Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education reluctant writer

According to comments from his family, Einstein spoke at least sporadic sentences by 2.5. Which is neither here nor there but for being a pet peeve of mine - apologies as I don't want to detour the conversation.

Does this child communicate by signs, pictures? Is there a global problem with organizing or planning output? (for example easily making signs for things but struggling with making sentences of them) Or an issue with timing of responses, or initiation in general (like kicking the ball before or after it passes by). Is he a perfectionist, not wanting to do anything unless he can be sure of doing it perfectly? Easily frustrated? General fine motor issues or difficulty with other tools? Challenges following instructions in general?

My perfectionistic and fine motor challenged DS (he's 5) was helped a little by the book Ish, only temporarily, then much more by the handwriting without tears method. The aspect of the handwriting without tears method that helped most was a recentering on use of any material (Playdoh, sticks, pipe cleaners, etc) to make letters in discrete predictable steps. This divorces the mental process of letter formation from the fine motor act of pencil use. Since the latter was challenging on its own, approaching it as a whole was overwhelming. But he could handle the frustration level of each separately. Once familiar with the specific order of creating a particular letter and going in a logical order of ones that possess major similarities he no longer had to think actively think about that planning aspect. Then doing it with a pencil was not so intimidating. As success built some self esteem about it, he's needing the non-pencil stuff less and trusting himself more.

In researching writing difficulties I found really a myriad of reasons why writing may not come easily and each reason demands it's own approach. For my DS Handwriting Without Tears has been exactly what he needed, but there are probably other methods that would work better for others. If you are interested in the HWT method there's YouTube videos to get an idea of it, I found reading the kindergarten teacher's manual cover to cover helped me really get the reasons behind their approach.

Until you are able to unravel the cause of his reluctance and find a specific plan to help you could perhaps step back from pencil/paper and choose a group of similar letters such as E F, or D and P, to work on making from something fun, for example twizzler candy sticks (then eat them once you've made the letter). Then separately encourage pencil or crayon use with mazes or dot to dots or whatever he likes.


Edit: adding that there is a HWT app for the iPad but DS found it too frustrating to use because the tracing component demands near perfection, it would repeatedly make him start over when his letter formation was actually quite good.