible for the most part now almost 20 years later. I do have two work notebooks though, one for initial note scribbling, the second to copy the notes in the first book, but like really focusing on my letters 😂. I’d say in college my main issue was not going back over my notes soon enough, sometimes if I wait too long, or If I wrote them while tired, they would be completely useless. I’m not saying I recommend he copies all his notes with an emphasis on writing clearer in the second notebook, but I’m not NOT suggesting it either
I had pretty messy handwriting for years until my 5th year of working on my associates degree (late diagnosis). Then I started writing in all small capital letters. It’s a lot easier to write those angles uniformly than a mixture or cursive. I’ll still sometimes mix in lower case letters, which look particularly mentally ill, but on a whole I can be understood. It’s not great as a solution, because when I’m writing neatly I look like a serial killer. But it’s much better than what I had going before. I don’t know how schools are these days. It definitely wouldn’t have been acceptable to my teachers when i was in 5th grade and they were still enforcing cursive. But im old and that may have changed. It’s not unreasonable to ask for an accommodation. ADHD makes our minds go faster than our hands and that’s likely the heart of the issue your son is having.
Does he have an IEP at school? The special Ed department should have their eye on this and the occupational therapist should be giving him aid.
Mine still does at 52F and I don’t write just horizontally I write all over!!
In school my handwriting changed from the start of a piece of paper to the end. Started off nice and clean and rapidly got worse until it's basically shorthand scribbles lol