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Filed under: In The News, Special Needs, Expert Advice: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Expert Advice: Big Kids, Expert Advice: Tweens
Some autistic children have a hard time with penmanship, finds new study. Credit: kpwerker, Flickr
Imagine being William Shakespeare. OK, you're a bit of an odd duck on the Elizabethan social scene, but you are arguably the most brilliant writer in the history of the English language.
There's just one problem: Putting pen to paper literally drives you mad.
The act of forming letters is, for some people, such a long and arduous process that it invariably leads to frustration, anger and despair.
Locked inside many intelligent and gifted autistic children might be the next Shakespeare or Hemingway. Many great writers -- including Lewis Carroll and George Orwell -- exhibited characteristics we now associate with autism.
Yet budding literary talents are sometimes stymied because children are expected to learn to form words with pens and pencils before moving to typewriters and computers. The latest edition of the journal Neurology examines this link between handwriting and autism.
Barbara Wagner enrolled her 14-year-old son Austin in the study conducted by by the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. She said she knew there was something different about the way he wrote.
Homework assignments that involved writing sometimes took up to three hours to complete, she said on National Public Radio.
"He doesn't actually write they way you or I would write," she told NPR. "He draws his letters. It was almost painful to watch."
Researcher analyzed the handwriting skills of 14 autistic children, ages 8 to 14, with average IQs and a similar group of children without autism.
The study gives scientific confirmation what parents of autistic children have observed for years: Autistic children often have trouble with fine motor skills. The same trouble they have with handwriting is the same trouble they have holding a fork or buttoning a shirt.
It also may relate to the same trouble they have interacting with other people.
A popular theory is that mirror neurons that allow the brain to recognize another person's activity as if it was one's own are impaired in people with autism. That keeps them from picking up other people's nonverbal social cues.
It might also inhibit their ability to develop fine motor skills, Amy Bastian, the author of the study and director of the motion analysis lab at Kennedy Krieger, told ABC News. However, she stressed, that's only an interesting theory that has yet to be fully explored.
Some autistic children don't have any problem with handwriting. For those that do, Wagner said, the study provides a valuable tool. Parents sometimes find themselves in conflict with schools when they request keyboard writing and do not see penmanship as a priority.
When educators disagree, Wagner told ABC News, "I think it's important to have something to back you up."
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
12-18-2009 @ 5:04PM
pellicone said...As someone who grew up, being chastised for odd behaviors, and knowing now I was Aperger's and overly focused ADHD,I sympathize with these mothers. But I have also found that being raised as "normal", had both its advantages and disadvantages, disadvantages social concepts, good manners drilled in, but never was sure of my ground,as a child shy, limited friendships, did things that made me seem even odder. Difficulty interacting with people my own age.
As to writing,well trained but uncomfortable,frequently used a left handed slant though right handed, or wrote very accurately, but small as possible or mixed print and writing, even now inconsistent. Extemely hard letters for me in cursive were: Q FL X small n r q p and ending t. But I learned, later when I had throat surgery, I realized people with Down's Syndrome, dropped some words because they were painful to say, so the same with handwriting and autism.
Overly focused ADHD and Asperger's made some things hard to look at and listen to causing frustration and anger, or moroseness.
I have written two e-books on being odd-Flight of the Odd Child and The Spirit of an Odd Child for Adults who were once odd children.
Flight is a sampler of the seven books to follow.-the first twenty-five pages are free. Spirit is Religion, Spirituality, and Attitude. These two will go soft cover in Feb. and March. by then Oddly in Love and Odd id the Cook will be in e books on lulu.com.
Reply
1-01-2010 @ 11:52AM
Karey Felming said...As an occupational therapist, I see children of all ages with fine motor skill problems. The biggest correlation I see is with boys who have skipped the crawling stage. I would be very interested to know if developmental stages such as crawling were reviewed in this research study. I also think that a sample size of 14 is not quite large enough to come to any significant conclusions. If you are interested in more about fine motor skills, please see my website www.finemotorskillsforchildren.com
Karey Fleming
Occupational Therapist
Reply