Learning to love writing - suggestions needed.

[lobotomyboy63]

@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.

Much later on, if a professor tells her to pick a topic and write a term paper, the critical thing will be to narrow the topic. I.e., pick a topic that’s too general and you can’t hope to cover it in sufficient detail without writing a textbook.

I wonder if narrowing the topic for her would help. For instance, a teacher might ask for an essay like “What I did on my Christmas Vacation” because that works for most kids. Here, we get about two weeks for Christmas so the kids can remember something and find enough to write about. But with your daughter it could be she remembers too much. A better topic might be “What I did on Christmas Day.” That would naturally limit her.

So many kids have problems generating enough ideas. When she gets to speech class, she ought to rock. She’ll be able to jot down a rough outline to keep herself on track and go, free to explore what she thinks without the shackles of writing it all.

[maggenpye]

She should have her writing speed up to scratch well before she hits high school, let alone University. She has a good grasp of language, and great ideas. She only needs exercises to pick up her writing speed when she gets past the frustration - and after a week, she’s almost past that initial stage.

Perhaps a good analogy would be this: You can ride your bike, you’ve been riding it for years, but what you can’t manage is the Olympic level downhill mountain-biking track. Everyone keeps telling you to ride that track, you should be able to - since you can kayak so well! The more people push you, the less you’ll want to get on that bike.

My kid has been able to make letters since she was four, she started at the same time as she began reading, but although her brain can process the written word at twice her age level, she still has the hands and co-ordination of a perfectly normal nine-year old.

What lynne-42’s program has done is separate reading and writing (kayaking and cycling). A dictated journal entry gets her words on the paper. As her scribe, I can tell you she doesn’t lack ideas or the ability to organise them effectively. It was her idea to add another level of work where she suggests between three to five keywords that go at the top, then she dictates her journal entry from that point.

Afterwards, she copies out the entry - this gets her to write her own words, without the frustration of trying to keep up with her ideas. We’re working out games and tricks to keep her focussed and enjoying the exercise. She now realises that this practice will help her hand catch up with her brain. Her favourite game is for me to time how long it takes her to write either a line or sentence - then she attempts to write the next one faster.

While walking to school, we’ve been thinking of things she wants to remember or that she’s looking forward to - her daily diary has gone from a punishment to a competition with herself to write a bit more each day (17 lines in 10 mins!). She’s volunteering to record for her group during projects.

This is the kid who, one week ago, defied her teacher and refused to write a single word.

She also took this new-found resolve (to break through her frustrations) and did her first jumps at the skate park this week-end. My kid rocks.