Dysgraphia refers to "difficulty with writing," and like Dyslexia, can be acquired later in life, or be developmental in origin.  Children, students, and adults with dysgraphia may have difficulty with every aspect of the writing process, beginning with the generation of ideas.  However, handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, and the organization of information and ideas across sentences and paragraphs are often particularly difficult.   Because fluent written composition requires the simultaneous management of multiple tasks, difficulties with specific tasks, such as handwriting and spelling, can make the process of writing both effort-intensive and highly frustrating.  This can lead to aversion/avoidance and/or anxiety, which further complicate the problem: A child who won't write has little opportunity to benefit from writing practice.  Some individuals with dysgraphia also have accompanying issues that need to be diagnosed and addressed separately, such as fine motor delays, visuomotor coordination problems, difficulties with sequential processing, attention deficits, or language processing issues.   Dysgraphia can also co-occur with reading or math learning disabilities. 

However, difficulty with writing and/or writing avoidance, particularly in young children, can certainly have causes other than true dysgraphia.  For example, children with significant deficits in divided attention, or the ability to mentally multi-task, may have trouble balancing the multiple tasks involved in fluent writing, particularly while still in the process of learning the component skills.  A thorough assessment is an important first step in finding the cause(s) of writing difficulty and facilitating intervention.