Learning to love writing - suggestions needed.

[maggenpye]

My gorgeous, brilliant and intensely stubborn nine year old hates writing.

I know it’s not uncommon. I know that the main problem is that her brain works faster than her hands (she admits this herself and I remember it from my own childhood).

What I’d really appreciate is some suggestions for helping her.

Because she is bright (attending a school for gifted children one day and her regular school with extension classes four days) she finds it incredibly frustrating that she can’t master this skill immediately - as she did with reading, maths and most academic work.

I’ve had limited success with analogies - she took a while to ride her bike without training wheels, but now loves it. Same with skateboarding, plasticine modeling, computer games (she’s a better platformer games than I am), soccer and roller-blades.

She knows that this isn’t a skill in and for itself, but just a tool to attain other goals - and this is the closest I’ve been to a breakthrough in her thinking.

She’s so freaking close to getting this, when she writes out her spell- a-thon words (40), she says herself that she stops *thinking *about writing and just does it. But then the next day we’re back to “writing’s hard and boring and just not worth the effort.”

Calligraphy is a neat idea, but she knows it has little practical application. It also fails to address the ‘thinks faster than the pen’ issue, which really seems to be the core problem.

Any dopers have any ideas on how to let her enjoy the act of writing? Or at least suggestions to make practice interesting and appealing?

Please?

[Marley23]

Writing is tough for kids that way. I was about to suggest you teach her to type because that cuts down on the speed issue and can allow you to write with less effort, but I guess she’d have to pick up that skill, too. Maybe you can just encourage her to complete her thoughts before she puts the pen on the paper? She might feel like she’s struggling less that way.

[Nava]

I tend to trip over my tongue due to that “thoughts faster than tongue” effect, but can’t remember that as a problem for writing. I never thought of writing as a skill in itself, so much as a tool which would let me do Other Stuff. For example, writing my Christmas letter was important in that it made it more likely to get gifts I actually liked, as opposed to “stuff someone has decided girls my age like.”

Caligraphy, now that was a bitch. Years later I discovered that there were two different sets of caligraphy books, “English letter” and “French letter;” we did “French,” where the circles are round and the vertical lines are vertical, but my natural handwriting is slanted, which would have fitted “English” much more easily.

Writing in order to be able to store information, that was cool with me. Writing in order to help my dyslexic “student” learn to read, that was real good (for most subjects we’d get paired, those who got the subject best with those who had problems). Writing in order to make Mother Garcia happy, da barfies.

What is she writing? Does she enjoy reading? What would she find cool to be able to retrieve after she’s written it? Do you write shopping lists? Maybe she can “help Mommy by writing the shopping list” while Mommy checks the pantry for items needed.

[Harriet_the_Spry]

I do think you should teach her to keyboard. My education involved a truly disproportionate amount of time devoted to writing by hand, especially cursive. * And if I’m finding it archaic, imagine what that means to her generation. Typing will also give her another way to engage with things like spelling that she does need to learn at that age. But if she always has atrocious handwriting it can truly be no big deal in the end. Even classroom notetaking can be done on a laptop now, or lectures recorded to listen to and transcribe key points later. If she only masters one of the two skills, typing or writing by hand, I think typing will serve her better throughout life.

She probably doesn’t have this, but there is a learning disability called “dysgraphia.” If this is a real problem holding her back you could get her tested for that.

• Always, “write it in cursive now because in the next grade you’ll be required to write it in cursive.” What they leave out is that outside of school, unless you become a schoolteacher, NO ONE wants to read your freakin’ cursive.

[brujaja]

I was in gifted classes throughout grade school. I have the same problem; my thoughts go faster than my hand can. PLUS I’m left-handed, and writing really, really makes my hand hurt. I never much liked to have to write because it was a drag, but I always had a lot to say.

With the advent of the computer age, I feel so freed! I just finished a 17-page story; I have a page on Associated Content with a respectable readership of 7000 or so; when I was doing a MySpace blog I had a couple hundred readers a week. Made me feel really good.

