Cursive Writing

This year, Ryan has finally started learning to write his own name without help. That also including memorized the spelling of his last name ! Writing cursive is not easy for him. His cursive are loopy and large when he writes his name. It was due to that the researchers prove, " Autistic children often have unusually large handwriting" may be due to with cerebellar lesions or basal ganglia dysfunction.

This evening, he remembered the basic rules to keep his name on the line. He only did it once on the board, but not on his homework. Still more importantly, his print is legible. We will see how months go on. If it is all failed by the end of this year, I will teach him to use keyboard skills. Though he already learned a little bit by playing "Cars" on a computer. He is still young enough to learn to use his typing skills. Who knows he will become mastered in typing when he gets older? Or even who knows he would be mastered in Excel? (I admit I know NOTHING about Excel especially Spreadsheet.)

Actually, I am grateful for living in today's technology. Otherwise, he might have suffered a lot even he has learned, "Handwriting Without Tears"in his first year of both Special Education and General Education classes. Not only being suffered, he and I would have lots of power struggles if there's no miracle technology. Using the keyboard, this will bring Ryan a lot easier to complete his homework assignments, taking notes in class, and complete long-term assignments.

Even at 5 1/2 year old, Ryan reads at a high grade level such as "The Mittens" on his own, but writing and drawing pictures are not easy for him. Ryan still has the advantage for having me because I recognized and knew he has to start learning to draw pictures at early age. It was due to that I have met several Autistic teenage kids at my work site, who could put their thoughts beautifully in their journal though their penmanships were not great, and some of them drew awesome pictures. Their models had encouraged me to teach my son, Ryan at an early age. I started off the basic pictures such Tree and Sun. (You can see the model of my right picture, and Ryan's pictures of Tree and Sun were on the left side of the white board.)

Another purpose of teaching him is to master one language concept. Let's wait and see as the time goes on. If it is all fail, it would not matter because the computer does provide lots of pictures to do his homework assignments. Nothing can stop me from teaching him to become independent after he gets a lot of tutoring by me.