Story time on how I figured out I might have Dysgraphia!

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I have no problem writing on the phone or computer. In fact, I write an online book. I do a spectacular job.

But…paper…?

My left hand gets sore (cramps) after writing…very easily. I can’t really focus along to what the teacher or professor is saying when copying down notes during a class or a lecture since I have ADHD.

I try to keep up with the pace of the teacher but that just ends up with me rushing and my hand cramping even faster, as well as my hand writing getting even sloppier due to the soreness.

Whenever I used to run out of room on the paper I’d always write on the side moving over the top.

I write sloppier when I rush, and teachers have pointed out in the past that my writing is illegible.

It’s annoying because some professor could decide to deduct points on the papers that he/she cannot read or just not bother to even read it at all.

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Hello. I’m not diagnosed but for all my life I have experienced the stuff above. Teachers would tell me “I can’t read this,” “This is illegible,” “Write neater,” “You should write smaller, your handwriting takes up the whole page,” and then “You should write bigger, this is too small for me to read.” Too big? Too small???

Recently after looking up my experience with math I came across a Reddit post describing exactly what I was going through. The top comment suggested that they have Dyscalculia. I looked into it through descriptions, Reddit posts, Instagram posts, a person who gives really great point of view videos on different disorders and disabilities, and searched through the Dyscalculia subreddit. Yeah, I have it. Without a doubt. Still need to get tested of course.

One Instagram video I came across also described Dysgraphia and Dyspraxia. While I know I don’t have Dyapraxia, I saw that Dysgraphia is a writing disorder. I didn’t think much of it and was only looking for Dyscalculia.

Last Saturday I mentioned Dyscalculia to my mom. She thought it was interesting and realized some symptoms fit me.

She also mentioned how she brought up Dtsgraphia to my IEP meetings for three years straight.

In 3rd grade I switched schools due to behavioral issues, and she brought this up at the IEP meeting. She told me that the OT (Occupational Therapist) said “It isn’t necessary. Everybody their age starts writing sentences in the middle of the line. Kids start off with terrible writing.”

And the last thing the OT did? Tried to get me to write the same word 20 times. Like rewriting it will improve my hand writing…it would only make my hand even more sore which results in my writing becoming even more sloppy! I remember an instance where one of OT’s had me put my pointer finger in front of the last word I wrote and use it as a space. That was helpful but also very annoying.

My mom only told me about this whole story after I mentioned how I was suspecting myself of having undiagnosed Dyscalculia. I asked her why she never told me and she said that she didn’t want to label me incorrectly???

…

This could’ve saved me years about questioning why my hand writing is seen as abnormal to others. I can read it just fine. People other than myself? Apparently not.

I’m not THAT insecure about my handwriting, but I am very annoyed with it.

It’s so strange how the IEP didn’t do anything about suspected Dysgraphia yet they are supposed to take certain disabilities or disorders seriously.

I never got diagnosed for my OCD until right before I turned 18. I also didn’t know about Misophonia until last year but thought it was something else until this year. Probably because I always the OCD was its misconception? Maybe that’s why people don’t think about this stuff???

Misinformation and misconception play a role in how serious people may not take it. It really is unfortunate because a lot of people don’t understand and they don’t like to look deeper than something “small” that is happening in front of them.

So discouraging. I wished that elementary schools spread more awareness on “lesser known” (yet somehow a lot of people have this) disabilities like they did with autism, ADHD, or dyslexia. It would save people who fit these symptoms more time than thinking they are dumb or stupid.

What’s worse is that I’m left handed and apparently am now realizing (due to people on r/lefthanded telling me “Ew” or the overly-exaggerated “Looks like two broken bones.” C’mon people???) many years later.

Right-handed people and their incapability to mirror their hand placement./s 😂

I had an IEP up until 12th grade when I switched to a 504 plan before I moved on to my freshman year of college. I haven’t had time to look into accommodations yet.

