Kelli Fetter on Understanding Dysgraphia: Beyond Messy Handwriting

Debbie:
Hey Kelli, welcome to the podcast.

Kelli Fetter:
Thank you, excited to be here.

Debbie:
I’m excited to explore dysgraphia with you. is, again, a new topic. As we’re recording this, I just told you before, hit record that today is the 10th anniversary of Tilt. I’ve done 500 episodes, and I’ve never done an episode on dysgraphia. So when you reached out to me, I thought this would be a really important conversation to explore, because I know it’s got to be something a lot of our listeners are dealing with.

Kelli Fetter:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think even if they don’t have that label or that diagnosis, I guarantee you a lot of your listeners will still relate to what we talk about and hopefully better understand their own child so that they can better support them.

Debbie:
Yeah, that sounds great. Awesome. Okay. So I always like to start by just kind of getting a little more information about my guests, just so we understand your lens or your personal why for the work that you do. So would you tell us a little bit about how you got into this? Because I know that you’re also an occupational therapist. Like tell us a little bit about what you do in the world.

Kelli Fetter:
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I started out, you know, going to occupational therapy school. I knew I wanted to work with kids. That was like my lifelong passion growing up. And so when I graduated, that’s what I did. And I worked in a setting that really afforded me a lot of opportunities, you know, outpatient, early intervention, school-based practice, a variety of diagnoses, which was great starting out. And then I had my own child. And as our kids often do, they lead us down these journeys, right? And so when I had her, I actually went down part-time in that OT job and then eventually moved over to an academic, like an adjunct professor role, again, teaching pediatrics. And then she was diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia. And the interesting thing about her journey is that I started seeing signs in kindergarten and the school did not. And as an OT, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it because I was like, it’s not fine motor skills. it’s not gross motor. It’s not like it was nothing that my OT brain thought. well, then you can help with this. And So I reached out to one of our friends slash tutors at that point, and she worked with her that summer between kinder and first grade. All of a sudden, the first grade rolls around and then the school was like, my gosh, something’s going on. It’s an emergency. You need to seek out, you know, all of these. And I was like, you know, that typical parent moment of like, OK, first of all, yes, I thought something was going on. But also, my goodness, how did we go from Well, let’s just wait and see to like 911 emergency. Fortunately, we already had this rapport and relationship built with her tutor. So she was able to do some diagnostics and again, dyslexia and dysgraphia. What’s crazy about this, Debbie, is I, as an OT, I had never heard of dysgraphia before. Now this was granted, this was seven plus, you know, years ago. But I worked with the pediatrics. I worked with kids all the time. Yes, we worked on handwriting, but this whole learning disability world was not taught in OT school. And so again, I just was like, can I help her? How can I support her? What are the gaps of my understanding that I never received before? And who was out here helping these kids, right? Because the dyslexia support was easy to find. I mean, there were so many dyslexia centers in our area at that time. You Google dyslexia and you get tons of resources, articles, research, just such minimal support for dysgraphia. And so that’s what I did for a couple of years. I was like, I’ve got to figure this out. I took any and every training on handwriting, on dysgraphia, on learning disabilities, on the link between dyslexia and writing. And I realized that not only could I help her through that OT lens, but coming at it from a very different viewpoint or stance, but also, you know, a lot of our friends then started asking, like my friend who has kids with ADHD, she’s like, hang on, I think my son might be struggling with the same thing that your daughter is, but in a different way because he has ADHD. And so I started helping her kid. And then my other friend whose kid has autism, same thing. And I’m like, there’s gotta be something to this. So. I created handwriting solutions and what started as very much like me a couple of days a week, helping my friends has now bloomed into a 100 % fully virtual global tutoring platform where we just look at kids differently and holistically and really try to empower them and boost their skills and that remediation that is just missing. It’s just missing in school systems. know, teachers didn’t understand what dysgraphia was. They weren’t sure how to help. So that’s how I got here. It’s been a long, exhausting journey, but it’s also been the most rewarding journey, not only to help my own child who’s now in seventh grade, but to help and impact hopefully so many other families.

