Back To School!

I know it's been a while since I posted. The boys are done with football and only Jarrett is playing basketball. I should have time to post more.

Today Jason and I had a meeting at the school with the IAT(intervention assistance team). It was for Brandon. We had to do this once before in 2nd grade. You can read about that here. His 4th grade teacher is really concerned with his handwriting. Duh! She also noticed that he seems really distracted and she is having trouble keeping him on task. I explained to her that he has never had attention trouble before and it's probably that he is so frustrated with how hard he has to try to write. Here's an example.

That handwriting is actually pretty good for him. Remember he is in 4th grade. Anyway, the team decided that he needed to be evaluated by this guy that was in the meeting. He determined that Brandon would probably get a low score on his test and that would lead to the occupational therapist reevaluating him. She saw him last time and determined there was nothing wrong with him other than the bad hand writing. I think she's wrong!

Last time I went to the meeting I didn't know what to think. This time I did my research and found something that might explain Brandon's hand writing. It's a learning disability called Dysgraphia. The motor dysgraphia fits him perfectly. I think it all started when he nearly cut the tip of his ring finger off in kindergarten. His hand writing in preschool was better than it is now. According to my research a cure could be as simple as some physical therapy to strengthen his fingers and hand. Something about the muscles being so weak that the brain can't properly communicate. I'm not the expert so we will have to wait till next month to see what the tests reveal.

I feel bad for Brandon because he is such a good kid and this is affecting all his grades. All his teachers since he started school have been great about all this. They've made exceptions for him and try not to signal him out. I just make sure to keep reminding him that he has done nothing wrong. He tries hard but it gets him nowhere. Poor little guy. I'll keep you posted!