Poor handwriting can really set kids back in school. “A lot of times, we will get those kids that will come in and the parents say ‘oh their grades are failing, they can’t keep up with notes in school, or the teacher can’t read their handwriting, so then they’re failing.’ It’s not that they don’t know the stuff they just their fine motor skills are so poor that they can’t keep up,” said Lee Health Pediatric Occupational therapist Kyle Eiben.
However, just because they naturally struggle with handwriting now, it doesn’t mean it has to be that way forever. “We work a lot on handwriting, especially with our school age children, anywhere between four years old and up,” said Eiben. “Just helping them to learn how to hold a pencil, or any kind of writing utensil, properly helping them learn how to write letters, write their name, eventually getting into sight words and sentences.”
Messy handwriting is often due to trouble with fine motor skills. Pediatric occupational therapists work with these children and help turn things around. “The biggest thing is practice, practice, practice. We do a lot of practice. We have a special technique that we use called handwriting without tears. That was a program established for an occupational therapist to help kids use a multi-sensory approach to learn how to write letters,” said Eiben.
If you notice your child is struggling with handwriting, speak with their pediatrician and they can refer them to therapy. “We do ask parents to practice at home as much as possible, but I would say a great portion of our children we do see good success and we see that handwriting improve,” said Eiben. You can learn more about pediatric occupational therapy by searching for it on leehealth.org.



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Lee Health in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of health care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For more than 100 years, we’ve been providing our community with personalized preventative health services and primary care to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries. Lee Health - Caring People. Inspiring Care.


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