Why do boys dislike writing?

[NicAnn]

I've been tutoring for a year now, various ages of boys and girls. I rarely have issues with girls and writing. But nearly every boy does not like the physical act of writing. Many will happily dictate or type, but struggle to put pen to paper.

 

What is the reason for this?

 

Eta- I'm also referring to writing anything down...like math problems (showing work).

[Mom2TheTeam]

My son is only in 2nd grade, but he doesn't mind writing.  He does it all the time without complaining.  Most of the time, he won't sit down and write something that doesn't have to do with school, but sometimes he will.  And, he doesn't complain about it during school.  Today, I told him he didn't have to write something and he wanted to anyway. 

[Farrar]

Mine don't dislike it really.  The exception that proves the rule?  I'm pretty liberal about handwriting, so maybe that helps.

[FairProspects]

Both of mine hate it. But there is definitely truth to what Heigh Ho says. They cannot spell, handwrite, etc. fast enough to get down what is coming out of their heads. The fine motor just doesn't work that well.

[jar7709]

My son HATED putting pen to paper in K.  I think the teaching style was all wrong for him:  write the letter just.so. and make everything look perfect and write what I tell you to write.  We were seriously wondering if he was dysgraphic or something.  No, turns out, he just wasn't as quick with his fine motor skills and was frustrated with not being able to get his own thoughts down.  He's catching up with himself now and is shaping up to be a pretty writer-ly kid. 

[PeterPan]

Just as a question for you, are these homeschooled boys or other?  See something that came up about handwriting in the past was the idea of coloring and how often it gets tossed in our homeschooling efficiency.  Coloring is a great way to build hand strength and fine motor, and I suspect homeschoolers in general don't require a lot of it.  I didn't make my dd do it because her hand hurt, she shied away, blah blah.  Turned out she did have issues.  Just saying with my boy I'm not making that mistake.  I actually sit down now and color with him, me on one page of the coloring book, him on the other.  Even the HWT book I got him starts off with coloring.

 

So it would be hard to say whether your sample is showing solely gender or some homeschooling-specific trends like that.

[dbmamaz]

both of mine hate/hated it. i thought it was because boys have poorer fine motor skills and generally slightly different language development curves.  If you look, you can find articles pointing out that there are many more boys in special ed than girls

[NicAnn]

Just as a question for you, are these homeschooled boys or other? See something that came up about handwriting in the past was the idea of coloring and how often it gets tossed in our homeschooling efficiency. Coloring is a great way to build hand strength and fine motor, and I suspect homeschoolers in general don't require a lot of it. I didn't make my dd do it because her hand hurt, she shied away, blah blah. Turned out she did have issues. Just saying with my boy I'm not making that mistake. I actually sit down now and color with him, me on one page of the coloring book, him on the other. Even the HWT book I got him starts off with coloring.

 

So it would be hard to say whether your sample is showing solely gender or some homeschooling-specific trends like that.

Hmm, good point. Most are homeschooled. Though many started out in the public school.

 

I do see the relationship between boys not developing the fine motor skills for writing.

[mathnerd]

My son HATES writing. He is 6 years old now. At 4, his preschool teacher told me that to get him to write his name was like pulling teeth. His fine motor skills are very advanced - he builds legos sets meant for 10-12 year olds and plays the piano for the 2nd year running at an intermediate level. Yet, writing, coloring and tying shoe laces are his nemesis. And, most little boys he knows and goes to school with hate writing (though a few love coloring). Heigh Ho has a good point - DS is really fast in doing everything and gets frustrated when things slow him down - he cannot write at lightning speed and hence does not want to try.

But, to his credit, he is willing to try now and puts in an effort as opposed to refusing to hold a pencil 2 years ago.

[kiwik]

Is it because they are allowed to? Any time a boy has problems with academics people say "boys aren't as keen on writing/reading/colouring/sitting still as girls. He just needs some more time to play.

[ErinE]

Just as a question for you, are these homeschooled boys or other? See something that came up about handwriting in the past was the idea of coloring and how often it gets tossed in our homeschooling efficiency. Coloring is a great way to build hand strength and fine motor, and I suspect homeschoolers in general don't require a lot of it. I didn't make my dd do it because her hand hurt, she shied away, blah blah. Turned out she did have issues. Just saying with my boy I'm not making that mistake. I actually sit down now and color with him, me on one page of the coloring book, him on the other. Even the HWT book I got him starts off with coloring.

 

So it would be hard to say whether your sample is showing solely gender or some homeschooling-specific trends like that.

FWIW, during a conversation with a sixth grade English teacher, she mentioned that boys hate the physical act of writing. So it's not just the HS kids. However, I remember reading the coloring post here so I require my kids to do some coloring most every school day. We did a geography study last year; coloring a half-page flag every day helped build hand strength. I also had DS do copywork up until 4th grade, gradually increasing the length to a good paragraph so he only had to concentrate on his handwriting.

