Due to coordination and symbol recognition difficulties, I learned to “draw” the letters for cursive writing. However, I was concentrating so much on the drawing, even after a few years that it was taking away from the content of my work. In grade six, they finally allowed me to return to printing. By high school, handwriting assignments was beginning to affect content of my work because although I have functional printing skills, drawing letters takes concentration away from the academic task. The assignments were too long and complex for me to be concentrating on printing and writing a good response or taking detailed notes in class. Copying from the board confounded the issue further.
Thankfully, I had been using a computer efficiently since grade school so It was easy to transition me to using the computer for written assignments. My parents and teachers had me use my handwriting and printing long enough to develop functional skills. I can write my signature in cursive and I can print short assignments in an emergency. However, with the technology available, it did not make sense for me to continue to write by hand at the expense of my academics.
For those of you with disabilities or parents of children with disabilities, at what point, if ever, did you decide assistive technology was best for your child?
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1 comments:
Thank you for bringing this up. It gives me a much better understanding of what my son goes through. He is eight years old and has a terrible aversion to anything to do with handwriting, has since we tried to put a pencil in his hand for the first time. It really helps to hear it from your perspective because he often cannot put into words why he has difficulty with handwriting and hates to do it so much.
He LOVES to use the computer, so we do allow that. Something I think we will encourage more for him.
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