By Allison on Thursday, February 07, 2002 - 05:27 am:

Hi Folks

While I do not have HMS, I am an Occupational Therapist working in a school in NY with a lovely pair of 9 year old twins; one was born with left hemiplegia, the other with HMS. Both have learning disabilities as well.

At the yearly meeting of the child with HMS, I was informed I need to teach her to write faster, as her learning disability involves working memory, and she cannot hold her academic thoughts long enough to "get things down on paper". I have spent the past 4 years working on hand strengthening and proprioceptive (where your body is in space) activities, as well as proper positioning, but there hasn't been a whole lot of improvement in speed. For example, she writes beautifully now, but very slowly. We looked at typing as an alternative, and I personally purchased a smaller keyboard for her to reduce hand movement, but she is unable to remember where the keys are, so typing is also a laborious process for her.

So I throw my question out to the experts, the ones who have lived with HMS and have spent time figuring out what works best for them. Does anyone have any suggestions? After 4 years I'm stumped.

Thanx!
Allison

By Ian on Thursday, February 07, 2002 - 10:12 am:

I think you have two distinct problems here and that they should be treated in isolation.

If you are trying to get the brain working and putting thoughts down in writing then I believe that you should consider one of the voice recognition programmes that allow speach to do the writing on the computer. This would exercise the brain and the child would see much for the effort put in.

On the other hand, strengthening exercises and physical movement is a quite different item that needs to be worked on.

By Margareth on Thursday, February 07, 2002 - 02:57 pm:

Like Ian says, speech recognition, that does it for me... Also I would like to add that in the future she might remember the keys better. When I was 9 or 10 I was completely in to my Atari computer. I loved copying the programlines for simple games from the instruction books. It took me ages and ages because I had to search for every letter individually. But in time my typing got faster. My younger sister who has had some trouble learning, especially in primary school took a typing class at age eleven, she still profits from it.
One last remark, make sure she doesn't get obsessed with her handwriting. I wrote some stuff on my own 'primary school handwriting-trauma' in an earlier post which was a reply to a post by Barbara Scott about her little boy who, among others, had trouble with his handwriting. You can find these messages under RELATED CONDITIONS: Kids and sports/recreation/piano

take care,
Margareth