Increasing muscle strength, using screen filters, and eliminating fluorescent lights are just some ways to treat dysgraphia – a disability that impacts writing abilities – and to improve handwriting for a lifetime.

Dysgraphia – a learning disability that affects writing – has no quick, permanent fixes. The condition, characterized by illegible, messy handwriting and difficulty putting thoughts on paper, is usually treated by a combination of fine motor skill training and compensatory accommodations. But writing – from the mechanics to the cognitive processes – is much more complex than it seems. Effective interventions reflect this complexity.

The methods and tools below are practical ways to address the underlying issues and help children improve writing.

It might come as a surprise, but building strength in arms, shoulders, and core muscles can help with dysgraphia. Handwriting requires a foundation of postural stability and motor skill. Decreased core muscle tone (the state of muscles at rest) and strength (the state of muscles in use) negatively impacts postural control and hand use, as is often seen in individuals with dysgraphia.

Activating postural muscles improves core, upper body, overall bodily strength and stability. Play, exercise, and movement are great ways to do this. Some suggested exercises include:

[Think Your Child Has Dysgraphia? Take This Screener]

To build shoulder and arm strength, consider the following:

For hand strength, dexterity, and endurance, try:

Less is more when it comes to writing utensils. Use short pencils, crayons, chalk and other smaller-scale items that provide easier grip. Identify the “holding stripes” on crayons and markers or add tape to pencils and chalk to teach children where to place their fingertips (not their fingerpads).

Commonly used to improve grasp and handwriting abilities, molded pencil grips soften the writing tool and train the fingers to develop a stronger, more functional grip. Use popular products you can find online and in some toy or stationary stores such as these:

[Read: What Does Dysgraphia Look Like in Children?]

Poor design of the writing paper itself can make handwriting and letter formation more difficult. Writing paper for early learners often features multiple lines and dashes that confuse more than they help. For children with dysgraphia, who tend to have visual sensory issues, a very busy page or a poorly printed worksheet can also impede writing.

Find paper with simple guidelines or get a blank sheet of paper and draw out lines that work for your child. For inspiration, look to the double-lined paper offered through the popular handwriting curriculum called Handwriting Without Tears. The paper guidelines are relatively intuitive and provide early writers with a baseline to anchor letters which you can further darken if needed.

Sensory issues – from hypersensitive hearing to visual overload – are common in children with dysgraphia and can be part of what makes writing challenging. Handwriting instruction should use a multisensory approach to help children deal with sensitivities and provide alternative methods to encourage writing.

Preventing eye strain and modifying the environment helps address the sensory issues that tend to affect vision and thus impact writing abilities in children with dysgraphia.

Writing is not just about putting pencil to a paper. It’s a combination of neuromuscular, motor, cognitive, perceptual, and linguistic skills. Dysgraphia complicates these components, and often comes with other sensory, motor, and information processing challenges that require the attention of specialists.

Occupational therapists use techniques that help build physical strength, stability, and dexterity, improve letter formation, and deal with visual processing and sensory challenges.

Educators and speech therapists can help with phonemic awareness (listening and identifying individual sounds) which helps children process and reproduce words and sentences. These professionals can also work on conceptualization – identifying what to write about – and thought organization.

You can find more information and learning strategies in my books, Raising a Sensory Smart Child and Sensory Processing Challenges, and by visiting my website at www.sensorysmarts.com.

The content for this article was adapted from the ADDitude Expert Webinar “My Child’s Handwriting is So Messy: Strategies for Improving Dysgraphia in Children with ADHD” by Lindsey Biel, M.A., OTR/L (available as ADDitude ADHD Experts Podcast episode #322) which was broadcast live on September 1, 2020.

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It makes a big difference.

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