Fine Motor

My son has a fine motor skills deficit which affects how he writes, eats (holds utensils), buttons, etc. His doctor said he showed some choreo weakness, however, his OT specialist at school says it's because of his visual percep. deficits. At any rate, his IEP is being put into place and I would like to have added exercises for fine motor - Can anyone give me any suggestions/info.

Thanks

I and my daughter both had very slow developing fine motor skills combined with visual deficits. Here are a couple of hints:

Avoid stress. Stress is a killer. If you already have a coordination problem, getting twitchy and nervous makes it even worse. Avoid rushing, don't force jobs that are impossible, and above all don't threaten and don't let the teacher threaten with bad grades or other punishments.

Don't panic. I read at age four and couldn't read legibly until age eight. My daughter read at age two and couldn't write legibly until age seven. A five-year delay might seem a bit much, but gee, I seem to write OK now, don't I? And she's doing well in university. And I teach handwriting and can do calligraphy and copperplate. As an adult these delays won't matter nearly so much. You can make the problem worse by stressing what's wrong, or you can minimize it by stressing what's right and gritting your teeth.

For handwriting, get as old-fashioned and structured a program as you can. Stress proper directionality. Use tools that do not require pressure at the same time as fine motions -- throw out all cheap ballpoints and pencils; use markers, fountain pens, and *fresh* rolling writers. My Grade 3 teacher taught us with dip pens and inkwells, and it worked wonders (she said if you made a mistake you'll know it.)

Do as many activities as you can that develop large-muscle coordination - swimming is excellent, also gymnastics, dancing, skating; also soccer and other games if not viciously competitive. (a) This makes the child feel better in general (b) developing the eye-motion skills transfers to all of life (c) In many cases including my own improved large-motor feeds back to improved fine-motor.

Enter your child into fun classes in pottery, calligraphy, etc. - subjects where the skills are actually taught directly and where she can have fun developing skills.

Look into Developmental Optometrists -- I have no personal experience but have heard good reports -- check posts by Rod on Teaching Reading board

The issues are separate unless due to the same genetic error in the original cell. I and my brother both were born farsighted -- veyr unusual. In his case he had glasses at nine *months* old. My daughter always had odd vision problems and was diagnosed at age eight with a retinal problem that glasses can not help. She wore glasses for a year to keep her teacher off her back but they did no good.She and I both also have weak tracking.
Both my daughter had very very late developing hands. Mine finally grew at age fourteen, hers at age eighteen. Until she was seventeen, she bought hats and shoes in the men's department to get large enough, and gloves in the children's department to get small enough. The coordination followed the physical development.

Both of these problems could have been helped to a certain degree by better education and training, but there is a physical limit and a certain degree of coping skills is also required.

In my note above I was suggesting aiming at a reasonable balance of train what you can and cope around what you can't.