Episode 186: Dysgraphia and ADHD in children’s books – with Patty DeDurr

The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn Kiel: Before we get started with today’s episode, here’s a short promo for another podcast I’ve been enjoying.

Differently Brained podcast promo begins:

Lachlan: Hello, I’m Lachlan.

Jacinta: And I’m Jacinta.

Lachlan: We host Differently Brained, the podcast where no brain is the same.

Jacinta: Differently Brained is a fortnightly own voices podcast where we interview a neurodiverse guest or a guest who has lived experience with mental health challenges.

Lachlan: You can find us on all good streaming services as well as on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We hope you’ll give us a listen.

Differently Brained podcast promo ends.

Carolyn Kiel: Welcome to Beyond 6 Seconds, the podcast that goes beyond the six second first impression to share the extraordinary stories of neurodivergent people. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel.

On today’s episode I’m speaking with Patty DeDurr, a mom, healthcare worker and award-winning author. She provides educational information and resources for individuals looking for guidance on her publisher’s website, Sensing Greatness. She’s neurodivergent and determined to help reduce stigma surrounding neurodivergency by increasing representation in literature. Patty, welcome to the podcast.

Patty DeDurr: Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here and talk a little bit more about dysgraphia.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, I’m really excited because I think this is the first time that we’ve talked about dysgraphia on the show, so really excited to learn more about that.

So I guess we could start out with the basics. What is dysgraphia? How would you describe that?

Patty DeDurr: Dysgraphia, it is considered a handwriting disability, but it’s so much more than just handwriting. It is, people have difficulty with spatial awareness when they’re writing. There’s irregular spelling. There is just a lot more than just when you think pen to paper handwriting, there’s a lot more to it than just that. People have mental fatigue when they’re writing. If you are, if you have a child that just gets really frustrated or upset when they have to start writing, and their writing just doesn’t look like a typical peer at that age. Dysgraphia is, about five to 20% of the population has dysgraphia. So it is more common than many people think. Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. And you yourself have dysgraphia. And I’d love to learn more about what your experience has been like, you know, growing up with it, even as an adult. So I guess, how did you realize that you have dysgraphia?

Patty DeDurr: So I didn’t realize when I was going through school. I didn’t even realize I had ADHD until my second bout of college. And then when my son was diagnosed about 10 years ago with all the different Ds, like dyslexia, dysnomia, dysgraphia, all of that, I started thinking, his writing looks a lot like my writing and his issues look a lot like my issues!

And I’m a physical therapist assistant, so I work with speech therapists who can do some diagnostic testing for things like dyslexia and dysgraphia. A side note, they cannot do diagnostic testing for dysgraphia if it’s fine motor related, which our family is not fine motor related. And so I was speaking to them and I said, I think that I have this. And then they just did some diagnostic testing, looked at writing that I had did as a child and, and it just all kind of fell in line with, yeah, that’s dysgraphia. Because both my kids have it, you know? So it is genetic, it’s a neurodivergency.

Carolyn Kiel: Mm-hmm. It’s interesting how a lot of adults find out that they are neurodivergent through their children getting diagnosed with a, a form of neurodivergency. So it sounds like that was your experience too.

Patty DeDurr: Yeah, that was, yeah, it was. Yep. And for ADHD and dyslexia, about 59% of the population has dysgraphia. There’s a study, a study that’s been filed that people who have ADHD and autism, about 59% of the population has dysgraphia.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. Yeah, it’s amazing that it is so common, especially I, I know a lot of neurodivergent conditions tend to occur together, so that, it doesn’t surprise me to hear that, but it does surprise me considering that, you know, dyslexia tends to have a, a general, people have a general idea of what that is, but dysgraphia is just something that really isn’t well known or just people aren’t as educated about. So it’s really interesting that it’s so common.