Debbie:
Yeah, yeah, I love that story. you said something very, you said something at the very beginning that I had to write down, you said, and then I had my own child. And I realized if I had a dollar for every time a guest said that to me, because so many of us come to this work, because we created what we needed. But I love that because it’s, it’s, we have such a unique perspective to be living it to give it right. So I love that. And I want to just Before we get deeper into this to just talk about dysgraphia and I’m just going to share the first time that I heard of it. This was back when I was living in Seattle and a parent from my kind of, you know, newborn birth group that we kind of grew up together. There were like eight families and one of the parents in that group, I think her daughter was probably in maybe six or seven when she said, my gosh, Debbie. We just learned this stuff about our daughter and she was explaining to me she was dyslexic, she was dyscalculic, but then she was describing dysgraphia as her brain flips images and she’s an artist, this young girl is an artist, but the way she was drawing was she was seeing things in a completely different way and I was kind of mind blown. I just thought it was the most fascinating thing and I had never heard of it before. And it’s still something I don’t hear that much about. So let’s just kind of define what dysgraphia is. And is it different from just messy handwriting? Like what exactly is going on in our kids’ brain if they are dysgraphic?

Kelli Fetter:
Yeah, yeah. So I like that very ending of what is going on in their brain because that’s where I really like to nerd out a bit because it is a neurological condition, so to speak, or difference. I like to think of it more as just like dyslexia where basically our brain is recruiting different parts of the brain when a child is writing. And the interesting thing about this graph here is Writing in and of itself is so complex. And I think a lot of us just don’t realize just how complex is. Not only is it like reading the decoding and understanding letters and sounds and blends and all of that, but we have to then encode all of that, get that information from the paper or from an auditory input. And we have to process it in our brain. through various channels, visual channel, auditory channel, executive function, attention, all of these pieces, process this, and then get it out physically onto paper. And so then your motor skills, your visual skills, like you said, the flipping or the reversals. it’s a very, handwriting in and of itself is a very complicated and complex process. And I think that’s part of the reason why dysgraphia is so misunderstood or even unknown, because it presents so differently in different kids. So sometimes it is that letter reversal. Sometimes it is messy handwriting, but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes kids have dysgraphia and they actually have really legible handwriting. It’s that thought generation of like getting the thoughts onto paper, that written expression part of it. Sometimes it’s all of the above. Sometimes students have fine motor deficits. Maybe their grasp is awkward or they push really hard on the paper and they’re ripping the paper. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes they have excellent. That was with my child. That’s why I was like, I don’t understand what’s going on because her fine motor skills were excellent. She does have the quirkiest grasp and still does. So I have a handwriting tutor that says, it’s okay, we can figure out the grasp pattern and as long as it’s functional. But, you know, I think the biggest thing to think about with dysgraphia is, kind of, so what I like to think of is like, what are the symptoms? What is the red flag? Because that’s what parents need to know is like, what should I actually be looking for? Avoidance. If your child is avoiding writing, that tells me something is going on. Maybe it’s not dysgraphia, but that tells me that there is a barrier. There is a block. There is something that is preventing them from getting their thoughts on paper. And it’s one of probably the most skipped over symptoms as well, because we just think they’re just being stubborn, you know, or they’re just being lazy or whatever, know, name it. But that’s probably one of the biggest red flags that I see. Frustration around writing as well can be a big red flag. And then, those obvious skills of, their letters, their sentences are floating all over the page. Their spacing is either so spaced out or so squished together. The formation is just quirky. Like, maybe they write an R. from the bottom up and then the next time it’s backward, know, everything’s just kind of funky is like the way I would describe it. You know, sometimes I see on like different moms’ Facebook groups or something where parents will post like, does my child have dysgraphia? And they post like the, just the picture of their child’s handwriting. And while that does give us a lot of information, that only gives us just a glimpse because I wanna see what is happening when they’re writing, what their eyes are doing, what their hands are doing, even just like the process, you know, are they, does it take them forever to get that out? You know, is it laborious? Or are they just rushing through, you know, there’s a lot of, I think, again, you can see why it’s like, there is not just one like standard, like this is dysgraphia, and this is the label. And even if you look at the diagnostic statistic manual, it is also very vague, which I think is another reason why it can be hard to get that diagnosis. It can be hard to even understand the diagnosis, which unfortunately means hard to get supports for it. But yeah, it’s very, very complex.

