If your child’s writing looks nothing like the thinking you know is in there, two roads keep getting offered: accommodations at school, or a program promising to correct the underlying wiring. A new Psychology Today article, published August 9 by clinical linguist Coral PS Hoh, argues hard for the second road. It calls dysgraphia a brain-based condition affecting an estimated 20 percent of the population, and it says accommodations "make school life easier but do not address the underlying processing problem." The writing research reads differently, and the difference decides where your money and your child’s effort go.
A widely shared Psychology Today article tells parents that accommodations fail children who struggle with writing and that the answer is correcting the brain. Here is what the writing research supports, and the questions worth asking before choosing a road.
Common questions
What is dysgraphia?
Do accommodations like extra time stop my child from improving?
What actually helps a child who struggles with writing?
Should I get my child evaluated for dysgraphia?
New dysgraphia advice: skip accommodations, correct the brain. The writing research: component training keeps failing, and directly teaching spelling and handwriting keeps working.
The pitch: stop compensating, start correcting
The article, "Dysgraphia: Solving It Via Dyslexia," defines developmental dysgraphia as "a persistent discrepancy between a person’s actual vs. expected writing ability based on their age, instruction, and intelligence" and calls it "a language-based learning disorder affecting written expression." Writing, it notes accurately, is "one of the most demanding tasks at school."
Its central argument is a binary. Accommodations, in its telling, are compensation: "Extended time, assistive technologies, shorter assignments, and testing through oral means—these accommodations make school life easier but do not address the underlying processing problem." The alternative it urges is "correcting the root problem" by targeting foundational language processing in the brain, "similar to advances in dyslexia treatment."
One line of the author’s bio belongs in the story. Hoh is chief executive of EduNational LLC, the company behind Dysolve, a subscription program that uses AI-generated games and is marketed as finding and correcting language-processing problems. Public radio station WGBH profiled the company in 2024. The article recommends an approach; its author leads a company that sells one.
Extended time, assistive technologies, shorter assignments, and testing through oral means—these accommodations make school life easier but do not address the underlying processing problem.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
What the writing research says
Start with the 20 percent. The article cites a 2020 clinical review by Chung, Patel and Nizami, and that review is more careful than the number pulled from it: "Between 10% and 30% of children experience difficulty in writing, although the exact prevalence depends on the definition of dysgraphia." The dependence is the finding. In a French clinical study of children with coordination difficulties (Lopez and Vaivre-Douret), 95 percent were rated as having poor handwriting while 21 to 26 percent met the dysgraphia cutoff on the same instrument. Move the threshold and the count of "affected" children swings several-fold. A prevalence figure for dysgraphia is a decision about where to draw a line, not a census of a discovered condition.
The deeper problem is the promise itself. Correcting an underlying process instead of teaching the skill has been tested in writing for decades, and it is the most consistently failed idea in the field. Santangelo and Graham’s 2016 meta-analysis found that motor training without handwriting practice did not improve handwriting, and an occupational-therapy systematic review concluded that interventions without handwriting practice "were ineffective." Where training an underlying component has been tested head-to-head against practicing the target skill, practice won. A program promising writing gains through an activity that is not writing is making a far-transfer claim, and far-transfer claims keep failing their tests.
What holds up is less glamorous: teach the skill, directly and explicitly. Graham and Santangelo’s 2014 meta-analysis of 53 studies with more than 6,000 students found that direct, systematic spelling instruction improves spelling, that the gains last, and that what children learn in spelling practice shows up in their own writing. Handwriting taught as handwriting improves too. For a child whose writing struggles run deeper than effort, that is the best-evidenced starting point on record.
Key takeaways
- The pitch: A Psychology Today article urges correcting dysgraphia in the brain, not accommodating it.
- The record: Component training without writing practice keeps failing; direct teaching keeps working.
- The disclosure: The author leads the company behind an AI program sold to do what she recommends.
The choice you are actually making
The either/or is false, and the article’s own source says so. The Chung review recommends a three-level plan in which accommodations sit alongside modified assignments and direct teaching of the skill. Extended time on a history test is not surrender; it keeps your child learning history while the writing skills get built separately. Dropping supports because a program promises to make them unnecessary trades a working plan for a prediction.
Our test for any support, and it is our position rather than a research finding: is this building the skill, or replacing the expectation that it gets built? Point the same question at any program that promises correction. Ask what your child practices during a session. If the answer is not writing, not spelling, not handwriting, you are looking at a far-transfer promise, so ask the provider to name the study where their activity improved actual writing.
Coverage of dysgraphia will keep swinging between "accommodate and accept" and "correct the brain." You do not have to pick a camp. Get direct instruction and short, regular practice in spelling and handwriting; keep the accommodations that let the rest of school move; and hold every product that promises the brain will do the rest to the standard the research applies. Your child’s writing grows the way every skill grows: by being taught and practiced.
Between 10% and 30% of children experience difficulty in writing, although the exact prevalence depends on the definition of dysgraphia.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
Your child isn’t broken, and their writing is not waiting on a product to rewire them. The villain in this story is a framing: the idea that a struggling writer carries a hidden defect only a proprietary program reaches, and that ordinary teaching and practice are settling for less. Skills are built, and you are in the strongest position to see them built: direct practice, short sessions, encouragement that holds up on hard days. That is the design behind Learning Success All Access, which pairs foundational skill work with coaching that shows you what to practice with your child and how to keep it going, so the practice the evidence points to actually happens at your kitchen table.
See what All Access gives your child
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- Your child sits no test and gets no score: nothing to schedule, nothing for them to dread
- You do the answering, the AI does the writing, and a person reviews it before it reaches you
- Access all 40+ courses instantly: reading, math, focus, processing and more, with new ones added regularly
Why we use AI, plainly: it writes from a knowledge base our team maintains and audits. We work through it line by line and pull anything the evidence stops supporting. The roadmap you get on Tuesday reflects what we corrected on Monday, and a human still reads it before you do.
Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
Your answers stay yours. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not hand identifiable assessment data to outside AI companies to train their models.
A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
References
- Psychology Today — Dysgraphia: Solving It Via Dyslexia (Coral PS Hoh, August 9, 2026)
- Chung, Patel & Nizami (2020), Translational Pediatrics — Disorder of written expression and dysgraphia: definition, diagnosis, and management
- Graham & Santangelo (2014), Reading and Writing — Does spelling instruction make students better spellers, readers, and writers?
- Santangelo & Graham (2016), Educational Psychology Review — A comprehensive meta-analysis of handwriting instruction
- GBH News — How a New York company uses AI to diagnose and treat dyslexia
