Dysgraphia: Difficulties of Witten Language

“Twice Exceptionality” isn’t unusual; individuals can be very bright and yet also struggle with Specific Learning Disabilities. Many of those with Tourette are Twice Exceptional.
The two most common I’ve come across in my Tourette Travels are Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia (a specific learning disability of math that I’ll talk about in a seperate post along with how OCD can sometimes affect writing ).
Dysgraphia is a specific learning disability that affects how easily an individual acquires written language in addition to how well they use written language to express their thoughts.
It can manifest itself as difficulties with spelling, poor handwriting and trouble putting thoughts on paper.
Students with Dysgraphia often refuse to write, might complain of pain when writing, have a cramped or unusual grip, have slow or labored writing and possibly have an odd body or paper position, have sloppy, illegible printing and cursive writing with uneven spacing or margins, inconsistencies such as a mix of print and cursive, upper and lower case letters, irregular sizes, shapes or slants of letters, unfinished words or letters, omitted words, poor spatial planning on paper and great difficulty thinking and writing at the same time.
All three of those in my family members have Dysgraphia as part of their Tourette Syndrome.
When my eldest son was in elementary school — before he’d been diagnosed and even after when we were still trying to learn what Tourette was — there were complete and utter refusals to write, stomach aches at creative writing time, meltdowns over classroom assignments and sobbing hysterics over spelling tests.
There was also frustration from teachers over unfinished work, lots of red inked comments about “laziness” and the need for our son to “learn to be responsible” sent home in agendas and on progress reports. There was anger from school officials at the amount of meltdowns and the time spent in the nurses office.
Worst of all there were the issues at work for both my husband and I because we kept having to leave to pick up our son up from school.
It made no sense to us…we knew something was off, we just weren’t certain what. Our son wasn’t lazy and he was clearly quite smart.
If you asked him to speak about a subject he could go on and on with all the knowledge of an expert, yet if you asked him to write about that very same topic he simply didn’t seem able to do anything other than look at the paper in despair. There was also a creeping sense of sadness and shame for him, even depression. His confidence faltered and failed. He told us that he felt “stupid”…that he “hated himself”.
At a local Tourette event I was blessed to hear educator, teacher-trainer and international Tourette Guru Susan Conners lecture on how Tourette can manifest in an educational setting. When she began speaking about Dysgraphia it was as if all of the lights began to flash; we had an answer!
It took lots and lots and lots (and lots!) of Occupational Therapy, keyboarding skills, and finding the right educational environment which allowed options for video assignments and taking tests orally to get to where he is today, a straight A honor student.

