01 Jul 2011
Poor handwriting isn’t just about not being able to form ABCs or 1,2,3s properly. A child who struggles to write properly may have difficulty making sense of what he sees, insufficient hand strength, or poor hand control, balance and coordination.
That is why children who are sent to occupational therapists for help with their handwriting difficulties are not asked to write, but given activities and games to assess their motor and perceptual skills, said Ms Natalie Chew, Senior Principal Occupational Therapist, Singapore General Hospital.
“We try to figure out the reason for the child’s writing difficulty, which could be related to his motor-muscular skills, or be more of a visual-perceptual deficit. This means that what they see, what they process and what they perceive may not match 100 per cent,” said Ms Chew.
For instance, most people “automatically complete the picture of a triangle” when they see three unconnected lines that roughly correspond to the shape of a triangle. But a child with a visual-perceptual difficulty sees three separate lines.
Kids with this difficulty find it particularly hard to remember and write Chinese characters. “So many strokes need to be connected in a specific way, so children with visual-perceptual difficulty may find it challenging to write Chinese characters well. We don’t address this by getting them to practise Chinese writing, but we try to find out why they have this difficulty in the first place,” said Ms Chew.
Other children may write poorly because they have less muscle strength than their peers, “perhaps because they spend a lot of time indoors and have less opportunity to use their muscles”, said Ms Chew.
Writing badly may also be due to poor control of the hand that holds the pen or pencil, and this may be the result of poor body coordination. “To write neatly, you must have good posture. If there is less stability (because of poor posture), there will be less control of the wrist,” said Ms Chew.
“It’s really about having a holistic perspective of the problem. Therapy isn’t just about training them to write,” she added.
Games and exercises to build strength and develop good posture and coordination are used to help the child develop. To strengthen his muscles, the child may be asked to climb, crawl or push something heavy. To develop motor strength in the muscles of the hand, he may be given playdough to mould or pinch.
Before the child is asked to draw a picture of a man, an aid known as Mat Man – a game which involves putting shapes (representing parts of the body) in their correct positions to build the figure of a man – is used to help increase awareness or perception. “Some kids have very poor awareness of their own bodies. When they draw a person, the drawing may not have a body, or have hands that are sticking out of the head,” said Ms Chew.
Poor awareness can show up as a difficulty in differentiating between left and right. For instance, the child may write “b” when he means to write “p”. Or, he may have to constantly look at his hand when writing. A child with this difficulty will find it hard to keep up with the rest of his class when copying notes from the board.
“If children are constantly being told by teachers that they need to write better or faster, they may lose confidence. This may affect their motivation for learning in school,” said Ms Chew.
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