• An intelligent child who fails at school.
• Trouble with one or more of these: maths, spelling, writing or reading.
• Knows maths or spelling one day but forgotten the next.
• Trouble distinguishing between left and right, up and down, front and back.
• Does well in some things but unexpectedly poorly at others.
• Difficulty stopping and moving to a new activity when doing something they like, or have done successfully before.
• Is a quiet child who bothers nobody in the classroom but does not learn.
• Over-reacting in situations.
• Prefers to play with children younger than themselves.

With dyslexic dysgraphia, spontaneously written work is illegible; copied work is fairly good and spelling is bad.

Motor dysgraphia is due to deficient fine motor skills, poor dexterity, poor muscle tone, and/or unspecified motor clumsiness. Generally, written work is poor to illegible, even if copied by sight from another document.
Letter formation may be acceptable in very short samples of writing, but this requires extreme effort and an unreasonable amount of time to accomplish, and cannot be sustained for a significant length of time. The learning of keyboarding skills is often a solution for these students.

Treatment for dysgraphia varies and may include treatment for motor disorders to help control writing movements.
Occupational therapy should be considered to correct an inefficient pencil grasp, strengthen muscle tone, improve dexterity, and evaluate eye-hand co-ordination.
Dysgraphic children should also be evaluated for ambidexterity, which can delay fine motor skills in early childhood.

• Did you struggle to learn maths as a child, even in primary school, and despite extra help?
• Have you always had trouble with fast recall of basic addition or multiplication? (e.g. 8+7=?, 7×6=?)
• Do you find that numbers sometimes seem like meaningless symbols to you?
• Do you have trouble estimating, for instance, how much your supermarket shop is going to cost or about how much 236 + 564 is?
• Do you struggle to understand everyday numbers such as statistics in the newspaper or your financial statements?

If you answer yes to all or most of these questions as an adult, you could have dyscalculia.
For an official diagnosis, you would need a professional cognitive assessment.

• Children with dyscalculia fall behind early in primary school, and may develop anxiety or a strong dislike of maths.
• In secondary school they are likely to struggle to pass maths and science courses and find their career options reduced.
• As adults they may earn less, and have difficulties managing their everyday finances.