OVERCOMING HANDWRITING ‘WHOAS’!
There was a time when I bought into the whole ‘don’t make ‘em do it if they don’t want to’ philosophy. My son Ricky is a youngster that wouldn’t do a thing unless I made it a game or an otherwise ‘fun’ activity. Of course, fun being a relative term, my ideas of fun ended up in the ‘don’t make ‘em do it’ category. This made home educating him a HUGE challenge!
The other day I was talking to a friend about her son’s resistance to handwriting. I find that this resistance is prevalent in many children and is not centered only in children with disabilities. I told this perplexed mom that I had been right where she is with my son and began to share with her about the strategies that she could use to help her son overcome his resistance to writing. As we talked I realized that it is as much an opportunity for character training as it is an exercise in handwriting!
I thought of the stories in the Bible that talk of those who persisted in reaching a goal no matter the difficulty: the woman with the issue of blood that had to push through the crowd to touch the hem of His garment; the young men that went so far as to tear up the roof of the house to find healing for their friend; Paul’s perseverance for the cause of Christ. How will a child ever learn to persevere when things are difficult, if he is never taught how? How can he learn we must to do things that we just don’t enjoy doing? Resistance is not just a learning issue, it is an issue of the heart. Perseverance is a character strength that is necessary to further the work God has planned. As you learn the steps to improve handwriting, remember, this is not just handwriting but a lesson in perseverance.
Below are some strategies that may help you encourage your reluctant writer and improve handwriting skills. Using copy work as your basis for handwriting, you will help improve time on task, hand strengthening and stamina, correct pencil grip, letter formation, and last, but probably the most important, perseverance.
1. Copy work
Copy work is one of the most important activities your child can do. It helps them identify important pieces of information, piques interest and improves handwriting while teaching perseverance. A strategy one might use for those very reluctant writers is to start a notebook that holds all of the copy work that
is done. You can use any type of notebook system; spiral bound notebook, journal, three ring binder with document protectors (my personal favorite), or any other system you find that fits your child’s personal style.
Once you have chosen a notebook method, choose a topic that is interesting to the child. It is even better if the child can choose the topic himself, as it will promote interest and encourage the handwriting process. You may want to choose a Bible passage or a line from a favorite book. You, or the child, will select the length of the copy work depending on the age of the child and their resistance to writing. Copy work can be done as early as kindergarten or first grade, or as soon as the child learns letter formation. For younger or more resistant writers one or two sentences will be sufficient to start. One sentence may be easy for us, but will seem impossible to a child that is resistant to writing.
Finally, pick up a timer from the store. We use an LCD timer that can be restarted for the same amount of time without re-entering the time. You will probably have to let your child spend a week playing with it before he will actually use it. But once the newness wears off, it will be a very useful tool for copy work! Using the timer is easy. For young or reluctant writers set it for 5 minutes. It is not as important how much is done during the 5 minutes as it is that the child works diligently and does his best work. Give him a cheat sheet so he can be sure of proper letter formation. Don’t let the child use a pen as it doesn’t allow for corrections without having to start all over. Starting over may cause frustration. Each day, praise his efforts and put the work in his notebook (or let him write in the journal a new page each day.) Don’t write multiple entries on the same page, you want to encourage the child by letting him see that his fluency and letter formation is getting better over time. After a week of writing go back through the notebook with your child and praise him on his efforts and improvement (no matter how small). The next week, use the timer again increasing the time to about 8 minutes. Continue to increase the time each week until the child writes easily for 15-20 minutes without complaint. This will improve stamina, hand strength, and perseverance.
2. Physiology of Writing
Another important part of writing is the positioning of hand and paper. The proper grip of the pencil is called the tripod position. The pencil should rest on the side of the middle finger near the first knuckle while the pointer finger and thumb grip the pencil with their tips. The hand should rest relaxed on its side
while holding the pencil to the paper. The pencil should stick up at an angle about forty-five degrees from the hand. It may be necessary to pick up a good positioning pencil grip. Hand stress is prominent when hand position is not correct. There are also three sided pencils that can be used. Smaller hands need smaller pencils and larger spaces to write on. Use a wider rule and over time decrease the rule width to the appropriate width for your child.
Paper position is also important. For right handed children, position the top of the paper at a slant to the left so the edge of the paper is parallel to the resting arm. The arm and hand should be straight. For left handed writers, there are two ways that are taught for positioning. The first one is the exact opposite of that for the right handed child. The other is to position the top of the paper at a slant to the left and bend the wrist around to see what is written, writing in an upside down manner. Either is correct.
Another benefit for your reluctant writer is hand strengthening exercises. You can use clay or a stress ball to strengthen the hand by having the child squeeze the clay with the whole hand and with the writing thumb and fingers. This exercise increases strength and stamina as well as isolating the specific muscles that need to function together in the handwriting process. Stringing beads, hand sewing and other fine motor and eye-hand coordination activities will also help improve handwriting.
3. Style
One of my many soap box issues (and I have many) is changing handwriting styles after 3 years of instruction! Our culture teaches manuscript in grades K-3 and then changes mid-stream and teaches cursive and expects our children to become fluent hand-writers. Unfortunately, for most of our children, this is a difficult transition at best. The experts are now seeing this is a terrible problem for our typical children, let alone our children with learning issues. Whether you start with printing, D’Nealian, calligraphy, italics, or cursive, don’t change mid stream. You might consider working on traditional cursive as a print style and later teach the child to connect the letters. If you have an older child that has already learned to print, teach him to sign his name in cursive and allow him do everything else in print. Encourage neat printing during the writing time. If the child wants to learn cursive or calligraphy later, then use the same technique and teach him cursive or calligraphy. You may choose to start with italics and use it for the entire school career. If you are starting with a young child a good
place to start handwriting skills is with large muscle movement drawing letters in the air with arms and hands. Gradually move to smaller and smaller formation of letters such as drawing letters with hands and fingers in sand, paint or pudding. Finally, move to large single letters on a regular size piece of paper with a pencil or crayon (no lines), then to primary lined paper (with raised lines if necessary) and eventually to regular lined paper.
BHF Fluent Handwriting is a handwriting program available that starts with detached lettering in a cursive type style and then moves to an attached lettering using the same letters taught in the detached style. It comes on CD-ROM that allows you to print pages for practice or add your own text for printing copy work. Some of the lettering is a bit odd, but a wonderful program to use. We are using basic cursive for the print without connecting and will learn to connect the letters later. This has been time consuming, as basic cursive is not on the computer, but it has been well worth the time and effort involved for our youngest child.
“So,” you may ask, “will this make my child love to write?” This I cannot answer. But, if I were to attempt it, my answer would be “probably not.” If you are consistent, patient, encouraging, and have appropriate expectations then you will see improvement. You should see improvement in stamina, legibility, and fluency. Yet, I believe that the most important lessons learned using this method are perseverance, obedience, and a lesson of the heart: to press toward the mark of our calling.
