Do you have a kid who avoids writing? There are often underlying reasons for a child’s reluctance. It helps when we keep an attitude of curiosity, and view the behavior as evidence of an unmet need or lagging skill. Sometimes they need a little extra support or creativity to push into something “hard.” Visual processing issues, coordination, weak core muscles, dysgraphia, dyslexia, anxiety, ADHD and processing speed are all potential factors. Gifted and 2e kids tend to be motivated by work and projects that serve a true purpose. They may be resistant when they see no real point to an assignment outside of grades. You’ll find many of my activity suggestions to be learner-led, focused on interest, and project-based. The writing part comes more naturally when there is a clear goal and purpose within the child’s interest.
When a child has gone through a negative school experience, they may be carrying trauma around it. This could be big, acute Trauma with a capital-T, such as being bullied, etc. Or, it could be more subtle, where really small incidents were wearing away at your child over time. I think of that as lower case-t, trauma. Death by a thousand cuts. Either way, their response to certain kinds of academic tasks may be reactive, avoidant, defensive and visceral. They need time to heal from the negative academic experience. If you have started homeschooling recently and a negative school experience is still right in your child’s “rear view mirror,” your kid needs time to decompress. Many homeschoolers call this process “de-schooling.” It looks a lot like unschooling. Unschooling is a fully unstructured, unhampered schooling experience. No worksheets. No assignments. No grades. Learning is completely child-led and based on their interests. If coming from a negative school environment, the general rule of thumb suggestion is that you allow the child to de-school one month for every year that they were in a negative environment. Add more time if the level unhappiness was significant.
Until they have time to decompress and process, they may not feel safe or relaxed with structured school demands. Trying to force worksheets and rigid curricula is not going to bring about learning. When a person’s mind jumps into defense mode, logic shuts down and they can’t learn. Instead, their mind is focused on self-preservation. During this season, dive into their interests with full abandon. Bake. Make play-doh. Visit museums. Go to parks. Watch amazing documentaries or learn the history of Pokemon. Build with Lego. Climb trees. Don’t worry about spoiling your child. Time to heal really does allow them to be in a place where they can try hard things again. Imagine asking a child to stay in a running regimen with a sprained ankle. No. You would let them heal first, and then would gently transition back into a running routine. You wouldn’t say, “they have to keep jogging or else they’ll become lazy.” They really need the time to heal to be able to get back out there again. If the anxiety and stress around academic tasks is quite significant, therapy can be a big help. EMDR is a specific kind of therapy that helps you process trauma. It softens the body’s response to past unhappy memories.
Ways to help your child expand their writing:
Scribe for them. This bypasses the actual act of writing and allows the child to communicate unhindered. Try it! It can be amazing to see the difference in writing ability when kids have the right support for their needs. Speech-to-text and eventually adaptive typing can be helpful as well. Give them opportunities for oral demonstration of work rather than funneling everything through pencil-to-paper. Keep in mind that children do well if they can. Behavior is communication of an unmet need. (Psychologist Dr. Ross Greene The Explosive Child, delves more into this.) Accommodations aren’t a crutch. Many adults use text-to-speech, adaptive typing, and depend on spell/grammar check on computers.
Body Doubling. This is where you are simply present while your child works on their difficult task. You could be reading a book, sitting next to your child while they work. You aren’t doing anything besides being with them, but this can help them accomplish difficult things. Often adults utilize body-doubling, too, even if they don’t know that is what it is called. For some of us, there are tasks that are easier to accomplish with someone present rather than working on it alone.
Baby steps. Break the writing process into very small, clear steps with a rubric. Focus on only one or two steps per day. It’s okay to do a writing project where early on you do more of the work, walking your child through the steps, and your child is the helper. Then the next time, hand over a little more responsibility to them. Over time, you are the helper. Later, you are only the body doubler. And there will be a day when your child will figure it all out on their own. If they still utilize body-doubling, they will find a study buddy in college or discover that working in a coffee shop helps.
