“I can’t read your chicken scratch, Andrew!”
I remember most of my school teachers reminding me that my handwriting was poor. Although I was always one of the top students throughout my educational experiences, my teachers could never figure out what to do with the fact that they couldn’t read what I turned in. Sometimes, I couldn’t even understand what I had written myself.
Intervention never looked like getting evaluated for learning disabilities because again, how could a top student have a learning disability? Instead I was led to believe that I had a moral flaw. I was either too lazy or careless to neatly draw out the complex letters, or I was just hopelessly sloppy.
In fourth grade I remember being taken out of class to participate in infantilizing ESL (English as a Second Language) group sessions. I should point out that English was, and always has been, my most dominant language. I was forced to sit out of class to re-learn kindergarten level English language skills. We made “clap” sounds to help us count how many syllables were in a word. We got stickers for memorizing sight words. While this might have been helpful for some of the students who needed this (I went to school in the South Bronx, and many of my classmates were young immigrants learning English as well as learning grammatical tools in their home countries’ languages). But the instructors in these sessions always seemed perplexed as to why I was in the room.
In middle school I remember my homeroom teacher taking me out of recess because she was concerned about my penmanship. Again, instead of assessing me for a learning disability, I was told my handwriting was poor and that I should try learning cursive. This didn’t make any sense to me because I knew it was hard for me to draw print letters, let alone cursive letters. After a few short sessions, my homeroom teacher gave up. My cursive turned out to be WORSE than my print handwriting.
Frankly speaking, I was a nerd. I was already an avid reader. I had been selected to represent my elementary school in a city-wide science fair. I was asked to be a tutor for some classmates as part of my school’s tutoring program. I was valedictorian of my high school, I made Dean’s List in undergrad.
I don’t say this to put anyone else down, but rather to demonstrate that bad handwriting is not an indicator of poor reading comprehension, or a lack of intellect. But rather it is an indicator of something I am finally learning about myself. And while it is possible to train yourself to write more legibly, it never really goes away.
My handwriting changes regularly. Sometimes it looks like multiple people are writing at the same time, even in the same sentence. I am terrible at margins, and it gives me anxiety when a notebook does not have my preferred line spacing. I slant. words come out crooked. I am also terrible at spelling so my notebooks are mostly cross outs. When I was younger, I often experienced hand cramps and smudges on my hand because of the way I held my pens and pencils. I am terrible at drawing and the images I conjure up in my head never come out on paper. I am very clumsy with things in my hands.
These are all textbook characteristics of a condition called dysgraphia. Dysgraphia is a condition that effects the motor skills required to write, type and spell efficiently. If you think about it, writing things out by hand is a complex series of motor processing. You have to hold your writing instrument, draw out the characters that represent the words you are thinking in your head, you have to plan out spacing to separate words and stick to margins. I’m amazed anyone can do this at all! Shout out to you super heroes!
When I was first diagnosed with ADHD, I wanted to see if my new diagnoses could be linked to my history of bad handwriting. This is when I first learned of the term dysgraphia. I remember sharing the several articles about dysgraphia I found online with my friends. I’m pretty sure I cried myself to sleep that night. I still get teary eyed at the fact that there is a name for what I was experiencing and that I had gone through so much trauma.
I get flashbacks of the time my 4th grade substitute teacher (probably the worst teacher I’ve ever had. His idea of teaching was having us all copy word-for-word his written lectures. But he was also violently abusive. A matter I’ll talk about later). I think about the times my dad would sit with me as we conducted spelling drills where I had to spell words out 5 times each until I managed to spell them correctly. I remember my mom advising me to finger space my words because spacing was (and still is) an issue for me. I remember being told that my college professors would not grade my work if they couldn’t read it. I remember the shame and never volunteering to take notes in group projects.
I must say that I have never been formally diagnosed with dysgraphia. In fact, I am not even aware if there are ways to get a formal diagnoses as an adult. I should also point out that not everyone with ADHD has dysgraphia. But ADHD is linked with many comorbidities including learning disabilities. Fortunately for me, I work in a field where typing things out on a computer is the way to go. This works for me, although, I am lucky that spell check is a thing because I would be doomed without it!
I want to reiterate out there that having poor penmanship is not an indicator of laziness or carelessness. If that were the case, how would we take into account the extra time it takes for us to write things out by hand, or our masking techniques we acquire along the way?
The reason why I am particularly emotional about this is because for a long time I internalized some of these ideas. But now it helps me appreciate my hard work and commitment to being understood as a young scholar, and storyteller. Another reason to love on myself more deeply, and completely!
Time Blind ADHD 