chelle3271

I'm not sure this would qualify as a learning disability. My son is 7 and I've noticed that he has some odd handwriting habits. As a high school English teacher, I tend to see a lot of students writing in my class and notice that most of us develop the same writing habits. My son defies all of them, despite the fact that I was a big influence in teaching him how to write.

First, his writing is atrocious, and he labors over it.

Second he writes his letters backwards but not dyslexic. All of his letters look normal, just very messy in the end result. To explain better, it is more the WAY he writes. Rather than start his letters from the top, he starts most letters from the bottom. He also tends to work the letters opposite of "normal." For example, when writing the letter "O" he will start at the bottom and go clockwise, with the end result looking more like an upside down teardrop. With the number "6" he starts in the middle of the number, drawing counterclockwise and ending with the top of the number.

Even more oddly (to my way of thinking) he tends to write certain words in reverse order. For example, if he is writing the word "of" he'll often write the "f" first, then the "o" to the left of it. OR, a 2-digit number--such as 17--he writes the 7 first and the 1 afterwards. The end result looks just fine, but you can just sense that he is thinking the whole process out, even if he tends to do it quickly.

I know that handwriting, and the way we write, can say a lot about the way the brain works. My son is very intelligent, if maybe a little unfocused. He can follow the schematics to put together a lego star wars cruiser completely on his own, will reason out the cause of something like a scientist, loves to read and is fairly decent in math, so I have no real concern over his ability to learn, but I am super curious about what this anomaly might mean.

Any thoughts on why this might be?