I have been working with a high school student since January who has many sensorimotor challenges which lead to difficulty with organization, completing work on time, focus, and energy level regulation.
He also had a pretty terrible pencil grip.
He hated writing and could not do it for long because he got tired.
At his age (a sophomore) the likelihood of changing his grasp is pretty slim.
Mostly because he is pretty proficient on his laptop, and does the bare minimum of writing and is getting by. Sometimes even when something is terrible, if you can get by, there is no inner motivation to work on it.
So for the time being I worked a lot on his other challenges rather than work on his grasp.
I worked on his posture, his endurance, his organization, his reading comprehension, ability to prioritize work and study. I also worked on handwriting speed(despite the grasp) and it did improve.
Many of his challenges have decreased so it felt like it was the time to work on his grasp and he was actually game to do it because he hadn't thought of another goal.
I lead him through a bunch of grasp pattern exercises, opposition exercises and did some reflex checks for palmer grasp reflex and babkin reflex. Then I had him do a writing sample for me, and then took him through a brain gym balance process with some additional movements, all of which took about 20 minutes.
Then after we were done we did the same exercises as we did before and I could see that it was different.
I told him how to separate the two sides of his hands and rest the pinky side of his hand down on the paper for support, and then I just had him write.
When he started writing again that BOTH OF US were shocked!
He was looking at his own hand like he couldn't believe what he was seeing or feeling.
I asked him how it felt and he said, ".......better.......than.....it's ever felt.......when I have tried it in the past".
The invisible thought bubble over his head actually read, "WTF?!?!?!"
I asked him if he would practice this normal regular grip during the week between our sessions. Still looking at his hand, he said, "yeah....probably"--which is teenager speak for "yes totally!" The brain and body is so amazing in its capacity to learn and re-learn!
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