Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School writing frustration

I know a child that had difficulty writing and it was due to the fine motor skills. So while her mind may be going faster than she can write, there could be a physical aspect to it. Maybe see if the school could offer some OT like the previous poster said and see if that helps.

Ahh the perfectionist. I am one and it seems I have one too, especially when it come to writing. I find the solution is to take all the pressure off him and let him come to it in his own time. He will generally melt down when there is a task set for him and has gone through many periods of not making any craft/art or writing anything at al for fear of it not being good enough (his words). Apparently when he was making me a birthday card recently he had a major melt down over a forgotten "r". It was screwed up and there was much shouting at my partner, who in the end asked him to have a break in his room to calm down.
Later he emerged, tried again and did the whole thing in private without asking for any help. He wrote more words than he's ever written in one go, and when he made a mistake he calmly altered the letter to make it look right to him. He came into reading in much the same way, reading in his room before sleep on his own, without any perceived pressure from me or any other listener.

I've spent a lot of time with him demonstrating that I too make mistakes, and I model healthy coping responses to him. He is starting to understand that making mistakes is an important method of learning new skills and that sometimes the most interesting creations come from mistakes.

My DS7 is exactly the same. The more he does it the less aggravated he gets. He has sat there for 2 hours staring at a blank page when he had to write a 5 sentence essay.

The more practice the less time he sits there blank.
One thing I read in a writing book that helped a lot was to think about the senses when writing

How did something Look, feel, sound, smell, taste etc
That gave him a tool to use so he isn't blank.

All of a sudden he can write a bunch on sentences to get him started.

It's a relief to read so many people's stories about writing frustration TBH! Count in DS6, and come to that count me as a child in too - I remember hours sat at a table in tears. Not wanting to replicate that, I've made a lot of use of stopwatch-timed 10-minute writing sessions (if necessary, repeated), which help a bit. He has a holiday journal to write and we agreed he'd do 10 minutes once a week and that that would be enough; I added the totally artificial rider that it's only enough if he doesn't moan about it, and that if he moans, he has to do another 10 mins the next day, too. Haven't needed to invoke that. I can't imagine trying to get him to write 5 sentences though!