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>Handwriting is, in fact, a great place to drive everyone totally nuts.
Many a happy learner has been made miserable by well
>intentioned "teachers" putting pressure on them. Leave it be. This is
of course very much from the unschooling perspective.

Our family spent 3 years in Germany where it is illegal to home ed so our
dd had to spend 3 years (Gr 1-3) in a school. Going into Gr 1 I knew that
her small motor skills were weak and knew that she did know how to print,
but that it was quite messy. They zoomed through printing and then went on
to script, because in that enviroment beautiful handwriting with a fountain
pen was what they aimed for. Of course she was thrown for a loop and her
script was very messy (which the teacher told her again and again).

When we got back to Canada and were finally able to home ed again I told
her to forget all about script and print for as long as she wanted to. She
printed for about a year and then said she was ready to learn to write. She
already had the skills so when she took off on handwriting it turned out to
be quite beautiful (her own style combining German italic-style with some
Canadian style letters.)
However, when she has to write now (Gr 10) she is still much more
comfortable with printing.

Kathy T from Alberta Canada (mom to Janelle 14 and Katrina 12)