Writing Right
You also know when writing is a trial for your child. Problems with muscle tone and motor planning can turn writing a simple sentence or completing a worksheet into a Herculean task. Teachers who are sticklers for penmanship may make things worse by forcing your child to repeat the writing over and over again, with severely diminishing returns. But even if the teacher doesn't add to the stress load by disciplining your child for writing problems, the problems alone will be stressful enough.
You'll want to talk with your child's teacher to make sure he understands that your child has good reason to have such writing trouble. Make sure, too, to arm your child with good tools that will make writing as easy as possible. Thick pencils may be easier to hold onto than thinner ones, shorter pencils easier to manipulate than longer ones.
Pencil grips may make grasping a pencil more comfortable and secure for your child. Pencil grips are soft rubber tubes that fit over the lower end of a pencil and give your child a fatter, less slippery surface to grab onto. They're generally formed in such a way as to make your child's fingers naturally fall into the proper position.
When your child brings home her textbooks, sit down and look through them with her. If they're visually busy and hard to follow, talk with her a little about the elements on the page and help her identify some features that can show her the way through. Chapter subheads are often useful for pinpointing information, as are summaries in the margins.
If writing at school is a problem for your child, doing homework is likely to bring all that unhappiness home. Homework can be of great value to your child, and it can also help you get a good firsthand look at what his academic strengths and weaknesses are. Too often, though, homework turns into an endless battle — hours of forcing your child to write, struggling to produce blotchy torn-up papers. Don't fall into this trap with your child.
Confer with the teacher and see if you can get permission to adjust homework when needed. Perhaps your child can write the spelling words once or twice instead of five times and spell them out loud to you. Maybe you can transcribe long written answers for him or let him use a word processor.
Ideally, the goal of homework is to reinforce material learned in class and let the teacher know whether the students have mastered it enough to do it independently. Only for penmanship is the goal of homework good penmanship. Reducing the writing burden may give your child a much better chance to show what he knows. With luck, you'll have a teacher who understands that.
