Dysgraphia (“Dys” meaning “difficulty” and “graphia” meaning “writing”) is a neurological disorder seen in many children with fine motor or sensory-motor challenges making their handwriting unintelligible.
Dysgraphia can result from any neurological trauma or along with physical impairments, ADHD, learning disabilities, autism etc. If the child shows symptoms of dysgraphia when introduced to writing, parents must consult the best occupational therapist for treatment.
Here are the types of dysgraphia:
Dyslexic Dysgraphia – When the child’s readily written works are illegible and copied works are fine with minor spelling mistakes, the condition is said to be dyslexic dysgraphia. It is not necessary that a child with dysgraphia must have dyslexia; they often occur together, but not certainly.
Motor Dysgraphia – If the handwriting issues are caused by the deficiency of fine motor skills, poor dexterity, poor muscle tone etc. it becomes motor dysgraphia. Written works are illegible, even if copied from another document. For these children, letter formation requires extreme effort and considerable time, at the same time, cannot be sustained for a longer period of time.
Spatial Dysgraphia – When children find difficulty in understanding the space such as spacing between words, letters and lines on a sheet of paper, it is called spatial dysgraphia. These children write on top of the lines with no spatial concerns making the written works extremely hard to understand. They might not have any spelling errors or writing speed related issues but are unable to comprehend the concept of spacing.
Phonological Dysgraphia – Phonological dysgraphia can be defined as the writing and spelling perplexities occurring with the spelling of unfamiliar words, non-words, and phonetically irregular words. Children with phonological dysgraphia have difficulty in memorizing phonemes to produce the right words.
Lexical Dysgraphia – Lexical Dysgraphia is very rare, yet defined as a condition in which the child is able to spell words but hugely relay on standard sound-to-letter patterns which leads to the misspelling of words.
