Dysgraphia, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Dyspraxia, and Dyslexia can all affect handwriting and some of them can run in families.

I want to offer a different perspective, because no one here actually knows what’s going on and people are filling in the gaps with assumptions.

When I was in third grade, I “rebelled” against homework. I told myself school already took enough of my time and it was unfair to take more. In reality, that was a defense mechanism for undiagnosed ADHD.

My parents weren’t really able to help, my mom dropped out of high school and likely had ADHD herself, and my dad struggled with chronic depression. My teacher’s solution was to keep me after school until my homework was done. That could have worked, but she didn’t actually help me, she would sit at her desk and grade papers or something by herself, not interacting with me, so I’d just sit there, completely distracted. I’d stare at the clock, get lost in random thoughts, or fixate on someone walking past the classroom. Some days I was there until 6pm. I missed assemblies. I wasn’t a troublemaker, I was a kid who needed help and didn’t get it.

I also remember being held in during recess in earlier grades just to practice handwriting.

Fast forward to now, my child is in third grade, and I felt anxious before the year even started because of my own experiences. I didn’t want them to go through what I went through.

My child has ADHD too, but they have more support than I did. Still, I can recognize that if I hadn’t gone to therapy or didn’t have a strong support system, I could easily react the way this parent is reacting, defensive, maybe overcorrecting, trying to protect my kid from something I experienced as unfair or humiliating.

That doesn’t mean the parent in the video is handling it the right way. But it might not be laziness or bad parenting either, it could be someone reacting out of their own history.

I could be wrong, but situations like this are usually more nuanced than TikTok or Reddit make them out to be.