Mind you, I never did learn to touch type. I just hunt-n-peck really fast!

Not sure if it’s writing per se or “penmanship” that she doesn’t like doing; but if it’s just writing and it’s okay to type/ word process it, by all means, teach her to do so.

There is a really, really cool program I got my son when he was little that they still make – it’s called “Kid Works Deluxe”. You can write a story, illustrate it, design a cover, and then it will print out on the pages in such a way that you can fold them up into a book! (and the pages will be in the right order too.)

Plus, it will read your story back to you in a variety of bug voices. Big fun!

(pelican pelican bird bird bird bird!)

[maggenpye]

Thanks everyone.

More clarification. She loves reading, has been a confident reader since age four.

She already types (still slower than her handwriting, but she loves the ability to edit).
It’s frustrting for both of us - like Nava suggested, she writes out shopping lists with zeal and flair - because that’s helping. She’s got several levels of handwriting, the really nice but painfully slow style, the middle ground (which is what I’m trying to promote) and the “I hate this, so I’ll do it badly” style that is causing issues. She can write and write well, it’s just the almost daily exercise of convincing her that it’s worthwhile that is getting us both down.

I can’t afford to get her a laptop (or one for me, and I’d damn well *use * it!),so she does need to have hadwriting skills, for her own notes on story ideas and jokes, for diary entries while she’s away with relatives and just for the ability to share her brilliant ideas without having to remember all of them all the time.

She’ll hear all these reasons and agree. Similar to Marley23’s suggestion, she’ll even write out song lyrics to help herself learn her part of a show, knowing that it gets her closer to the "writing is as automatic as riding a bike’ stage. She revels in the difference between the first and last verse as her confidence increases. This is also the reason she’s writing out her list of spelling words daily, it was her idea to combat the ‘forgot where the sentence was going’ problem.

Then the next day, we start again from “It’s hard and boring and I hate it.”

I appreciate your help and ideas.
Brujaja, good to know you felt the same. I can remember the frustration of not writing fast enough, but I dealt with it by writing lots more and I was lucky enough to have a teacher who insisted that we practice precise, elegant writing - he gave it value.
Harriet the Spy(loved that book), funnily enough, she finds cursive easier. It really seems to be that if she can’t be perfect immediately, she’ll loathe the whole exercise.

She’ll get there, eventually. I have no doubts about that. She’s got too many great ideas to let them all fade into the ether. But, as her mother, I want to fix this - now.

[gwendee]

Is there a reason that her stories or diaries need to start as text only? If she’s having thoughts faster than she can write them maybe she could sketch on a portion of the page or jot single words in the margin to capture the ideas and then go back and flesh them out in writing afterwards?

My son is now 10 and up until the middle of this school year getting him to write his vocabulary sentences involved a lot of whining of “but it takes soooo long” and “it’s tooo hard”. a few months ago I noticed a remarkable change in his pennmanship. His handwriting became a whole lot smaller and neater, and the resistence I wonder if it’s as simple as development of finer fine motor skills.

[lobotomyboy63]

John Holt wrote an essay called How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading. He went on to say that we often don’t get good quality writing because they don’t write enough— teachers feel they have to grade everything the kid writes and English teachers are swamped.

His suggestion, which some teachers use as a warm-up, is to ask them to write private papers. These are papers not to be graded or even read by the teacher. That allows them to 1) make as many mistakes as they want, 2) use any vocabulary they want, and 3) write about things that teachers might frown upon. It’s sacred—these are private papers.

He has them write for ten minutes straight. If they can’t think of anything to write about, they just write. It might be,

I’m kind of tired today. I didn’t sleep much last night. My baby sister was crying. She cries a lot. But I like my baby sister she’s so fun to be around and someday when she stops crying we can do lots of fun things together like this weekend we’re going to the park.

(I.e. they find things to write about just by getting started. I switched to a run-on for dramatic effect, showing that.)