P.S. It’s unfortunate that no teacher has suggested that I get checked out for Dyagraphia, they only tell me “Your hand writing is illegible,” “I can’t read it,” “Your hand writing is too big and takes up multiple lines,” “Now your hand writing is too small to read.” I seriously wish people would stop and pick a lane. I wish more people knew about this stuff. Lastly, I wish that teachers didn’t print out papers with a short line to write on yet the prompt requires multiple sentences! It’s impossible.

His test last year showed surface dyslexia, but the school psychologist acted like that’s no big deal. Before that he had a learning disability specific to reading diagnosis. I finally followed up (he’s homeschooled through a public charter) and got some pushback, so I sent this writing sample. They’ve followed up and are now going to do the test (they hadn’t seen the sample yet, but now have). I just feel upset that it’s taken this long and wonder if this has been the issue.

Do most people not get diagnosed quickly or easily? What has everyone’s experience been. I’ve read it’s often genetic, but all my husband and I have in common is we have messy handwriting and our hands would hurt when we were little as we both hold our pencils incorrectly.

Hi! Im looking for some recommendations on either some kind og brace or assistive tool for pen grip that's causing huge callouses in my fingers as well as pain and fatigue

Thank you!

Was it just me or did I think the cursive that my mom wrote in was magic?

Like I would be there waiting for my mom to give her signature and would see her just don't some squiggles and then it would turn into cursive and me being sooo smart went in my little mind "hey I can do this it's just some squiggly lines and boom it turns to pretty handwriting" so that's what I did i wrote down squiggly lines and waited. Then I thought "well mabe it will do it when I look away" so I looked away and nothing happens (soo surprising I'm sure) and then I closed my eyes and looked and it did... absolutely nothing. Yeah another big surprise then I asked my mom "how do I do the pretty handwriting?" And she said "oh you'll get better handwriting when you grow older"... my handwriting sucks now and no one can even read including myself.

DAE write in Cursive? If you don't you should as it "Masks" the Disorder in a way...

My mom brought Dysgraphia up to the people in the IEP...three years straight. She didn't tell me what it couldve been because she didn't want to "put a label on me." But if she did, it would've been treated more seriously. Somewhere along the line I switched schools and the OT at the new school never thought it was necessary because every kid my age would write in the middle of the page. The pencil rubs against the finger next to my pinky, and it gets uncomfortable as my hand gets sore after rushing to write as fast as the teacher is speaking. My handwriting is very messy and was deemed 'illegible' by everyone I turned my homework into. I posted the way I grip my pencil on the left handed subreddit and someone stated that my hand looked like it was a broken bone (here is the way I holt my pencil for example!)...l hold my fork the same way. I type way faster than I write on paper.

I'm actually a really great writer (hoping to become an author in the future. I currently am writing an online book series!) and strive to be an author but I despise note taking on the paper.

"Write smaller, you're taking up the whole page" teachers have said. "Write bigger, your hand writing is too small and condensed together. I can't read it." Pick. A. Lane.

What did the final OT do? Made me rewrite the same word loads of times. I was in 2nd-3rd grade.
From then on I just stopped having an OT.
When I try to hold a pencil "the normal way" it just feels like I'm holding a tweaser or an operation tool which shaky hands as I have no control.
Sometimes, if I run out of room, I write on the side of the page.

Despite my high school which was supposed to teach study skills (cough, core support (and note taking skills) they failed in that criteria while everyone else might be on top of things. I procrastinate.
Now, I do really well when writing digitally…but traditionally…? And when I’m in a lecture and my professors (or uses-to-be) highschool teachers were flipping through the slides incredibly fast…? I rush and my hand writing becomes illegible. My teachers sober why my handwriting is illegible and I’m just sitting there thinking…”Gee, I don’t know! You rushed me with your lecture! I don’t understand how anybody is retaining this stuff!”

Not to mention I have ADHD which means I cannot focus when music is playing during a lesson or homework (and I don’t like those who say “All people with ADHD will benefit from music.” No??? Not all. Half of us, but not all.) and I cannot hear anything the teacher is saying while I’m copying down notes as I’m too focused on copying down notes. Then when I ask any teacher to repeat again they might get annoyed.

