Oh, I would have a COW if they were not letting Wiz use the tech in his IEP. HIM refusing it was one thing - and he was NOT allowed to "relax" the standards when he stopped using it because he chose to. School NEVER pushed that on him. They were as unhappy as I was about it. They watned to lower the standards for his papers but my dad was in charge of IEPs by then and he said there was no way in H that it was going to happen. If he insisted on writing by hand then he could provide the same quality/quantity as when he typed. If school had taken it away it would have been a different story altogether though.
thank you has had Occupational Therapist (OT) to help build up hand strength and with writing tasks for several years. It has done a LOT for him. He still has problems but doesn't actively avoid writing/scissors/anything to do with holding a pen/crayon/etc....
If your child is having a lot of pain that interferes he needs an Occupational Therapist (OT) assessment (pref private as they are much more thorough) and he may need to see an orthopedist or rheumatologist. I had a LOT of hand problems and handwriting problems. Only bad grades I really had were in handwriting. By jr high I was diagnosis'd with arthritis in my hands and teachers who gave me fits got to deal with my mother. One teacher still refused to believe it in spite of seeing reports so my doctor called her and ripped her a new one. She still gave me problems but stopped reducing my grades by a full letter grade for bad handwriting (it was a biology class). She also refused to accept any typed assignments, which was idiotic.
Try having him use the computer at home. On long assignments have him dictate to you while you type (if you are decent at typing). We did this wehn Wiz was younger - I never changed his writing - typed it word for word as he said it and then made him correct it for spelling, grammar, etc.... Some teachers didn't like it, some refused to believe I didn't do it for him, but 1-2 meetings and seeing samples of MY writing which is quite different than his usually changed that. For the few who tried to not accept it I put it into the IEP and then when they had problems I told them they were not allowed to have problems or lower his grade because it was in his IEP that it was OK. I fought hard to get that in some years, but it paid off.
Get some software at home to help him learn keyboarding and give him an incentive for learning it. It will pay off in the long run as he will be able to type his own papers, etc...
I would NOT NOT NOT fight homework at home if they cannot get him to do classwork at school. You have many more battles to fight at home and if his entire day is a fight about school assignments things will just get worse and worse and worse. Kids often have very few hours at home, esp with the entire family. Adding long homework battles takes even more away from this and often just burns kids out to the point they refuse to do schoolwork, esp the difficult children. I know our schools at one time assigned 1 hr of homework per class per day - and kids had 6 or 7 classes. It was high school when this was the policy and the dropout rate SKYROCKETED. Kids didn't have time for sports, clubs, etc, families never spent time together, grades plummetted and a LOT of kids dropped out, took the GED and went to college with-o graduating high school. As soon as this was realized the teachers were forced to stop giving this much homework. It SOUNDED nice but was just too much. It also caused some real problems for local businesses because most of the high school kids had to quit their jobs. So the foundation that supports our school district lost a LOT of $$ from local businesses because they had to pay the college kids a lot more to do the same jobs. Not fair, but reality.
I am sorry this is such a problem for him. Lots of times it happens because a disorder called dysgraphia, which is a learning disability in writing. Many people with dysgraphia are talented artists, but different parts of the brain are involved in writing letters and drawing pictures. Not all, but lots of the ones I know/am related to. You might do some research on dysgraphia.