Does My Child Have Disorder Of Written Expression?

Does your child have writing skills, as measured by standardized tests (or functional assessments of writing skills), that are significantly below those expected given the child’s chronological age, measured intelligence, and age-appropriate education?

Does your child have difficulties to compose written texts evidenced by grammatical or punctuation errors, lack of paragraph organization, spelling errors, and excessively poor handwriting?

Does the disturbance significantly interfere with academic performance or activities of daily living?

In case a sensory deficit is present, are the difficulties in writing skills in excess of those usually associated with it?

Based on your answers, it seems unlikely that your child has a problem with written expression. Children who have a learning disability in writing, also called dysgraphia, have difficulties with handwriting, spelling, and composition. For example, they are slow with writing, their writing is illegible, and they may take very long to come up with a topic to write about. Sentences may lack detail, and they usually don’t plan out their story. In case you are not sure about your child’s symptoms, it may be important to take him or her to a mental health professional to have a thorough evaluation.

Based on your answers, your child may be displaying some signs related to disorder of written expression. It may be useful to plan a visit to a mental health professional to get your child evaluated. Writing problems are usually discovered around the age of 8, but these problems commonly go underdiagnosed until middle school or even high school. Teachers are likely to think that the child is just not motivated or ‘not trying’. The disorder is often found together with a reading or math disorder. Besides, many children with ADHD also have a problem with writing, which makes a proper diagnose of disorder of written expression often very hard.

Unfortunately, your child is displaying symptoms typically seen among individuals who have disorder of written expression. It may be of high importance to seek medical support. Through occupational therapy kids will learn the mechanics of letter formation, and they will work on fine motor and sensorimotor skills. Other programs are focused on helping children to organize their ideas by using templates. Besides, adaptions to the children’s learning environment may help to provide ways to demonstrate knowledge through other means than written work, such as oral reports. Nowadays, disorder of written expression is part of the specific learning disorder group.