When I go back I don’t understand what I wrote because there are several different notes all over the place, and (used to be) on the sides. I despise “Answer this question” and it only has one line of text. How am I able to write less? Then as I used to tun out of room on the line I start writing from the right side into the top or the bottom.

I also write my q’s, p’s, d’s, g’s(???), and my b’s different than everybody else. I genuinely thought everyone wrote the same. I only realized after my acquaintance last year wrote a d(?) from the curve to the top. I go from the stem and down.

I am now in highschool,i learned how to wrote almost 10 years ago and since my handeriting never changed,i began to learn how to write letters of the alphabet that were looking so bad ,never straight and i always did not write perfectly straight letters, how i wrote in middleschool was chaotic, i got so many bad grades because of my handwriting , teachers not being able to read what i wrote,at math numbers and math questions became hard because of my messy handwriting and it would turn out that i couldn t read what i wrote.

In my testing skills like decoding and other skills involved in reading were apparently quite good. But I struggle with reading anyway, the letters seem to move kind of like an optical illusion. Fortunately things like colored overlays seem to help. I'm sure there's no way to know but I do sometimes wonder if it's more related to processing stuff with dysgraphia or my autism

Edit: don't try to diagnose me, I already know what I have, this is a post of curiosity and community seeking.

https://www.amazon.ie/Schneider-188733-Rollerball-Beginners-Turquoise/dp/B0CTCKJCKP

eu tenho disgrafia, mas tenho uma cordenação até que boa em ritmos porque desde pequeno eu jogava jogos de ritmo como fnf que hoje em dia é impossível eu perder e praticamente todos os mods dificeis eu passo com mais de 90% de precisão, e osu que eu fiquei estagnado no modo insano 4,6-4,8 eu tiro D C e poucas vezes B. e eu queria saber se a diagrafia iria afetar muito em aprender a tocar ukulele que seria o meu primeiro instrumento

Finding the right provider

What could I ask a potential IEE evaluator to make sure they can determine current writing performance, whether the intervention is working, and which instructional, support, and assistive-technology components are essential for continued progress?

Background: Student is already identified as having an SLD and uses AT - but the teaching piece has not been ideal (or moved the ball) and the school refused to believe direct explicit instruction was needed to make progress in light of circumstances.

Please give me all your feedback!

A few months ago, watching my child sit in front of a computer doing writing homework was painful. She had vibrant, creative ideas in her head, but the physical drag of typing and second-guessing spelling made her so frustrated that she'd end up in tears before finishing two sentences.

I didn't want to hand her ChatGPT to do the work for her, and I didn't want her voice and thoughts uploaded to third-party cloud servers. So, being a developer, I decided to build a lightweight, offline desktop tool for her.

How it changed things for her:

The shift was honestly night and day:

1. Bypassing the keyboard bottleneck: She just talks out loud, and her ideas land on the screen instantly. Her creative flow doesn't crash anymore.

1. From frustration to reading: Because she sees her own spoken words appear on the screen cleanly formatted, she has actually started reading her own writing back with genuine curiosity and pride.

We just shipped v1.1.2 today! 🛠️

What started as a tool for my daughter turned into something a few other parents and students are now testing.

Today we released version v1.1.2, which is a dedicated quality-of-life update focused entirely on bug fixes:

• Fixed background audio capture stuttering on certain Windows microphone setups.
• Improved punctuation accuracy during long-form natural dictation.
• Resolved formatting glitches when pasting directly into various text editors.

If you’re a parent, educator, or dealing with writing fatigue / dyslexia yourself, I’d love to hear how you handle assistive tech at home.

(The project is called Kiword — happy to share more details or set anyone up with access if this sounds helpful for your family!)

I just have "the worst learning disability in spelling I've seen" according to my highschool psychologist.

I graduated in 2020 but think about this regularly. I've always had a major issue with my spelling, I'm horrendous at it. Was tested in elementary by an incompetent tester who said I was fine. Got retested freshmen year of highschool.