The payoff is that if they’re writing about things they like and feel strongly about, they’ll put more effort in and it won’t seem like work. We adults are no different. Here in the dope, we try to bring a lot of force to our arguments, to choose words carefully, to write clearly, and all that.

Like I said, this is often treated as a warm up. Once they have their juices flowing, they’re generating ideas and have things to say about a topic you give them.

In a similar vein, you could give her a diary. And if she gets really stuck you can give her fun, silly topics like “The day mommy got in trouble” or “The day a nine-year old got elected president.”

Too often we’re caught in the micro- by which I mean, “You spelled this wrong, forgot a comma, didn’t capitalize,” etc. That really stymies kids: let them focus on the macro-, getting ideas on paper and organizing them. The micro- will come with time.

[lynne-42]

Hi, maggenpye, I am a specialist teacher and author in gifted education and am very familiar with the problem you talk about. I have dealt with it often and even write all my extension material - used in America and other countries around the world as well as here - with this aspect specifically in mind. I have instigated the following method with many highly gifted students I have worked with online to America. Writing or typing will hit the same issue.

The problem is that writing is being linked to thinking and they are asynchronous in terms of speed. So you need to separate them. Sounds hard? No, it’s easy. Writing is a mechanical tool - so outsource it. You (or any other adult) act as scribe initially. These are the steps which have worked for lots of my students, usually with their parents, over the years. I have used them with young kids right through to my 18 year old senior physics students!

Stage 1. You take dictation - word for word - of whatever your daughter wants to write. You do not interrupt to edit as you go - that interrupts her flow of thinking . You are just being her hands (that’s easier to say than do!). Then she can work from your written notes. Some teachers object and say the parent is helping too much. If you have a teacher who accepts that you are not adding any editorial to the work, they will accept it typed or hand written by you.

Note: work which is not thought-ridden, such as spelling lists, should continue to be handwritten. She needs both skills - just not at the same time at this age.

Stage 2. You take dictation, but instead of it being the finished product you take point form and she then expands it to the full written project. This half-way stage is an invaluable transition. Don’t rush it. For some kids, I never went past this in really creative work which was in their area of passion. I sometimes get someone to do this for me when I have a flood of ideas for a book. Even adults have the “hand is slower than the brain” issue!

Stage 3. She will learn to scribble her ideas in a rushed, shorthand format to use as her guide to write, or type, things out fully. The reason this stage needs to be handwritten is that ideas don’t flow linearly - we go back and cross out, or put arrows from one idea to another - that’s much too slow (or impossible) on a computer. Eventually she will do this at the speed she can think - well, near enough.

Stage 4. In most situations, she will then be able to write as she thinks, or type. This may be a year or two down the track, or longer. In times of extreme intellectual excitement (academics in the field will call it ‘flow’ and refer to the research of Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi) then she may still call on a scribe or voice recorder. This is the high which comes when you are really onto a good thing and your brain is just flowing with it. It is an experience which needs to be cultivated and hence techniques to avoid the handwriting issue should be developed for all creative people.

The key is that you have separated the fun of thinking from the drudge of handwriting or typing which are both skills which are still requiring the distraction of co-ordination and getting muscles to do things they aren’t yet fully developed for. Gifted students think faster, but also to more depth and at greater length - especially when working in their area of passion. Having something slowing that down and constantly interruption will lead to a resentment of the skill which is causing the hold-up. So you need to break that link.

Just a point on typing versus handwriting. I was instrumental in the revolutionary (back then) program of requiring laptop computers for every student in the school nearly 20 years ago when some of the schools here adopted a school-wide laptop program - the first to do so in the world. The students still needed to handwrite and still did a great deal. Laptops will not replace handwriting ever in education - long term research now shows that.

If you have any more questions, I would gladly answer them. I have been working in gifted education for thirty years now and it is my passion. I happen to leave tonight for the UK to work on my next book, so will only have irregular access, but I will be checking in!

Good luck!

