It has been a long time since I’ve updated and the main reason is that it has been crazy around here!  Over the last month, 3 different members of our extended family have been in the hospital for a variety of reasons (everyone is doing fine now).  On top of that, the routine of school and work is keeping us all on our toes.

Be that as it may, it’s time to do some catching up.  Angel finished her brief intervention clinic for handwriting before school ended last year.  We had our last reassessment with the OT around August.  For the most part, Angel met her goals.  She was able to print letters (upper and lower case), button, zip, and use snaps.

What I’ve found is that although she can print the letters, Angel has trouble putting them together.  She likes to print words and will often copy words or sentences, but the letters don’t tend to match up as words.  One of my favourite things she’s printed is a card that she made for me.  It started “To Mom”, then she asked me to spell each word from a phrase she learned in OT, “The quick brown fox.”  That was all that fit on the outside.  On the inside, she wrote a jumble of letters that I should have recognized, but didn’t until she told me what it said.  Here’s what it looked like:

For those that don’t have 2 pre-teen girls in the house, it says, “Justin Bieber”.  Angel thinks he is her boyfriend, so I guess she is practicing writing his name.  She copied it from a birthday invitation she received.  As you can see, she does a fairly good job with her upper case letters.  We have managed to tame her excessive use of extra lines on the letter E for the most part.

Other things our OT recommended were hand exercises (she shakes when printing, so they think she may need to strengthen her hands) and general strengthening exercises to help build Angel’s large muscles to help her to print.  One suggestion was wall push-ups.

When all was said and done, Angel was discharged from the program.  It was a combination of aging out and receiving the maximum services for OT allowable.  We received a referral to a fitness club through the clinic and Angel is still on the waiting list for OT through school.

The brief intervention clinics were a big help for Angel and she’s got the basics of printing down.  We are definitely getting somewhere, but we will need to be doing a lot of printing practice to help Angel to improve.