Debbie:
Yeah, it sounds like it. Okay. So as you were talking, I was thinking back about a conversation I had with Rebecca Bush about dyslexia. And she talks about navigating a new dyslexia diagnosis. And in that conversation, I saw dyslexia in this whole new light. It connected so many dots for me. It’s so much more than what I thought it was, including the kind of the process and the comprehension and the processing speed and all of those aspects of it. And so I’m now having this similar moment with this conversation and talking about dysgraphia. So I guess what I’m curious to know is why do you think it is something that people are not talking about? Because the way you’re describing it, it seems like it’s got to be very, very under reported, under identified.

Kelli Fetter:
Yeah, I mean, I think that is in and of itself why it’s so, why nobody is really, I think we have come a long way. When my child was first diagnosed versus now, I’m like, I’ll say, dysgraphia to someone and they’re like, yeah, I’ve heard of that. like, yeah, we, know, seven years ago, no. But I think that is why it’s hard is because there isn’t just one image or one. characteristic or one you know it is nuanced and this kids with dysgraphia present in such different ways and I also think you know not to go too far off on another tangent but just the priority of handwriting in schools it’s just not prioritized as much now and so if we are seeing gaps it’s that whole well is it because they were never taught how to write? Or is there something more neurologically underlining it? And what I know the next question will then be like, well then how do you tell the difference? And what I tell parents is like, let’s give them a few months of quality instruction and let’s see. If they’re still struggling, then we might wanna explore what else is going on. But if they are getting it, and making connections and it’s carrying over, then it’s probably not. It probably is just a gap in instruction.

And so part of our mission at Handwriting Solutions is to also teach the teachers, to teach the schools, to train the OTs who are working with students. So ideally that way, the only kiddos that are coming to us are the ones who truly need that intensive intervention. And the other kids will be getting what they need in the school. And that’s, of course, an ideal world and a perfect world. we have had such a huge outpouring of interest from teachers because they’re seeing the struggle in their classrooms too. And it’s really exciting to see that. I think we are seeing a pendulum. I think we’re in the middle of that pendulum shift. If we went from like good old school, let’s teach them phonics and let’s teach them handwriting. And then we swung, we have this huge swing of tech and kids will just get it. And now we’re seeing a comeback of like, actually, so many states have brought back cursive. Love to see that. I don’t think internationally. I know we were talking before we recorded. Most international schools didn’t take that away, so that’s good. But in the States, lot of schools removed cursive. And so now they’re seeing, this is actually really important developmentally, know, developmentally from a brain and neurological standpoint, as well as it gives students an alternative mode of getting their thoughts out. So it’s really exciting. I forget the numbers, but I think we’re in like the 30s as far as how many states have brought back cursive. The trick is, can we bring it back with fidelity? Can we bring that handwriting instruction back where it’s not just like, we’re going to talk about handwriting for two weeks. And then, you know, and I get it, teachers are so bombarded with standards and, you know, test scores and all of that. But sometimes we have to just go back to our roots and build students skills from a neurological and a developmental standpoint so that they and then achieve their potential.

Debbie:
Yeah. OK. So many different threads, directions I could go in. But I do want to just go back to what you said about schools, because you mentioned earlier that, I think it was kindergarten, your daughter’s teachers were like, everything’s great, no issues. And then first grade is like, whoa, something’s going on here. And I’m just curious, what were the signs that the school noticed? And what would teachers be seeing if they’re really going to get clued in like there’s a learning disability happening here.