[maggenpye]

Gwendee & Lobotomyboy63, thanks - She’s already making those incremental leaps of ability and if asked to draw, will spend hours doing that and write nothing at all. She does a 10 min diary every day in school, which is what actually brought this to my attention. She sees that 10 minutes as a punishment from her teacher.

lynne-42: Thank you so very much for this. I’ve printed out your post and will read it and make a plan based on it. Some of your points are very close to what I’ve tried, but I can see where I’ve missed vital steps - I’ve been asking her to write bullet points to work up her reports, with limited success. I’ve taken her dictation, but not regularly or with a free conscience (I won’t be discussing this with her regular teacher, but will bring on board her ‘gifted’ teacher as we’re already discussing this issue - pick my battles).

Oh, do I recognise that ‘flow’! I’ve never appreciated how lucky I was that I played code games and developed my own verions of shorthand as a kid. But I guess that’s why I see this as something I *must * help my kid get through.

We had the conversation a couple of days ago (exploring the idea that writing is a tool rather than a goal) where I said that my book ideas had to be handwritten because of exactly the reasons you said here:
[QUOTE=lynne42]
ideas don’t flow linearly - we go back and cross out, or put arrows from one idea to another - that’s much too slow (or impossible) on a computer
[/QUOTE]

Thank you again, this is exactly the information I needed. May I please share your post with both my mother, who is a teacher’s aide and assisting children in all levels in writing, and Jenn’s Gifted school teacher, so we can work out a plan together?

[lynne-42]

[QUOTE=maggenpye]

Thank you again, this is exactly the information I needed. May I please share your post with both my mother, who is a teacher’s aide and assisting children in all levels in writing, and Jenn’s Gifted school teacher, so we can work out a plan together?
[/QUOTE]

Please share it with anyone you like. It is something I talk about publicly when I speak at gifted education conferences here and in the US. If you feel a teacher needs some kind of qualifications to back my suggestions should you chose to advocate them, you can link to my website from my SD profile and there find that I am highly qualified in the field.

I am delighted that you find my ideas useful.

[maggenpye]

Thanks again. Because of her clever little brain, the kid can talk herself out of achieving just as easily as she can read a book or de-construct a misleading advert.

Her current teacher is lovely and supportive in many ways, but has just come from a school where she had to be very, very strict in order to control her class. After four years of indulgent teachers, I think it’s good that my kid finally has one who can’t be manipulated or distracted, so we’ll do this work independently. Sometimes we all have to run our own race and let the bureaucracy lie - and horribly mix metaphors at the same time.

I’ve shown your post to my mum and she’s as excited as I am. Having an actual plan will take our frustration right out of the equation and let us concentrate on what the kid needs. Mum (as I thought she would) can can also see applications for her own students.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed,

[maggenpye]

Update - I got called into class to speak with the regular teacher after school today. She wanted to raise her concerns about the kid’s writing, specifically with the kid’s attitude towards writing.

So I explained that I’m not only aware of the situation, but have been actively seeking help since I’d run out of ideas (this is one area where self-teaching sucked). I’ll be passing on the plan to her on Monday so it looks like there’ll be a combined and co-ordinated effort to get the kid past what she is now calling ‘the log jam’.

The kid herself has read the plan - she’s quite relieved that this isn’t just her problem, it’s a gifted kid thing. When I tell her that, it’s just Mum being kind, when an independent person says it, it *must *be true! She’s off right now, doing a fair copy of a poem she worked on last month.

Oddly, we were talking about this poem on the way home - I’d said how it was something she wrote by herself and edited until she got it right. She said that she only fixed what I’d told her to fix, but I remembered (luckily) that when she read it to me, she explained one line “that really means this other thing”. I said that maybe the explanation could be the line, so she changed them over (using her own words) then I asked if two lines could be better swapped around and she agreed. The poem is still all her own words.

Even that ‘log jam’ phrase may be a huge leap forward - the writing isn’t the problem, the giant flood of ideas all trying to get out at the same time is the problem. Better writing skills and tricks (notes/shortcuts) will *help *with the problem.

Phew.

