I recently received Peterson Directed Handwriting to evaluate with my kids and I have made some startling discoveries about myself;). The program is a good program. It has all the research that says how important handwriting is and that it is a learned reflex. I agree, the more you do it (the right way) the more natural it is. The problem for us lay in a couple of areas. First off you need to have the proper set up. It needs to be a straight edge table they work at (not a round kitchen table) with the chair height and desk height at a specific proportion. Also there is the right way to hold the pencil, place the paper etc. While I agree with all of this, it ends up being a lot like school at home.

I made the realization that I don’t like having everything so perfectly layed out for me to implement with out any leeway for me to customize. I also realized that I don’t care about handwriting as much as I thought. It is recommended that you try this for at least a month before you decide it doesn’t work. But in my house that still equals a lot of hours of fighting and for me it wasn’t worth it. Now I will be trying this again with different children (the joy of 4, always a new victim;) and maybe it will work better with a different personality. But I am not sure.

So my over all recommendation? It is a good program. It is obviously set up for either a classroom or some one who does school at home (verus our crazy method). It wasn’t a good fit here but it might work nicely for you.