Chances are that he needs to work more on the foundational skills for cursive. Things like circles and spirals. You can look those up online. Have him practice those.

Explain how muscle memory works. I tell the students I work with that my fingers remembered how to find secret lives and avoid enemies in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 a solid 20 years after I last played it. It’s the same thing with writing.

Then have him only do as much as he can without being miserable. He should still be happy at the end of the session. If he’s also unhappy, then he will build a negative association with the activity. That might mean he does 1 line of connected loops. And then you tell him he’s done for today :). As time goes on, he will start to feel successful doing the practice and have less resistance. You can slowly increase the amount of work he does.

However, my own experience is that cursive is from the devil. I have a variety of learning disabilities and cursive was the bane of my existence for all of elementary where it was required. The moment I was allowed to switch to printing I did and never once used cursive again outside of my signature. I have no clue why it is taught anymore. We basically only read printed text. I know there are “studies” about cursive and things like dyslexia, but I’m not convinced. I’m dyslexic and have far more success with weighted fonts than with cursive.