Society
Learning to write the right way
Movies like Taare Zameen Par highlighted dyslexia, but there is little awareness about dysgraphia, which is a "disability of written expression" in the child. How does one cope?
Aditi Garg

Six-year-old Parth throws a temper tantrum every evening. Not because he is not allowed to watch TV or play with his friends but because his mother, Shikha Handa is begging and cajoling him to finish his homework in his notebook. Every day, he simply refuses to do it or does it in such a bad handwriting that all his mother can do is despair. She is under immense pressure too, with the teachers sending notes in the diary about bad handwriting and incomplete work. But so far, there hasn't been a solution.

If this sounds like your kid, rest assured that it may not be the child acting up or a lack of effort on your part, but something else entirely. While movies like Taare Zameen Par highlighted the plight of kids with dyslexia, there is little awareness about dysgraphia which is dealt with as its poorer cousin and is a "disability of written expression" in the child. Though not all reluctant writers are necessarily afflicted, it is worth looking into. With little help available in small cities and even big city schools relatively unaware or unconcerned, it gets difficult to deal with. Just labelling a child who doesn't want to write as lazy or a shirker is not right and needs thorough examination.

What you can do to help Poor writing

Expose them to variety in the form of written work like picture books, newspapers, magazines, websites, leaflets and brochures, menus etc.
 Focus on the content and not on spelling and grammatical style.
 Don’t get exasperated if the child takes a lot of time to complete a seemingly small writing assignment.
 Encourage him to learn to type.
 Talk to the teacher concerned and find out if there is a possibility of reducing copying from the blackboard, say by providing a worksheet.

Signs that a child needs to be assessed

Looks for excuses not to write; wants to use the washroom, very hungry or thirsty, drops his pencil, etc
 Sometimes or very frequently reverses letters
 Left or right orientation of words is poor
 Inconsistency in writing. The child may write well when he writes very slowly but not all the time
 Word spacing is poor
 Very poor at copying from notebook or from the blackboard
 Does not respect rules for capitalisation, even when he knows them well.

A study by Professor Butterworth and Dr Yulia Kovas of UCL and Goldsmiths has summarised that roughly 10 per cent of students are affected by specific learning disabilities (SLDs), including dysgraphia. This means a startling four kids in every classroom of 40 students, where as hardly any are acknowledged. Though CBSE provides for kids with learning disabilities in the form of extra time and provides them with writers for the exams, due to lack of awareness among school teachers and lack of resources, it is of little use.

Rajita Goel, 36-year-old mother of two, says, "I have never had a problem with the handwriting of my daughter but my son was quite a handful. Despite being meticulous about writing practice, I could do little. There was little help forthcoming from primary school teachers. Even a calligraphy class could do nothing to improve his speed or handwriting. Now, he is 13 but his writing skills are as poor as ever. Sometimes, I wish he could have got better guidance."

A leading child psychologist and counsellor, Dr Roopali Virk says, "Children who have just started school may not be ready for writing and may still be in the process of developing their fine motor skills. To help them, you could introduce finger-tapping exercises, paper cutting or coin arranging. For slightly older kids, instead of singling them out as being unmotivated, an assessment of underlying disability or other issues is very important. If their work is too slow, not neat or the letter formation is bad, stress begins to mount on both the home and school fronts and writing turns into a nightmare for them. They start to avoid it altogether. Another issue could be that of attention, as in ADHD, but that too calls for a diagnosis to address the problem. With any problem related to children, appreciation and motivation work wonders, while labelling and scolding are bound to fail."

To understand the agony such kids go through, a single statement by seven-year-old Aastha Kapoor from Faridabad is enough to open your eyes. She says, "I used to feel bad when the teacher said I make excuses not to write but not anymore. I find it easier to pretend not to know anything than to write it down."

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