Patty DeDurr: Oh yeah. I think that some people just may not even be aware that are doing the diagnostic testing, that this is something that they can test for. Most neuropsychs should know what dysgraphia is, but even speech therapists who do do the testing for dyslexia, you really have to find someone if you’re doing through, through a speech therapist, you have to find someone who’s familiar with dyslexia and all the other Ds that co-occur with dyslexia as well.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. So since you went through your whole childhood without realizing that you had dysgraphia, like what was that like? Like in school? Like, you know, I can just imagine obviously handwriting and penmanship must have been an incredible challenge, but otherwise, like how, what was that like for you, that experience?

Patty DeDurr: Yeah, so I’m older, so I kind of grew up like pre-technology for a lot of my schooling until about high school time. And in second grade, I remember my teacher would take my handwriting assignment — and there was about three of us in the classroom — she would take our handwriting assignments, and we never knew when she was gonna take it. She would just come and take our assignments, tape ’em to the board, and then our class would go through one by one to judge who had the best handwriting, and then whoever had the best handwriting got like a treat.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, wow. Gee, that’s a lot of pressure.

Patty DeDurr: Yeah. Because you never knew when she was gonna do it.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah.

Patty DeDurr: And at the time, like I always wanted like, oh, just pick me, pick me. I would try so hard and I rarely got picked for having the best handwriting of those, of the individuals. Definitely when we started to do typing more often or using a word processor, it came, it was a lot easier to do writing assignments than it was having to do pen to paper cuz it was just a lot of scratches, a lot of misspellings. A lot of having to look up, back then, look up in the dictionary, like how to spell things correctly or ask someone how to spell things. And, you know, my o’s look like a’s, and my a’s look like u’s and just all that.

Carolyn Kiel: And aside from penmanship, were there other challenges related to dysgraphia that you remember having in school?

Patty DeDurr: A lot of my challenges through school probably had more to do with ADHD than dysgraphia. And a lot of that was just focus and organization and just the, the typical executive function skills that people with ADHD sometimes have difficulties with.

As far as dysgraphia, definitely when I had to do pen to paper, I would just judge myself so harshly. So that was really difficult as well. And trying to keep up doing notes when a teacher was talking was very difficult. I would have to use my friend’s notes all the time because I could not keep up with the teacher when I was having to write notes. And that’s why things like doing guided notes or a note, some type of note accommodation for individuals with dysgraphia is so important in the classroom because it’s very difficult to keep up.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, I can imagine. And especially, you know, when I was in school at that same time before technology, when, you know, they were still teaching us cursive writing up until like, through elementary school and, you know, printing. So yeah, writing was definitely critical as part of that. So, Yeah, quite a challenge.

And you know, you mentioned accommodations and adjustments that can be made for kids in school who have dysgraphia. Tell me a little bit more about that, cuz I’m curious to learn like what kind of accommodations work well with dysgraphia.

Patty DeDurr: The ones that I find to be the most beneficial and for our family and others that have spoken to me as well, is definitely assistive technology. So being able to use a computer that has perhaps when they’re starting typing, word prediction software, kinda like in your phone, how it has the word prediction software, having that with Google Extension program, like Co:Writer or Google Read&Write can be very beneficial as well. And it already, and it has that grammar check for you and it has the spelling check and all that can be so helpful for individuals that have dysgraphia.

And if you’re ever able to scribe for someone, so they talk and you write it for them, it could be really helpful as well, cuz then they can just get their thoughts out without having to really do the frustrating part of having to type or do the frustrating part of having to do speech to text, when a lot of these individuals may have some type of speech impediment when they’re younger as well.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna ask if the technology was speech to text or was typing, but it, it sounds like that there can be challenges probably cuz so many neurodivergencies tend to co-occur that some children may have challenges with that as well.

Patty DeDurr: Yeah, speech to text can be very difficult when they’re younger cuz they can get frustrated, because it will start saying something different than what they’re saying. So it could be extremely frustrating until you get to maybe that middle school or high school level where you’re able to take more time and kind of enunciate. Because it says stuff for me wrong all the time as well, because sometimes I talk with a little bit of a northern accent and it doesn’t always detect things. So it can be a little cumbersome as well.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, yeah, I could see that. Wow. So, you know, we mentioned in your bio that you are really trying to increase representation of neurodivergence in literature. And you are the author of two books. One is focused on ADHD and one is focused on dysgraphia. And they’re children’s books. And, yeah I would love to learn more about those, and what inspired you to write children’s books with neurodivergent characters?

