Handwriting

1. My 7 years old child handwriting quality is very poor. His teacher always complains for his poor handwriting quality. How can I help him to improve it?
   There may be many reasons for your child’s poor handwriting. Firstly, children with sensory processing issues may have difficulties paying attention while participating in any table top task. They find handwriting tasks to be very challenging as they cannot stay focused on their task. Next issue could be related to your child’s visual motor integration (VMI) which includes both visual perception and motor coordination. Handwriting will be affected if he has difficulties in any of these areas. Other reasons for difficulties with writing may be your child’s low body muscle tone, poor body posture, inappropriate pencil grip while writing and sometimes lack of motivation to write properly.

2. My child is 9 years old and he complains of frequent hand pain while writing a larger volume of work. How can I help him with this problem?
   Children with improper pencil grips, especially applying too much pressure on the pencil to grip it while writing may trigger hand pain. Gripping the pencil with too much pressure results in muscle fatigue in hand muscles, thus causing hand pain. Another reason may be that your child’s proprioceptive senses (joint sense) is poor, and he may have difficulty in gauging how much pencil pressure is needed when gripping the pencil during handwriting. As a result he or she uses too much pencil pressure and pain happens. Finally, your child’s hand muscle may be very weak, and as result s/he need to apply increased amounts of pressure on his hand muscle to hold the pencil properly.