Kelli Fetter:
Yeah, I mean, the first signs that I saw as the parent and kinder was just like, even just basic three letter words for both the reading and the writing were so those CDC words. It’s like she knew her alphabet, she and I knew she had the understanding, but it just was not clicking when she would go to write it. And again, it was that puzzle of like, motor skills are fine, she understands the alphabetic principles. Why is there a breakdown when we put pencil to paper or marker? You know, we did a lot of play and skill building that way, but you know, breaking those letters down. She also was a master memorizer, and so she would read books, but they would be memorized. So there was just a few things that I was like, hmm. She, at that time, she was at a school that was I think kind of more on that progressive side of kids. We will let kids develop in their own time, which I can get behind obviously. But the problem is when kids don’t receive that explicit and systematic instruction in reading and writing, they’re not going to get it on their own time. And I think come first grade, the standards were increased, the expectations were increased. And just that gap of where she was coming in at that first grade year and what their expectation was, that’s when I think they were like, hmm, yeah, there’s something that’s not, and I think they had also during that fall semester had started to do a little of like pull out, know, intervention type and they were starting to see the gaps too.

But I think all that to be said, you know as a parent sometimes you have to just go with your gut and your instinct and If you have the concerns and I will tell you the majority of our students that we work with no matter their age if they’re middle school high school elementary going with that instinct that like something just doesn’t feel right or I just don’t think they’re getting it, that is your superpower as the parent. Because also schools, are just gonna, they have huge classrooms now. If they’ve got 20, 30 kids in the classroom, they’re not always going to see things as soon as you are. I mean, just an example from recently, we’re seventh grade math, so no joke. my daughter was avoiding homework. And I thought, well, that’s interesting. Okay, just gonna monitor it. I’m not a big pusher of like, homework and academics. Like, I’m just like, you do that your best, you put your effort in. That’s all I care about. But why are we avoiding? And so then like another week went by. And then she I think, did a summative assessment. And then it was like, then another week went by. And finally, I reached out to the school and I was like, I just don’t, I don’t think she’s getting, I don’t think it’s soaking. Like I don’t think she’s understanding this unit. And they were like, yeah, we don’t either. But I’m like. like I’m glad I reached out. So of course, again, I’m like, OK, we’re bringing in the tutor and we’re and they are graciously like helping and supporting her. Some of her executive function skills have also come to play this spring semester of seventh grade.

I know people had warned me about seventh grade, but wow, it is a pivotal year. So we’re doing all the things, though. But had I not maybe that inclination, it would have snowballed. It would have easily snowballed. It was starting to, really. So I think even at those early years, if you’ve got that instinct of like, I just don’t know if they are where they, quote, should be. The other thing I think for your 2E listeners is that gap, that gap between their ability and their performance. and can they demonstrate what they know? That’s a big gap for our 2E kiddos and kids that we work with those students all the time. Because again, schools may not recognize it. If we zoom out and look at their composite scores, their score to average, that if we zoom in and see those spikes and then we’re like, huh, that’s why writing is frustrating. Yeah.

Debbie:
Yeah. Okay, so I feel like I wanna do kind of a true confessions moment before we move forward and that is that I homeschooled my kiddo, who by the way is a computer science major in university and in a program where final exams have to be handwritten code. which is a whole other conversation, because that is really tricky for my kid. But while we were homeschooling, was like, second, no, what grade was it? I think it was third grade, third grade, time to learn how to write cursive, right? So I got Handwriting Without Tears, the cursive edition, and there were tears and it did not go well. And I put that book away and I was like, we’re going to just focus on typing right now. And so I just kind of moved on. And I shared this in Differently Wired in my book that years later, my kid kind of became, had a deep area of interest around cursive and Spencerian handwriting and went deep into that. so independently decided I’m going to learn how to do this and I’m going to learn how to do calligraphy and kind of really worked on that more as like an artistic expression, I think. And now is very proud of the signature and all of those things. At the time, my inclination was like, all right, we’ve got tech. If this is a barrier, let’s just lean into that. So I want to just put that out there and hear your thoughts because I know I’m not the only parent there. And I’d like to know your thoughts on that as a strategy. And yeah, because what we don’t want to do with a lot of our kids, sorry, this is the longest question on the planet, but what we don’t want to do is also kind of hold kids to a timeline if they’re not ready for it and then have them lose confidence and not have autonomy over that learning. So the floor is yours. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

