Last week we sat together with dysgraphia. This week I want to take you one step further out, to the children whose ideas are rich and whose writing still will not come. That is written language disorder. This time I am going to do more than tell you about it. I am going to show you, and have you feel it in your own hand.
Years ago, on a rainy afternoon, I stood in front of a room of teachers and therapists and walked them through the whole machinery of writing. From a baby's first grasp on your finger, to the pincer grip that finally catches a Cheerio, to the tripod grip most children reach by four or five, all the way to the moment a finished sentence lands on paper. Then I made them feel it jam. The video below is that session. Give it sixteen minutes and a pencil, and it will teach this better than anything I could write.
Here is the map, so you know what you are watching for.
Writing looks like one act. It is actually four parts, and all four draw from the same small tank of effort.
One. The idea. You hold a picture in your mind of what you want to say.
Two. The words. You find the words that match the picture and line them up.
Three. The details. Spelling, letter order, word order, the punctuation, the capital letters.
Four. The hand. Your fingers form each letter, on the line, in order, without losing your place.
The top two parts are the language itself. The bottom two are the labor of getting it down. Dysgraphia, from last week, is the hand fighting a child at part four. Written language disorder lives higher up, at parts one and two, where a child with a perfectly good hand still cannot turn that picture into words on the page. Same four-part machine. A different part jamming.
One thing before you start. You will hear the room in this. The rainy afternoon, the laughs, the groans, the one brave soul who tries to bolt for the door. I left all of it in, because that surprise on a professional's face is the best preview I can give you of what your child meets on an ordinary school day.
So do me a favor. Get a pencil and a scrap of paper and set them beside you. When I ask the room to write, you write too. That is the whole point.
▶ Press play below. The video opens on its own page — give it a moment to load, and keep your pencil handy.
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Here is what nearly everyone feels.
Your idea was fine. You knew the sentence. Yet the moment one part demanded too much, it ate the others alive, like a little Pac-Man loose in your working memory. The color came out wrong. A word went missing. You started in cursive and bailed to print. The sentence you were holding slipped away while your hand was busy fighting for every letter.
That is the whole lesson in one feeling. When any one of the four parts costs too much, the rest starve. For one child it is the hand. For another it is the words. The page looks the same from the outside, and none of it is laziness.
Now picture that child in a classroom, taking notes while the teacher keeps talking and never stops at the end of a sentence. In the time it took you to write one short sentence with the wrong hand, I could have said four more. That child is not missing the lesson because they drifted off. They are missing it because one part of the machine cannot keep up with the rest.
So here is my question for you. Which of the four parts did you feel collapse first, the idea, the words, the details, or the hand? Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.
Next time, the newsletter will focus on real student writing, so you can see written language disorder with your own eyes. I will set it beside the motor struggles we met last week with dysgraphia, the language side and the hand in one place. The newsletter after that will talk about dyslexia.
Warmly,
Dr. Pat
Patricia McGuire, MD, FAAP
Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrician
P.S. It runs about sixteen minutes. Pour a cup of coffee and give it the time. It is the closest you will come to feeling what your child feels at the kitchen table every night.
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