Patty DeDurr: I just would like to always kind of like wrote a book. I think a lot of people who have this idea that they just wanna write a book or have a character that’s like them out there, it’s kind of like that’s how they kind of get started. They don’t feel like the representation is really out there. And that’s with like my first book, the ADHD one, it’s called This Kid Can Hyperfocus. A lot of ADHD books that are out there are kind of focused more on the diagnosis, where this is more focused on like a story about a particular characteristic trait of individuals that have ADHD, which is that hyper-focus ability.

And then for This Llama Can Write, there’s barely any books out there. I think there’s like one other children’s book that has a representation of an individual with dysgraphia, so I just thought it was really important because there was none out there, children’s books that focused on assistive technology for individuals with dysgraphia. So I thought that was really lacking for representation out there as well.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, that’s great. And yeah, I mean, they’re children’s stories and the characters are, I think all the characters are animals. Well, obviously in This Llama Can Write, the llama is the character! But so yeah, they’re short and they’re perfect for kids. And it’s just like a positive and authentic representation of ADHD and dysgraphia. And as you said, it’s a story around the strengths of those as well.

Patty DeDurr: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Well, that’s so cool. And like, what kind of feedback have you gotten on the book so far?

Patty DeDurr: I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback where people really enjoy them. They feel like it’s really familiar with them. They’re like, oh, this sounds a lot like me. I’ve got a lot of that. And, and the llama one as well, for the dysgraphia one, when people are like, oh, this is nice that this message can get out there so people can get more familiar with dysgraphia as well. So it’s been a lot of positive feedback.

Carolyn Kiel: Mm-hmm. That’s cool. And how did you come up with the specific story for each of those books?

Patty DeDurr: I kind of just sat down and just started writing it. It just kind of like flowed out of me. I kind of did a lot of edits. I, with my first book I wrote with like three different editors to kind of get everything kind of meshing up well and get their feedback as well for it.

And then with the llama one, I really wanted the focus to be assistive technology. So I really wanted the story to envelop that perspective. So I had to figure out how to get to that journey, to make people more aware of assistive technology.

Carolyn Kiel: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they’re great stories, and especially This Llama Can Write is a great one around dysgraphia because as you said, there really aren’t any, or maybe one other book that has someone with dysgraphia who’s featured in that in a positive way.

And you also publish a lot of other resources on dysgraphia. Is it hard to find good resources out there for people with dysgraphia?

Patty DeDurr: It can be. There is a couple pages out there that do have some focus on dysgraphia. There’s an organization called Dysgraphia Life that’s does a lot, focuess a lot on dysgraphia. They’re actually going to be doing a study that’s over a couple years focusing on dysgraphia. That’ll be so beneficial cuz that’s going to put a lot more highlight on dysgraphia with that study that they’re doing.

A lot of Decoding Dyslexias may have information about dysgraphia as well, even though their focus is dyslexia. You know, dysgraphia is a comorbidity with dyslexia many times as well. And then there’s my page. I have a lot of, and I have an extensive list of accommodations for dysgraphia, and I’ve written some articles for magazines as well about dysgraphia.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s a great resource. Do you have any other books in the series that you’re planning to create on neurodivergence topics?

Patty DeDurr: Yeah, I have some other books. This series probably will be put on hold for a little bit just cuz I’m gonna focus on a couple other ideas that I have. But they’ll be more books that will be coming out for sure.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s really cool. Yeah. I mean, you have a lot, you have a lot of great resources on your Instagram account, which is how, how we connected. Yeah.

In your day job, you’re also a licensed physical therapist assistant. Did your experience growing up with dysgraphia, ADHD influence your decision to do that? Or was there another drive behind that?

