| Teaching kids to write is one of the biggest | | | | step back and allow them to write without over |
| challenges that a homeschooler faces. Just how do | | | | correcting, modifying, or rewriting--in other words, |
| we get those little guys to wax eloquently on paper? | | | | taking over? |
| Doesn't it make your hair bristle when they groan, | | | | But Dianne, I hear you thinking. How can I teach my |
| "Ah, Mom, I hate writing!" | | | | children to improve their writing skills? I want them to |
| We try everything to make it work. Don't we make | | | | do their best. Perhaps the child's best is far below |
| them fill the page? Don't we circle every error, | | | | your comfortable standard. Perhaps the standard that |
| correct every misspelled word, harp about their | | | | makes you comfortable is unrealistically high. The |
| grammar? What more can we do? Unfortunately, | | | | worst thing we can do is to do the work for the |
| sometimes we do too much. Let's consider the | | | | child. |
| following example to illustrate what I mean. | | | | When a child writes a story, a report or a math test, |
| Yanking the garment from your hand, the toddler | | | | the end product should look as if a child wrote it. It |
| says, "Me do it! I do it myself." From a young age, | | | | should sound as if a child wrote it. A child's story with |
| children express independence by attempting | | | | an adult voice begs the obvious question: "How did |
| grown-up tasks. They want to dress themselves, | | | | that happen?" It simply shouldn't sound that polished. |
| make a sandwich, set the table. We smile at their | | | | There should be mistakes because children have not |
| childish efforts. Colors don't match, the sandwich is | | | | yet mastered spelling, grammar, punctuation, word |
| sloppy and the table setting haphazard. A wise parent | | | | usage and style. If a story pops out of the printer |
| accepts the creation, resisting the urge to fix it. I | | | | perfectly formatted, paragraphs correct, punctuation |
| confess that I wasn't always a wise parent. | | | | flawless from commas to semi-colons, complicated |
| How many times have I stepped in to help? "Here, | | | | sentence structure and figures of speech lined up like |
| Honey, let Mommy help." That statement is the kiss | | | | motor homes at a trade show, there's something |
| of death to the child's creativity and independence. | | | | wrong. |
| When children complete a task with an adult-modified | | | | Like Grandma, we all know that there is no way the |
| result, they know as well as everyone else that their | | | | child produced that piece of work herself. The sad |
| creativity was lost in the shuffle. Grandma knows | | | | thing is that we broadcast our embarrassment of our |
| when the child carries that perfectly decorated angel | | | | children's imperfect work when we clean up all the |
| food cake to the table while you gush ecstatically, | | | | errors in our desperate attempt to make the writing |
| "Just look what Zelda made, all by herself," that | | | | better. The truth is that it isn't better; it's just altered. |
| there's not a chance that she actually did. Everyone | | | | By us. What's sadder is that we aren't even doing it |
| in the room, including Zelda, knows that there's a lot | | | | to make the child look better. We are mostly |
| more Mommy in that cake than Zelda, but no one | | | | concerned with how we look. |
| admits it. | | | | In a future article, I will share some more tips on |
| Are you seeing the similarity? Now let's apply this | | | | how we can encourage our children to do their best |
| principle to teaching children to write. How can we | | | | at writing without taking over. |