I walked into TJ’s first grade class to pick him up for his speech-language therapy session.

“Come take a look, Ms. Callender,” said his teacher.

“Show Ms. Callender what you’ve done!”

As I walked toward his desk, a look of uncertainty flitted across TJ’s face… quickly replaced by a look of accomplishment.

Once I stopped at his desk, he timidly pushed the book toward me.

There on the page of his journal were a bunch of letters – upper and lower case thrown in anywhere.

With hardly any space between them, the script looked like one long jumble of a word.

“Good job, TJ!”

He had written his name… the first time he had put anything on a page during journal writing.

After our therapy session, Ms. Beez, the teaching assistant for TJ’s class came to chat with me.

“What do you make of that boy?”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s lazy, and when I speak to him, he stares at me and does not respond.”

“He’s not lazy. He has some developmental delays.”

“You’re always making EXCUSES for your children!”

Poor TJ!

One of TJ’s problems is visual motor processing difficulty. Children like him are often thought to be lazy.

Visual Motor Processing is the 4^th Visual Processing skill we are examining this week.

So far, we have talked about visual discrimination, visual figure-ground discrimination, and visual sequencing.

So what is visual motor processing?

It is the ability to use feedback from the eyes to control and coordinate movement of other body parts.

The last time you wrote your name? Did you have to think about how to form each letter or when to stop and make a space between your names?

Many times, children who are challenged in this area are not identified until they enter elementary school. But you don’t have to wait until then. You can check to see whether your child struggles in this area.

Look for these occurrences:

• Reversals in written letters or numbers (younger children)
• Printing instead of using cursive (older children)
• Copies poorly from books and the board
• Poor spacing of words in a sentence
• Laborious writing—takes a long time to complete an assignment
• Good orally, but written work is poor

Here’s an informal way to determine if your child is having difficulty with visual motor processing.

1. Give him a sheet of paper
2. Tell him to write the alphabet using lower case letters
3. Observe what he is doing but DO NOT CORRECT him
4. See if he makes any letters from bottom-to-top (this is a vertical reversal)
5. Check whether he has difficulty remembering the next letter to write and sometimes has to begin from “A” or has to sing the alphabet song
6. Look for a mixture of lower- and upper-case letters
7. Watch the direction of letter “O” formation (clockwise or anti-clockwise)
8. Take notes about everything you observe

Some Cautions:

• Limit writing tasks, like spelling words written 5 times. The child will be focusing on remembering how to form the letters rather than how to spell the word.
• Eliminate copying work until the problem is corrected. Writing is extremely stressful for these children.
• Reduce writing until the problem is reversed

You may try this rehabilitation method that was created by Dr. Geteman, and Dr. Paul Dennison:

1. Get a large piece of construction paper or chart paper
2. Draw a sideways eight on it
3. Have the child sit directly in the middle of the eight and trace it for as many times as he can, until he tires
4. Increase the number of times he traces as his improves
5. Do this four times per week for 6 months.

Children who struggle with visual motor processing difficulties have trouble learning through writing.

However, this does not have to be a life sentence.

With diligence, commitment, discipline and perseverance you can help your child overcome this problem and be a successful learner.

What inconsistencies have you noticed in your child’s writing?