Patty DeDurr: Well, this, this is kind of like my third career, if you think about it. Like, I went through, I went to college, got a degree for one thing. I did, I worked in like an Alzheimer’s study kind of thing, which can be similar. I worked with people with dementia, but I worked more of like the study process of it. And then I kind of moved into like the sales aspect and kind of did more focus more on like business sales. And then I went back for another degree and then I started to become a physical therapist assistant, so I had to get that degree, pass the medical boards. And my mom is the one who kind of said to me, Hey, I think you’d be good at this. Because I love working in the, you know, the, the dementia world and the geriatric world. So my focus is more on that, it’s not pediatrics. I don’t work in that or outpatient. I work more in home health and kind of geriatrics and dementia.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, it’s gotta be really interesting, interesting work to do. That’s great.

Patty DeDurr: Yeah, it’s, it’s a good career path for if you have dysgraphia too, because you can use a lot of medical abbreviations. So if I have to do a quick note for someone and I can’t get to my computer in time, I just do a lot of like two letter medical abbreviations to write like together a sentence.

Carolyn Kiel: Mm-hmm. Oh, that’s good. Yeah, I guess that, that makes sense. That does make it easier. No, that’s great. Cool.

Patty DeDurr: Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Do you have other types of neurodiversity advocacy that you do? Or is the, the writing the main one?

Patty DeDurr: The writing is kinda the main one. I do have a lot of people that reach out to me because they want me to help them with their IEPs and stuff. I don’t do that. So I, I am gonna be creating like some kind of resource that will have different advocates from different states that people could reach out to if they do need help with their IEPs. I try to help as much as I can and I give ’em guidance on it. And I do that all for free. And I’ve done that here locally for a long time too, cuz people reach out to me cuz they, they know that I’ve been able to get certain things in place that they have had a hard time with.

And then I’ve done stuff with Decoding Dyslexia here locally as well. I helped to organize a couple 5Ks for them as well as a silent auction. And things like that as well.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s great. Yeah, it’s great to be able to help in that way, even if it’s not your area of expertise, but it sounds like you’re creating resources that will help people get the information that they need, and that’s really great.

Patty DeDurr: Yes. Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Very cool. So, yeah. Patty, like how can people get in touch with you or if mainly if they wanna learn more about your books or the other types of resources that you have available?

Patty DeDurr: You can find my books on Amazon and all other platforms as well, including my own website if you want to get a signed book. On the different social media platforms, I’m mainly on Facebook and Instagram, and I’m Sensing Greatness on both of those platforms.

Carolyn Kiel: Okay, great. Yeah. I’ll put a link to your website and your books and your social media accounts in the show notes so that people can click on it from there.

Patty DeDurr: Yeah, cuz I’ve created a lot of accommodations lists besides just dysgraphia as well, if people wanted to take a look at those as well.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, that’s awesome. That sounds great. Yeah, we’ll definitely link that in the notes.

Is there anything else that you’d like our listeners to know or anything that they can help or support you with?

Patty DeDurr: Well this is kind of a side note, but I know a lot of people reach out to me after they got their kids the dysgraphia diagnosis and they’ll say things like, we’ve been doing OT for a few years and we haven’t seen any difference. And I would say if there’s any OTs, occupational therapists that are out there listening, I would strongly suggest them looking into a little bit of assistive technology. And they could look into helping children in that aspect, instead of just doing all pen to paper type stuff. They can start looking more onto assistive technology and helping children that way as well. Because that’s completely billable working with stuff like that, because it’s an IADL for them to work like that.

Carolyn Kiel: Okay. Yeah, that’s a great sort of different path to take and it sounds like that will help a lot of kids who are really struggling and, you know, the assistive technology sometimes is a better route for some kids than just pen to paper practice all the time. Yeah, no, that’s great.

Awesome. Yeah. Well, Patty, thank you so much for being on the show. It was really great learning more about dysgraphia with you. And yeah, congratulations on the success of your books and looking forward to seeing more resources and writing from you in the future.

Patty DeDurr: Well, thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

Carolyn Kiel: Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help me spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend. Give it a shout out on your social media, or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of my episodes and sign up for my free newsletter at beyond6seconds.net. Until next time!