It took the assistant-principal looking at my work (after my mom fought for more testing)and professionally saying " Wtf why wasn't this girl tested and given a 504 plan yet?" Got tested and I could tell during the testing I was going to be diagnosed with something.

The guy turns around after looking over everything and basiclly says, well Im not sure what its called but you have "the worst learning disability in spelling I've seen" ever. I remember those words jn the quotes exactly because, it caught me off guard just how baffled, honest, and blatant he was with me. He described that he could tell it was getting all jumbled up when it was going from my brain to my hands but, he didnt know if there was a name exactly for what I had.

Looking back now i can see that I had lots of other symptoms of dysgraphia, mixing cursive and block letters, inconsistent letter sizing/spacing... ect ect. But im still just like baffled and have it burned in my mind that it was the worst he'd seen so far in his career. I got my 504 and actully started passing English but dang.

Thank you everyone for reading just telling some people who may understand.

For context, my handwriting has always been bad and not due to lack of practice. As a child, my mother used to get mad and make me stay up practicing all night until it looked neat, but no matter how much I practice it doesn't really get better. I often use a mix of upper-case and lower-case letters, my hand physically cramps and hurts after writing a few sentences, the letters/words are often awkwardly and inconsistently spaced, and if the paper isn't lined then it's impossible for me to keep it straight/aligned. I have a hard time keeping up with taking notes during lectures because of this.

The photo I've attached is how my handwriting looks when I'm trying to go as slow and neat as possible, this took me well over an hour. It's always been an insecurity of mine, but now it's more than just being embarrassed about my ugly penmanship. My English class requires extensive notes for open-note tests and I stay up late at night because it takes me so long to write it all down.

Is it worth getting tested? After hearing about how expensive testing is, I want some input from people who are more knowledgeable or have experience struggling with dysgraphia before making that kind of financial commitment.

was inspired by the other dysgraphia papers out there and decided to make my own. not dxed with dysgraphia but like my handwriting is hard to read and this paper has helped immensely with the legibility of my notes and i'm hoping it can be helpful for others. there's a white/blue and a yellow /dark yellow variety. it's free just in a google drive 🫡 paperz

My child is 10 (4th grade) and has struggled with reading and spelling for years. He went to a tutor to help him with reading and it helped tremendously. His spelling however has not. He often mixes up his b’s/d’s, and rarely uses vowels. For instance, birthday is spelled as “brthday. Or, he mixes letters; for example, two is tow and he very frequently writes an s for a c. It’s gotten to the point where I have to sit with him for all homework to help him spell. He is currently in OT (privately) doing a handwriting without tears program as his writing is hard to read. He struggles with spacing, writes super small then big. It’s also ineligible at times if he’s writing fast. In order to write neatly, he has to write really slow and concentrate.
My issue with all this is getting testing done. He goes to a private school and their help with this matter is minimal. They recognize his issue and have emailed the public school in our district to come in and assess him, however they “haven’t heard back.” I don’t know if they’ve tried as hard as they can, but I also know that the public school district doesn’t have to respond to their request in any timeframe since it’s a private school.
I have reached out to a private office for an educational neuropsychologist evaluation and they have an opening for an evaluation later this month…for $3,000. I guess I am here to ask, do my son’s symptoms coincide with anyone who has been diagnosed with this? I will pay the 3k, I just want to make sure it’s necessary. Like I know it is, but I’m just looking for reassurance. I’m also looking for help with anyone else who’s been through this with their child. Thank you

Hi, I'm a 16 year old in Cebu city, Philippines. I discovered this disorder a few years ago and thought that I would have a decent chance of having it, and I took a few of those online tests for funsies and they all said I had signs of it. Only problem is I have no idea where to go to find out, I brought it up to family and they tried to take me to a therapist (they still haven't gotten back to us it's been like 3 years) and the department of social welfare but nowhere did we get an official diagnosis. So I just wanna ask if there's any recommendations to look into cause I wanna know if I have this disorder or if I'm just really bad at writing