Kelli Fetter:
Mm-hmm. This is probably one of the most common questions I get asked actually is like, do we balance, especially for our dysgraphic kids, how do we balance remediation and handwriting and cursive with tech? And I think my consistent answer is always, let’s do both. Like let’s. build those skills, if they’re not, if they are to the point where they, like you said, if they are melting down and like having, no, like we are going to give them that accommodation. We are going to scaffold. We are going to, yeah, perhaps bring in tech, typing, speech to text, scribing for them. Absolutely. How can we get their thoughts out? That’s like the ultimate goal. But then if they are at a place where we can work on that skill building, we can do that. ideally alongside the accommodations. I think what happens, unfortunately, in a lot of systems is that, and I see it daily probably, is okay, a kid gets diagnosed with dysgraphia or is just struggling in general. Maybe they don’t have the diagnosis. Let’s move them to keyboarding. Like it’s just like a blanket accommodation. And that’s where I caution both parents and teachers of like, but is that the most appropriate accommodation for that student? Because a lot of our Diss Graphics students actually really struggle with keyboarding because it is also a fine motor skill. There’s a heavy cognitive load with having to memorize where the letters are. So it can be just as laborious as handwriting.

For some students, it’s an excellent accommodation. For some students, it might be more like a speech to text or even just at those early phases, just scribing for them. I know, fortunately as a homeschool parent, you can easily do that a little bit trickier in a classroom with, you know, 30 kids. But I’m a big believer in yes, if they’re ready. And I love that you’ve got that motivation piece too. We actually did the same thing last summer. My daughter and I got a couple of calligraphy books and together we practiced that because sneakily I’m like, This could be really good for your handwriting. But also I want to learn, I personally wanted to learn calligraphy as well. So if we’ve got that motivation, let’s do it. But we’ve also worked with a couple of students who have literal writing trauma from schools approaching it in a way where they push and push and it’s ineffective. It’s like, write 20, copy 20 sentences. Like that’s going to improve their handwriting. That’s not gonna, you know, that’s not gonna move the needle. That’s gonna make them frustrated. That’s gonna have them experience trauma. And then they’re going to resist. They’re going to be like, no, I don’t wanna do that. That’s really, really hard and that’s miserable. But it’s, you know, that meeting them where they are, that scaffolding. A big thing I talk about with a lot of, well, parents, students, teachers is cognitive load. And so oftentimes our kids are expected to generate their own thoughts and write them down. And that is the highest cognitive load. And so if we can just bring that back a little bit and think, well, where are they at right now? Maybe they need that visual, that copying. Maybe they need you to model for them that imitation skill, that very like lowest cognitive load, so to speak, but maybe that’s heavy for them. And so when I mentioned the scaffolding piece, that’s where I like to think, what cognitive load can we take away to minimize that frustration? And then as we’re building those skills and accommodating them, what can we add on to challenge them?

Debbie:
So what does building skills look like? So I guess I’m curious to know what is the goal and why is that the goal?

Kelli Fetter:
Mm hmm. Yeah. The goal for all the families we work with is function. I don’t want perfection. I don’t care about perfection. I live with a perfectionist child and I’m a perfectionist. We’re anti-perfection here. The goal is function and progress. And if that means functional, it’s just being able to fill out a form when you need to. But everything else is through tech of some sort. That’s great. functional for some kids looks like I want to be able to write a huge essay because that’s important for me. So that I think is the end goal. And then how do we get there is so individualized to the student. So our assessment process is, you know, I mentioned at the beginning is we take a very holistic approach and we look at those mechanics of handwriting, of course. We also might pull in some other expanded academic achievement assessments to really look at what’s happening. A lot of times if we’re struggling with writing, we’re struggling with spelling because of that cognitive load. That breakdown might not be handwriting. It might be that they don’t know how to encode and spell. Then we’re going to build those skills there for them. It might be an OT need. We refer out to an OT who specializes in maybe oculomotor skills or fine motor skills or visual perceptual skills. So a lot of it is just exploring. I also love if a family has a psychological evaluation report, we look at that too, because like you said, processing speed, I want to know what working memory is happening, auditory, verbal memory, all of those pieces play into writing. So I think it kind of goes back to that like complexity of it is that we’re not just building one skill, we’re kind of taking that zoomed out approach. And so maybe handwriting tutoring is actually not what the student needs. Maybe they need to go build some other skills first before they get that good quality instruction. Or maybe again, we pull in those accommodations and bridge that gap while we’re building those skills.

