Saturday, May 23, 2015

Do you have messy handwriting due to ADHD , dysgraphia, or that English is not your first language. I would love to hear how you were able to improve your handwriting?

This is a one time post about a video I produced " Anyone Can Improve Their Own Handwriting" which can be obtained as a hard copy or streaming download. Even though I was born and raised in the USA , I went to Hebrew school and thus learned another language with a different style of handwriting. In Hebrew you write from right to left , the opposite of English. My Hebrew handwriting was not bad and actually looked good. But my English handwriting looked bad. By the time I went to college - just before the days of the word processor - you could hand write a report or type it. I did not know how to type so hand wrote it. The English teacher ( Johns Hopkins no less) held my paper up high in the class and said this paper got a B but looked like the ink dropped and a chicken walked over it. ( years later I understood he meant the chicken scratch joke). To my chagrin he then handed the paper to me. I was humiliated. I also felt lost as to how do I improve my handwriting. Wasn't I " born with poor handwriting abilities". At the same time I wanted to learn to paint. I did well with color but could not draw to save my life. My paintings seemed to float in the air and thus looked impressionistic. At least people did not know I could not draw and liked the paintings though. Well , to make the story shorter. Over the years I continued my art, but also entered the health field of neuro diagnostics and behavioral psychology and began to help students with ADHD through biofeedback and then learning skills and strategies. Well , I noticed the ADHD students also had poor handwriting complaints . So I entered upon a quest to correct my own handwriting and my clients too. Well , these combinations helped me. One - relaxed concentration techniques taught me to go easier with the pencil. Two -Seeing like an artist helped me "See" how my individual shapes of the letters were suppose to look. Three - working in science helped me pay attention to details and be neater. So I put this all together and at the age of 40 I was able to change my own handwriting and help literally over 100 students with learning challenges and ADHD correct theirs. In the end I put these findings as resources in a book and video. The book " Creative Painting for the Young Artist " is probably the first book to help a youngster " see like an artist" especially if they have dysgraphia or ADHD. Then I produced the video " Anyone Can Improve Their Handwriting" and improved upon it a few years after that with a newer video editing skills into "Anyone Can Improve Their Own Handwriting". I have since shown the video at local handwriting improvement workshops so know it really helps many kinds of handwriting issues. I made the video in a self help manner, and also what is special about this technique is that it lets you analyse yourself what is wrong with your handwriting. Now this effort is not part of the cursive / Italic debate and does not teach handwriting as do many other books and products do. What is special about this video is that it helps correct messy handwriting in people with ADHD, dysgraphia, or just learned more than one language and let that interfere with their handwriting.