Try strewing. This is particularly great for demand-avoidant kids. Leave out potential projects for your child to see and consider starting on their own. Lifting the demands of you asking and assigning can alleviate anxiety and allow the child to feel a sense of autonomy. For children who are very demand-avoidant, that autonomy allows them to feel a sense of safety within their nervous system. If that resonates for you, look into PDA (pathological demand avoidance/ pervasive demand avoidance.) Don’t let the name intimidate you from looking into it. There are lots of tips and guidance to support your child if they struggle with demands, even if their struggle is not significant enough to garner a diagnosis. Check out Casey Ehrlich with At Peace Parents to learn more. I’m linking to her website, but I do really like her Instagram account for informative videos. The book, The Declarative Language Handbook can be helpful for allowing you to word things in a way that doesn’t add extra pressure or demands. Sometimes it is just a simple shift in how you present a task.
Curate the environment. My son used to sip gatorade during his writing assignments. Other ideas: turn the dining table into a tent by throwing a bedsheet over it. Give your child a pillow, flashlight, and a yummy snack and let them do the writing work in their special cave. Or, do writing at a beautiful park. We have worked on difficult tasks while sitting on playground equipment. (This was at a time of day when we had the playground to ourselves.) It’s not bribery. Adults curate their environment to help them get through hard tasks, too. Instead of Gatorade and a living room cave it may look more like a nice tea, earbuds with music playing, or working in a favorite coffee shop.
Try writing on a dry erase board. This could be a wall-mounted board, or a smaller lap board. Not only is this helpful for kids with dysgraphia, (diagnosed or not) it is also immensely helpful if your child has a sensory aversion to pencil/paper and the scratching sensation. To “save” the work, take a photo with your phone. Keep an album on your phone of these types of photos, so it is easy to look up and find. The physical position of writing while standing at a wall-mounted board also offers positive OT benefits.
Change things up. Maybe one of these ideas works great, but only once or twice before it fizzles out. Now your kid is over it. Then, try something totally different and new. Or, you started out with a curriculum but your kid has hit a wall. Change it up! Try a different curriculum. It doesn’t have to be expensive; rather than purchase a new curriculum, you can use the current one as a guide for grade level expectations and create your own outside-the-box projects that interest your child. Remember that we don’t need to mimic the structure and rigidity of a traditional school system. The world is your oyster.
Customize writing around their special interests. Does your child love dinosaur fossils, trains, crochet or science fiction? Create writing projects around what your child loves.
Get your kid published. Look into opportunities with Stone Soup Magazine, Highlights Magazine, and The Week Junior. Or use a kit to self-publish your child’s book.
Enter writing contests.
Send a letter by snail mail to a next door neighbor, grandparent, friend. Maybe they will write you back!
Write an author. Many authors respond! It is very exciting and encouraging to receive a personal letter from an author. (note: don’t expect a personal letter from J.K. Rowling. But the stock letter is fun, too.)
Complain, compliment or give feedback to a company. Write a company that uses styrofoam and ask them to consider using an environmentally-friendly alternative. Suggest a new flavor to a candy business. Give a rave service review about a restaurant or other company.
Run a lemonade stand for a good cause. Your child can create a flyer or poster that will share about the charity. (My kids did this and were able to send a check for $112 to a little village school in Ethiopia!)
Write a government official. Send a letter to your mayor, city councilman or state representative. Tell them they are doing a good job, or ask for more recycling options or about another issue you care about.
Publish book reviews online. Using your parent email address, allow your child to post reviews on Goodreads, Amazon or Common Sense Media. It is basically a book report, except that it serves a meaningful purpose as a published review that others in the world can read.
Create a podcast or a recording that simulates an old-fashioned radio broadcast. Have fun and use cool sound effects. (Try listening to Wow in the World for fun sound effect and style ideas.)
Create a recipe box or book. Make each recipe along the way. Allow your child to invent some new recipes- your child can decide special ingredients to a dessert they create. Shop for a few fun ingredients. My daughter invented “Marshmallow, Marshmallow, Marshmallow, Marshmallow Pie.” Can you guess the special ingredient?? Now record the recipe and instructions in the book! “Marshmallow x 4 Pie” gets made every Thanksgiving. It definitely raises your blood sugar level and poses a cavity risk, but it is fun once a year and as a little girl she was quite proud.
