The perfectionist and writing/spelling - just a vent

[blondeviolin]

My nearly-8yo still won't write much because she doesn't know how to spell everything right then. She spells fine for her age, but she won't even attempt words that she is not 100% sure how to spell.

 

She struggles with stuff like this with her math too. If she doesn't know how to do it, she won't even attempt it.

 

Drives me NUTS.

[Crimson Wife]

Teach her to type and allow her to use spell-check. My oldest is a strong speller but the physical act of writing is difficult for her (I wouldn't be surprised if she had mild dysgraphia but she's never been tested for it). So I learned early on to separate out composition from the physical act of writing. If I need to get a sample in her penmanship, I have her compose it on the computer, then copy it over by hand. It's like she uses so much of her brain forming the letters correctly that there isn't anything left to do the composition aspect. This despite years of working on her penmanship.

[EndOfOrdinary]

I still type for my son (9.5) and it drives his father nuts. Ds' writing stamina has increased so much in this last few months that I am whole hearted standing behind the decision of not pushing writing. Wait it out a bit, yours might come around too.

[eternalsummer]

I have the opposite problem - my almost-9 year old is wholly unconcerned about spelling, grammar, conventions, staying on the lines of the paper (!!! this drives me crazy!), etc.  She writes well and prolifically, as long as you can decipher the crazy semi-phonetic spelling and ignore random capitalization and margins.  If the first thing to hand is a stubby green crayon, that's what she's doing math in today, and if it gets breakfast on it, oh well.  Convincing her that there is some value in neat writing or correct conventions is a battle.

[Greenmama2]

My nearly 8 year is similar, but since she has recently lost some of her reluctance to write as long as I answer a constant "how do you spell...?"; I've decided just to tell her the spelling for now. Even if I'm certain she could work it out phonetically or if she read it out loud three times in the last hour (just happened with a journal entry). I'm so happy that she is writing of her own accord finally. I'd rather work on spelling separately (which is in fact, fine for her age) than trigger her previous reluctance to write at all.

[blondeviolin]

I'm hoping to move past some of it this summer. We're moving and she's gonna write a lot of postcards as we make our trek.

[Tracy]

I have used a very intensive spelling program, which has proven to be very helpful in this regard.  Dd9 is not by any means a natural speller, but she knows when something is spelled wrong.  SWR keeps her spelling way above grade level, which reduces the problem with not wanting to write.

[boscopup]

We had this problem with my oldest. When he was 8, I used IEW SWI-A, which you don't need to use... it's just what was taught in there that helped: 1) Rough drafts should be MESSY. It's ok to cross things out and redo them. Spelling will be fixed during editing. (demonstrate this to the child), 2) Rough drafts are written in PEN. Final copy is done in pencil, so you can erase, 3) Keyword outlines can contain some of the hard-to-spell words for reference. ;)

 

A year later, this same child has no problem writing an entire narration down, taking up a page to a page and a half (wide ruled, double spaced), in pencil even! Yes, he misspells several words in the process and will have scribbles where he got b/d confused (sigh), but during the editing process, he can pick out all of the misspelled words and correct them.

 

Also, I am always a walking dictionary. I'd rather tell my son how to spell something than have him use a lesser word than what he originally thought of (for example, if he is wanting to say someone is tyrannical and can't figure that out and would never find it in a dictionary without *knowing* that it's a 'y' in there, he might end up saying the guy was "really bad" instead... I'd rather him ask me how to spell tyrannical).

 

Pudewa (author of IEW) also suggests some kids do better with an electronic speller device. I haven't gotten one as of yet, but may do so later. Those devices are kind of like spell check on the computer - figuring out what you meant to write.