[lobotomyboy63]

Do you think the “magnetic poetry” stuff would appeal to her? I mean, those little magnets with words written on them? You pull out words randomly, then arrange them.

That’s one activity that would eliminate the spelling issue, might free her up to look at bigger compositional themes.

[maggenpye]

Great idea, but I’ve shown her various styles and she’s just not interested.

We’ve done a couple of exercises, a diary entry where I took the dictation (too slow for her liking) and she wrote it out. She was very impressed with the result - her words in her writing without the attendant frustration.

Then today, she wanted to write a letter - all by herself. Frustration! She hasn’t eliminated all problems immediately, how dare the universe do this to her!

I got her to take a break, offered various options (dictation, keywords etc). She calmed down and decided to take her time, writing out one line at a time in her notebook. When she had the whole letter, she got her favourite paper and wrote out the whole thing in her best writing. Happiness.

Tonight we’re doing another diary entry with the dictation method, but she’s pleased that she can write something absolutely privately if she wants to. She’s also rapt at the discovery that her Nan (my mum) can do typing dictation at 80wpm, they have plans to work together.

It really has
[QUOTE=lynne42]
separated the fun of thinking from the drudge of handwriting
[/QUOTE]

she just needs to take her time. We talked about how it’s taken her four years of frustration to get to the point of refusing to write for her teacher (the catalyst for yesterday’s meeting), so she’s allowed to take as much time as she needs to work through that.

But, far more progress than I expected. Now that she’s decided to get over it, she’s putting all her effort into that, rather than resistance.

Thanks again.

[lobotomyboy63]

[QUOTE=maggenpye]

Then today, she wanted to write a letter - all by herself. Frustration! She hasn’t eliminated all problems immediately, how dare the universe do this to her!

I got her to take a break, offered various options (dictation, keywords etc). She calmed down and decided to take her time, writing out one line at a time in her notebook. When she had the whole letter, she got her favourite paper and wrote out the whole thing in her best writing. Happiness.

Tonight we’re doing another diary entry with the dictation method, but she’s pleased that she can write something absolutely privately if she wants to. She’s also rapt at the discovery that her Nan (my mum) can do typing dictation at 80wpm, they have plans to work together.

[/QUOTE]

It sounds like there’s motivation but the frustration gets in the way. I’ve heard that G/T kids often have problems with writing—the physical act of doing it—because their thoughts are coming much too fast.

More suggestions, and of course feel free to shoot them down;

Get her a little recorder…the kind that you can carry in a shirt pocket, with microcassettes or maybe a digital one. When she wants to write a paragraph, have her brainstorm it into the recorder first.

Then have her play it back. Ask her to listen to it with an ear toward “How can I organize all this effectively?” (chronologically is a biggie) and “What doesn’t really fit?”

It would be interesting, too, to hear how many ideas boil out of her when she’s freed from the task of writing. Then, it’s about being selective of which ideas fit and how.

For longer writing requirements, work with her on outlining—that doesn’t take a lot of writing, and I don’t mean getting all hot about indenting and roman numerals etc. You just want a roadmap, a basic sequence, with just words and phrases to keep the outline clear enough to use. If the first outline is a mess, rearrange and recopy it.

Other: keep a leash on yourself. You are of course concerned and willing to help as much as possible, and that’s great. But let’s not turn this into something odious. How many kids gave up piano because they were sick of scales? It’s a tough line to walk because you want to push the child to work through her frustrations, but you don’t want to push too hard.

So think about rewards. The old “You made an A? That goes on the refrigerator!” applies. But maybe there is a poem the child loves: get some nice paper, have her write it in her best handwriting, and frame it for the wall in her room.

With reading, I’ve heard teachers say “Any reading is good reading.” If you’re reading a magazine in the car or reading a cereal box as you eat breakfast or thumbing through a pamphlet at the doctor’s office, it’s all good. Writing is probably the same way: there’s quality and there’s quantity but it all counts. We probably discourage them far too much by picking nits—spelling, capitalization, etc.—when they have big ideas to express.

