Contact: Tanya Mitchell, VP of Research and Development
Tanya@LearningRx.com or (719)955-6703
National Brain Training Company Shares
3 Things You Can Learn From Your Child’s Handwriting
Colorado Springs, CO; January 10, 2011 –National Handwriting Day is January 23 and the brain training experts at LearningRx are offering three tips to help you analyze your child or teen’s handwriting.
- Messy handwriting: Don’t assume your child is just being lazy. For younger kids, an inability to form letters correctly may be more about “motor dysgraphia,” or slow-developing motor skills. For school-age children and teens, writing illegibly may be a sign of dysgraphia (“problems with writing”), which is more about a lack of ability than effort – often due to weak cognitive skills like visual processing.
- Misspelled words: Sometimes referred to as “dyslexic dysgraphia,” misspelling words when writing is often a sign that certain brain skills like phonemic awareness are weak. One quick way to evaluate the problem is to ask your child to copy written work from another sheet of paper. If the copied work has few or no mistakes, the issue may be less about poor handwriting and more about weak reading and spelling skills.
- Extra, reversed or omitted letters; heavy pressure: A 2007 study found that students with attention deficits (like ADHD) were more likely to have dysgraphia. In addition to these graphemic buffer errors, writers with ADHD tended to write faster and exert “abnormally high levels of pen pressure.”
“While analyzing your child’s handwriting is by no means a scientific means of determining a learning disorder, there are clues that may help parents recognize a need for professional evaluation,” explains Tanya Mitchell, Vice President of Research and Development for LearningRx, a national brain training company with 71 centers across the United States. “Nationally standardized assessment tools like the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities, (WJ III-COG) and the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement, (WJ III-ACH) measure cognitive skills and academic abilities. Once the weak cognitive skills – like attention, visual processing or phonemic awareness – are evaluated, a personalized brain training program can be created to strengthen those skills and make learning easier for ALL areas of academics – not just handwriting.”
About National Handwriting Day
The day was founded in 1977 by the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association to promote the use of pencils, pens and paper. January 23 is also the birthday of John Hancock, whose name is synonymous with the word “signature.”
About LearningRx
LearningRx specializes in treating the cause – not the symptoms – of learning struggles. The programs’ game-like exercises and 1:1 trainer-to-student ratios provide guaranteed dramatic improvement in as little as 12 to 24 weeks. With 71 centers across the U.S., LearningRx can help anyone – from 5 to 85 – increase the speed, power or function of their brain. The brain training company averages a 14.99-point increase in IQ. To learn more or to find a center near you, visit www.learningrx.com.