Create a booklet of riddles or jokes. Make a nature journal. Sketch plants and flowers in your neighborhood and then write a little blurb or list of facts about the plants. Or, Instead of a nature journal, make it a Pokemon journal! Customize this project to your child’s interests and passions.
Do a personal journal project. This one could be a good project to strew or suggest in an open-ended way. Try not to turn it into a demand. There are one-question-a-day journals that turn into a time capsule. Some of them go three or even five years. Or, for the very writing-avoidant or a perfectionist, try a Wreck This Journal. My daughter and I got a “mommy and me” journal going years ago. One of us will write a new entry and then slide it under the door/leave on the bed of the other person. It disappeared for a couple years when my daughter lost interest, and now in the teen years we use it again. Bonus: if you already have this practice established, then as the tween and teen years approach, your child has a built-in safe place to ask you questions, voice concerns, give a difficult apology, or just let you know their thoughts. Some things are easier to articulate indirectly than they are to say in-person! Keep in mind too, with a personal journal, it may be a place where you encourage writing but give them privacy and you don’t read it or correct it.
Create your own comic book. You can buy a template book to use, if you’d like. Check out Dogman, Garfield or Calvin and Hobbes as an example guide.
Create your own board game. The writing will be in the little cards you turn over, and on game instructions, etc. Some writing might also be in the planning stage. Foam board makes a great game board. My son enjoyed 3D printing game pieces. If you want the board to fold, you can use a razor blade to cut the foam board, but leave the very top layer intact. The surface is smooth but the board can fold. (I did this part for my child.)
Use Minecraft. Yes, I’m saying play a video game and call it school. You could link the writing to social studies in Minecraft creative mode. Example: when studying the Middle Ages, my son created a replica of a Middle Ages mosque in Minecraft. Loads of writing came in when you approach a box in the world and open it and there is a scroll where he explained the 5 pillars of Islam, or another box with story of Muhammad. He also created a replica of an ancient Egyptian tomb. That was so cool! There was plenty of opportunity to fill it with hidden scrolls of information about the original tomb.
Make potions. Take water bottles and let your child experiment with food coloring and glitter in a few different bottles. Then, seal them shut. Now, have your child write out what Harry Potter “Potion” is in each bottle, and tape the potion label to the bottle.
Plan a house/backyard party and have your child write out the schedule/plan. Maybe you could incorporate some of the other ideas on this list into the party. For instance, Potion-making for a Harry Potter theme.
Create a newspaper. This could be online like a blog, or an actual paper newspaper.
Scavenger hunt. Your child can write out clues to help the family or some friends find whatever prize or surprise they have planned at the end.
Create a menu for a fancy dinner at home. Maybe your child would even enjoy cooking the dinner, with some help. Use a recipe from the recipe book!
Create a diorama out of a shoebox. It could be of a scene from a book, film, or history or science; something that your child loves. Then, on the outer sides of the box, your child can share fun facts about the scene depicted.
Hold an election. Kids will need to create a campaign and give a speech.
Create a script for a play, skit, puppet show (socks with google eyes or paper lunch box can be great!), a short film or a stop motion film. This will be so fun to create from start to finish! Enlist friends or siblings to join.
Play a game. You write one sentence of a story. Then, pass the paper to your child who writes the next sentence. Go back and forth without talking, and see where the story takes you! You have to pivot and flex to what the other person writes. This is also a great one for a kid who struggles with pivoting from their plan, since they have to improvise off of the other person.
Write a song. Record a performance of it.
Praise effort, not results. Perfectionism can be a crippling beast. It will suck all of the joy out of a child’s pursuits. It’s also capable of turning children into underachievers. If they don’t attempt a new task, then they are guaranteed not to fail. When we focus on results, we inadvertently encourage perfectionism. But when we focus on effort and the journey itself, we give space for children to try things without fear of less than perfect results.
Model making mistakes. Kids who tend towards perfectionism don’t want to risk making mistakes. When you model making mistakes and handling it well, you empower them to do the same. And watch out- perfectionist kids often have perfectionist parents. Make sure you don’t have to be perfect. Mistakes feel uncomfortable, but they allow us to learn new things. Perfectionism is an easy trap for intellectually gifted individuals to fall into.
Good luck! If you have another idea, feel free to share it with me.
Warmly,
Christina
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