OT and Sensory Integration (SI)

[Guest guest]

Hello all and Happy Holidays

I mostly read the list but right now, I have a OT question. Since I

home school, our son has only two therapists and I haven't made an

appointment yet to have him be seen by an OT I know there are some

SID issues to be dealt with. Until them, I could use some tips on

how to address the issue of pressing down too hard with whatever

writing utencil he uses. He is six (soon to be seven). I use

Danealean worksheets and these worksheets are GREAT. The letters

have the arrows showing the direction to begin and write and instead

of dotted lines there is a light gray shadow of the letter. I have

tried having him use crayon, marker, highlighter and pencil. The

problem is he gets so frustrated when it's not " perfect " . Meaning if

he goes off the light gray shadow he'll say, " Oh!!!! " or " it's no

use!!! " with a big growl and want to quit. Can anyone offer me some

tips? I thought about a mechanical pencil because I thought I read

about this once before somewhere AND I didn't think too seriously

about it either because the lead on a mechanical pencil would

frustrate him in the sense that the lead isn't wide enough to " fill

in " the gray shadow of the letter. His writing skills are

engouraging but he's not ready for the worksheets without the

shadow. I also am reading the book " The Out of Sync Child " but I

have not made it through 1/4 of the book yet.

Again, ANY tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Rose