4Real Forums: He just doesn't like to write?

Oh, Dearest Mother, Sweetest Virgin of Altagracia, our Patroness. You are our Advocate and to you we recommend our needs. You are our Teacher and like disciples we come to learn from the example of your holy life. You are our Mother, and like children, we come to offer you all of the love of our hearts. Receive, dearest Mother, our offerings and listen attentively to our supplications. Amen.

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Topic: He just doesn't like to write?

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mom2mpr
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Posted: Sept 10 2007 at 9:05am \| IP Logged

My ds, who is almost 10, really dislikes writing I assign. Now, I only do it every once in awhile so maybe it is my fault. I want to start some dictation/copywork this year and my first attempt was met with some serious resistance. I asked him to write out the first commandment, which we are studying, and it was 30 minutes(not quiet mind you)to get the first line on paper. However, he will write his reasons for wanting a rabbit easily.
Should I just keep plugging along or look for other issues? It really is painful. I THINK it is a "will" issue but we have been struggling since day one with handwriting and now writing.
Anne

italianalaskan
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Posted: Sept 10 2007 at 10:15am \| IP Logged

My son also hates writing. He is 11 and it is alays a struggle make him write something. But it has gotten better when I told him he could use the computer to write. It was a hard decision, because I always thought pennmanship is important. But he is a boy! He doesn't care about a nice pennmanship. All he wants is to be done quickly so he can go back to his boy stuff.
For composition I saw an incredible improvemnt since I started using the program form the Institure for Excellence in Writing. It's expensive, but well worthed.

Just know: you are not alone!

Simona

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rose gardens
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Posted: Sept 10 2007 at 11:42am \| IP Logged

mom2mpr wrote:

...It really is painful....

Oh Anne I share your pain! I was just going to post a similar question for my almost 9 year old. He took over half an hour to write out a very simple Bible verse this morning. It's so frustrating! Every writing assignment for every subject takes an excruciatingly long amount of time.

He takes a painfully slow approach to letter formation. I wonder if I should assign something additional to strengthen the muscles for fine motor skills in his fingers? He's practicing piano as I write this, and that too is painfully slow.

He's very easily distracted by just about anything. I try to keep the younger children quiet and they're pretty good, but honestly his taking so long places an extra burden on the rest of us. Even when they are quiet, he's still distracted, staring off into space or staring blankly at his paper. So I have to try to keep a 1 and 3 year old quiet for over half an hour so my 8 year old can complete work that should only take 10 minutes.

Like you, I wonder sometimes if there is something else going on with my son. His test score are average to above average, but he's slow in many regards to his schoolwork. If I stand over him while he works, he can pick up his speed and get it done. He needs lots of attention and encouragement to complete almost every aspect of his school work. I suspect that if my son attended a public school, someone would want to start him on medication for Attention Deficit Disorder. I also suspect that I have a little boy who is not particularly bright academically, nor very interested in doing academic work. I think I can help him overcome this by paying extra attention to him, but it is sometimes highly painful to me.

ALmom
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Posted: Sept 10 2007 at 4:10pm \| IP Logged

I also have 10 and 13 yo boy and the writing is terribly slow. Many of the descriptions of behavior/reaction could describe ours except that one of ours is so diligent and never complains - just sometimes find him frustrated to tears trying to plug away. We are still working on finding something that works but this year seems better than ever before and I'll try to summarize some of the things we've found that help:

For any lengthy essays or creative writing - anything where I want to see the actual writing process and not the handwriting, he does on the computer. This way he can have an extremely rough draft (no capitilazation, every other word misspelled) and the thougth of going back in and fixing it is not so daunting. Mine both do their own first editings and are giving me very decent papers. My 10 yo claims he has 11 pages going. This is from a guy who last year resisted even answering something in a complete sentence.

I try to develop these skills by taking advantage of a passion. So most writing assignments for one son are in science and for the other son, they are in history with an occassional literature one (trying to pick the historical fiction here).

I do not want us to simply get weaker and weaker in the fine motor skills as we have much to work on here in both coordination of both sides of the body and simple eye-hand-motor/brain integration. I try to work on that seperately from the literature, writing (essay, creative, etc.) Some things we do to work on this are:

insets (it helps if they are being used to reinforce an area of interest so it is more fun. Neither of my boys would choose to color, but they like science or math so I have botany insets and geometric insets and let them go and experiment with this however - as long as they fill them in with those straight lines). There are also some subjects that I am not focusing huge efforts on this year, but want to make sure we have exposure. In these areas, I do have some workbooks or answer the questions type of thing. These must be handwritten. I do not pick on my dc for the sloppiness here, figuring the written answers are evidence that the reading in content was done to some extent, it made them at least look up answers AND most importantly to me at this point, is that it keeps them using those handwriting muscles. We do things like make vocabulary flash cards, etc. I also make them do handwriting in spelling. We also reinforce fine motor doing a lot of practical life Montessori materials - so far the favorite of my bigger boys is the eye dropper with different colored water.

Janet

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