Handwriting: Why Is it So Hard for Some?

BY JULIA GROVER-BARREY OTR/L
FOUNDER OF IN-TUNED®

Many skills need to come together at the same time to produce legible handwriting. Multiple neural pathways need to be adequately developed to attain the level of self-regulation and motor skill required of the eyes, hand, postural muscles to synchronize and coordinate pencil on the page with efficacy.

It’s not all about the hand and lack of fine motor skills.

It’s not all about legibility. Some students have adequate legibility, but it takes them forever to get the work done.

For the student to be proficient at handwriting, it needs to be mechanically easy. If they are working too hard it shows up in their lack of consistency to produce, inability to gauge the pressure on the pencil, poor speed regulation (too fast vs. too slow), unwillingness to engage, attitude, as well as difficulties with composition and remembering to use writing conventions.

Handwriting is an activity requiring balanced use of both brain hemispheres, because there is a constant need for the eyes and the hand to cross the center of the body or the vertical midline. A common cause of poor print production, as well as geometric shapes, is the lack of having the skill to cross from one side of the page to the other. Sometimes we see students constantly changing what hand the pencil is in, moving or turning the paper on the desk. These are usually the students who have difficulties with crossing the midline.

Having well developed ocular motor, or eye position and movement skills, is also essential. The eyes must be able to converge on a target, follow it, stay attentive to it and the eyes need to move without the head moving.

If the child has low muscle tone, or fluctuating muscle tone, staying in a comfortable posture seated at a desk for any length of time can be exhausting and the student may not have the gross motor skills to support good functional positioning of their hand for the period of time it takes to produce on paper. These students have problems with sustaining effort, wear out quickly and often complain their hand is tired or painful.

I’ve mentioned the lack of thumb use before. Here it is again! Handwriting can only be easy when the writing instrument is primarily controlled by the fine adjustments and pressure gauging of the thumb – otherwise the student is using too many accessory muscles (or muscles that shouldn’t be involved at all in the process) to move the pencil across the page…expending way too much effort.

Writing should be easy. For many of our students it is not.

Julia