Debbie:
Yeah, it’s so fascinating. I just, it does seem really complex to me because I know I think about with dyslexia that that to me, my understanding is that there are some signs that and some ways that you can assess for dyslexia that are pretty clear cut, like we know this is going on and it seems like this is a little more nuanced. And there’s so many pieces. I’m just, you know, as we’re starting to wrap up this conversation, for parents who are listening are like, gosh, I wonder if this is what is going on at home because, and again, then we think about the avoidance. A lot of my listeners have demand-avoiding kids. So that could be a piece of it. Those spiky profiles could be a piece of it. The executive function piece, you know, kind of disconnect or like that task initiation or all of those things could be playing into this. So I guess for parents who are listening, what would you encourage them to do if they’re like, there might be something going on here. What’s kind of the first, maybe second and third step you would encourage them to take?

Kelli Fetter:
I would say there’s, yeah, probably like two, three steps that I would start with depending on their bandwidth, really. Often a lot of the parents that we’re talking about have already maybe had that psychological evaluation, the neuropsych eval. If they haven’t, that’s always kind of a helpful place to start. gives, it’s a very expensive place to start and requires a lot of bandwidth. But it can give you more information. But really, you know, from our programming, we start with that assessment, typically a handwriting assessment. Again, sometimes we pull in that reading spelling type assessment as well to dig a little bit deeper in the academic piece of it. But the more information, the better. so that you can better understand your child’s brain and how they learn and why it’s, I think that our goal of the assessment is like, where’s the breakdown happening? What is causing these barriers? And then we kind of work backwards and we scaffold and we skill build and so on. And then I think the other piece to that is that communication with the school. Then how can we get them what they need in that school day? Because it is the most frustrating when you think about I want to say the stat is something like 70 % of a child’s school day is spent doing fine motor tasks most of the time writing now more typing probably on the older and but you are seeing kids and schools that like I I was working with a student the other day that is in high school and they are pulling back on tech and doing more handwriting because of AI And so it’s like, how can we partner then with the school and ensure that they’re getting the supports that they need, the accommodations that they need, so that they’re not frustrated. We don’t want them to be frustrated and we don’t want this process to be miserable. It should be challenging. It will be challenging, but it should be. Dare I say fun? If you’re doing it right, it should be maybe a little bit fun. I think our students would agree. I think a lot of times, you know, we as kids work through our program, the biggest thing at the end, I ask parents is like, what did you get out of it? Like what’s the transformation? And you would think they would say, well, my kid improved through her handwriting and they do, but the biggest thing is confidence.

Debbie:
Mm. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Wow, OK, super fascinating. Can you share your resources and where listeners can connect with you and learn more about the services that you offer?

Kelli Fetter:
Yeah, absolutely. Our website is handwritingsolutions.org. We’re on Facebook and Instagram at Handwriting Solutions. I think it might be like at handwriting.solutions or something, but you’ll find us if you search for us there. They can email me at kelli at handwritingsolutions.org. We can also put all of that in the show notes, of course. And then we also do free consultations because I am a mom. who has literally lived and still is living this journey. So often just having a chat and saying, you know what, what, what do I do? What are my next steps? And it, I can, I can hopefully be able to guide and help kind of gear them in the right direction and give them, if anything, just give them like a, will be okay. Your child will be okay. We’ll figure this out together. Yeah.

Debbie:
Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, yes, I will include all of that in the show notes page listeners so you can check that out. I’ll also include links to the episode I did on dyscalculia with Laura Jackson a couple of years ago, and then some episodes I’ve done on dyslexia because I think there is often a co-occurrence with these neurological differences. So Kelli, thank you so much. Super fascinating. I love learning from my guests and I learned a lot today. So thank you.

Kelli Fetter:
Yeah, thanks for having me, Debbie.