While I understand your misgivings in the diagnoses and offering of services to children with this particular learning disorder, I ask you to take into account those that have a true and serious problem. Dysgraphia is not just a "writing problem" it is one of those disorders that has many sides to it and should not just be swept under the rug and treated as an excuse parents and those outside the school system are using to help "normal" children recieve services that children with other disorders are recieving, or is being misdiagnosed in place of another problem. I am not saying that a child with this should be atomatically qualified for any help but I do believe that it needs to be looked at on a case by case bases and that the childs individual needs and difficulties should be taken into consideration no matter who,inside or outside the school system, makes this diagnoses. After all the quality of the CHILD'S education is what we are after.

If you had ever come into coantact with, or been the parent of a child who has the more challenging type, or a combination of them, you would understand the frustration, pain and lowerd self esteem that these children suffer daily. You would be privy to the comments of 'He/She is just lazy' or 'He/She will never make it if they don't try harder' or hear the taunts of other children about how 'You write like a caveman' or 'My younger sister is better at this than you are, are you stupid or something'. You would understand that no matter how hard this student tries they can't seem to make thier work look like their peers and while they know the material, they can't seem to get that A because they are unable to finish their work due to all the time and effort and pain they go through just to try and make those few words they get on the paper legible without much success. Dysgraphia should not be taken as just another 'excuse' label and should be given due consideration if we are to keep these children from slipping through the huge gaps in our educational systems.

Just to enlighten those not familiar with Dysgrapiha, here is a small definition of true Dysgraphia and some of the problems a CHILD with this may have:

Types of Dysgraphia

Dyslexic dysgraphia
With dyslexic dysgraphia, spontaneously written work is illegible, copied work is fairly good, and spelling is bad. Finger tapping speed (a method for identifying fine motor problems) is normal, indicating the deficit does not likely stem from cerebellar damage. A dyslexic dysgraphic does not necessarily have dyslexia. (Dyslexia and dysgraphia appear to be unrelated.)

Motor dysgraphia
Motor dysgraphia is due to deficient fine motor skills, poor dexterity, poor muscle tone, and/or unspecified motor clumsiness. Generally, written work is poor to illegible, even if copied by sight from another document. Letter formation may be acceptable in very short samples of writing, but this requires extreme effort and an unreasonable amount of time to accomplish, and cannot be sustained for a significant length of time. Spelling skills are not impaired. Finger tapping speed results are below normal.

Spatial dysgraphia
Dysgraphia due to a defect in the understanding of space has illegible spontaneously written work, illegible copied work, normal spelling, but normal tapping speed.

Some children may have a combination of any two or all three of these.

Symptoms of dysgraphia
A mixture of upper/lower case letters, irregular letter sizes and shapes, unfinished letters, struggle to use writing as a communications tool, odd writing grip, many spelling mistakes (sometimes), pain when writing, decreased or increased speed of writing and copying, talks to self while writing, and general illegibility. Reluctance or refusal to complete writing tasks.

Lesser known symptoms of dysgraphia

Pain while writing
Many people who are dysgraphic will experience pain while writing. The pain usually starts in the center of the forearm and then spreads along the nervous system to the entire body. This pain can get worse or even appear when a dysgraphic is stressed. Few people who do not have dysgraphia know about this, because many with dysgraphia will not mention it to anyone. There are a few reasons why pain while writing is rarely mentioned:

Sufferers do not know that it is unusual to experience this type of pain with writing.
If they know that it is different from how others experience writing, they know that few will believe them.
Those that do believe that the pain while writing is real will often not understand it. It will usually be attributed to muscle ache or cramping, and it will often be considered only a minor inconvenience.

Now imagine a child in Kindergarten trying to learn thier ABC's and 123's with this. How are they going to learn to read, spell, or do math later on in higher grades when they can't even put this small amount on paper without difficulty? Or imagine a Third grade child in their class and trying to keep up, how well are they going to do at this most important time in their school life? How are they going to feel as they watch their peers throughout they day realizing that what they are struggling to put on their paper is no where near what the rest of the class can do? How will it effect their attitude, behavior, or potential?

Dysgraphia takes so much of these childrens time and concentration that many things are often missed and these children just fall further and further behind until other problems,mainly behavior as they get older, start to take precedence over this one simple thing that could be helped by someone actually looking at what these children are dealing with and the giving of a few simple services by the schools .