[Mojo_Pin]

I’m here to second the “teach her to type” opinion. The middle school I went to required that students get their own laptop and know how to use it, and using a word processor helped me overcome my fear of putting words to paper. One thing I remember hating about pen and paper writing was the inability to rework sentences–that’s where the fun in writing lies for me.

[Polyperchon]

I had the exact same problem as a kid. My mum tells me that for the longest time I’d even leave out words when speaking because the thoughts were coming too fast for me to get them out my mouth! If I was thinking too fast to talk, you can imagine what a pain writing was.

What really helped me was writing and getting letters. Does she have someone she make a pen pal or a relative she can write to? Letters made writing fun and personal, she can add pictures or stickers and address the envelope. Plus getting post in return is like the ultimate (!!eleventyone!!) reward when you’re a kid. Especially in the e-mail age, getting post is a treat to me and I’m 23!

Seriously, it was like a wall breaking down for me - with letters I saw writing as a means to a conversation with my friends who I’d moved away from. Because I was thinking carefully about what I wanted to tell them and how to make it interesting, it didn’t bother me as much that the writing itself was a chore (and soon it stopped being a chore). My penmanship improved in leaps and bounds because I wanted the letters to be pretty. Best of all, keeping in touch with my friends and the thrill of finding something in the mailbox with my name on was better than any reward my parents could come up with!

To this day I handwrite letters and I’ve converted loads of my friends to it as well. Granted my friends are all over the globe, but even when we just lived in different towns or across town from each other it was still a neat way to spend an afternoon and stamps don’t cost very much (at least where I am!) for the pleasure a letter can bring.

One fun way might be if she receives a letter from someone first, so it doesn’t seem like another silly exercise but an actual form of communication.

Best of luck!

[maggenpye]

Lobotomyboy63, you’ve hit the nail on the head. She’s had years of frustration - because she *can *write. Beautifully, eloquently and with great skill, just not any speed.

The recorder idea is for the future (I have a micro recorder in the drawer, waiting) she still can’t keep up with herself and it would (at this stage) just reinforce the frustration. Her Gifted School teacher has tried this and said the ideas are great, but right now, even summarising from tape is “ugh, too hard.”
Outlining is part of the future scheme too.

I’m definitely using praise (photo of her with her diary entry, rewards of nice drinks, TV access etc.) I’m only asking her to do a diary entry each day of what she wants to remember. The content and length are up to her. I’ve also suggested she thinks abut her school diary (required every day) on the way to school, so she clears the ‘log jam’ before she has to write anything.

She’s responded so well to lynn-42’s plan that I’m going to stick with it. She’s not just made the separation of ideas / writing, but also started to see the opportunities writing can provide. She’s noting down her jokes (“Nothing succeeds like a budgeriegar”) and good ideas, because all of a sudden she knows that it’s a different thing than trying to write while she’s thinking of what to say.

Mojo Pin - she has access to computers almost every place she goes and has exactly the same frustrations typing as she does with writing. Both are skills where the physical process is lagging behind her intellectual ability. We talked about typing over the weekend and she’s chosen to work on her writing first while I access some good typing programs. She’ll (ahem) *try *(meaning avoid)learning to type, but she sees it as a secondary skill at this time.

Picking my battles, I’ll help her with the writing first.

Polyperchon - great idea. I’ll talk to her Gifted School teacher about setting up a pen pal system withing the various classes around the country. I discussed this with the kid and she’d rather ‘talk’ to a kid like her, she’s already got a wish list of locations she’d prefer.

[lynne-42]

[QUOTE=maggenpye]
**
She’s responded so well to lynne-42’s plan that I’m going to stick with it. She’s not just made the separation of ideas / writing, but also started to see the opportunities writing can provide. She’s noting down her jokes (“Nothing succeeds like a budgeriegar”) and good ideas, because all of a sudden she knows that it’s a different thing than trying to write while she’s thinking of what to say.
[/QUOTE]

You have made my day!!!