[Alice]

My oldest hates it. My middle one loves it and says it’s one of his favorite things (he’s doing cursive this year). My oldest also hated coloring or drawing of any kind. He’d do the absolute minimal job if asked to color something when he was littler. Once I tried to make a lapbook with him (because I was a new homeschooler and though it was somehow a requirement :)). He very gently asked halfway through if we really had to do this. He just hates anything crafty. My middle son who likes writing also loves drawing, coloring and art. 

 

I think it’s sometimes one of those stereotypes that get perpetuated in people’s thinking so that when they hear about a boy who doesn’t like to write it becomes “oh, yep, boys don’t like writing†but when they hear about one who does “oh, that’s an exception, boys dont’ usually like writing.†Kind of similar to the way people used to think about girls and math/science. 

[Farrar]

Is it because they are allowed to? Any time a boy has problems with academics people say "boys aren't as keen on writing/reading/colouring/sitting still as girls. He just needs some more time to play.

Yeah, I can accept that there may be some actual developmental reasons too, but I suspect a lot of this is down to social attitudes.

[lllll]

..

[PeterPan]

9q5oi, I'm trying to understand what you did.  My boy is just about to turn 5, so I'm right there at the "push this too soon and you create negative feelings vs. get it right and they open up" stage.  So how did you decide WHEN to push forward with writing?  With my dd, who has low muscle tone and needed OT eventually for handwriting, I did gross motor for much of our K5 work for many months.  My ds has unusually good fine motor and before we started speech therapy at age 2 had an outrageous drive to write.  But that was his brain funneling the energy that SHOULD have gone into speech into fine motor instead.  Now he's much more normal, or maybe even the reverse?  For instance yesterday I had him writing a single letter on the chalkboard while standing, and he would do that twice.  I'm cool with that, and I could see us doing that another full year.  He'll do mazes and Kumon that involve pre-writing curves and whatnot, but he's still demonstrating the impulsivity people are talking about.

 

Anyways, I think it's one thing to do gross motor while you're secretly pushing inside, waiting, waiting for them to write on paper.  It's another thing to know developmentally when that change is ready to happen.  In our case it's pretty wild that when he was 2 he was literally writing as well as he is now at almost 5.  But it was all that speech energy in the brain needing to go somewhere.  We're so happy to have him able to speak (as is he!) that we'll just deal with whatever normal boy is.  

 

Btw, you can do metronome work to help with the impulsivity in the writing and wheelbarrow (walking on hands) to strengthen their arms and core for the physical act. 

 

As for why boys have more issues with adhd, etc. than girls, who knows? Guffanti claims it's a built-in bias, that the system is looking for certain types of learners and creates pathologies for everything else.   Sax's book Why Gender Matters might be interesting to the op.  SL sells it and Pudewa recommends it.  There's also a book (can't remember the title) that talks about differences in anatomy and variations between people.  We tend to think of anatomy as fixed, but apparently it's NOT.  The most obvious application is that's why some people become neurosurgeons and some DON'T.  :D

[PeterPan]

See it was the opposite for me.  My oldest, who hates writing more than anyone I mentioned, is my least active kid.  He can sit for hours.  He hates to run.  He hates anything physical for the most part.  He can lay around and read for hours.  So I don't know if it is that either.  I don't know what it is. 

Uh, that kind of feeds into what I think is happening.  I think they sit at home being sissified, reading books on cushions, rather than out hauling wood and getting strong.  If your core, hands, arms, etc. aren't strong, it's GOING to hurt.  

[NicAnn]

I have 2 boys and they both loathe the physical act of writing. I don't have any clue why. My husband hates it. My dad hates it. I hate when people say, "boys do x" because I don't believe in stereotyping based on boy/girl, but I have to say my personal experiences make me wonder!

 

I feel like I did the best I could to avoid this, but I haven't avoided it. *sigh*

Agreed. I don't like to say something is a girl/boy thing either, but it does always seem to be my boys that have the problem!

[Mandy in TN]

My oldest had week muscles in his hands. We did things like play doh and using a hole pounch. I found hole punches in different shapes and using them was a big hit.

 

But, I have another theory (in addition to the hand muscle thing). Many writing programs for young writers are often of the creative writing/ expressing yourself sort. OTOH- many men enjoy golf as an adult. It is parallel play where they don't actually have to make eye contact and interact with another person. Males are often much more reserved with their emotions than females. I do not believe that this is a cultural/ environmental/ nurture thing. This is a nature thing.

 

Try taking blind poll of couples. Ask the men and the women their best friend. I would lay money on the men saying their wife more often than the wife saying her husband. Not because the women love their husbands any less but because women develop deep, caring relationships with their friends far more often than men and may think of their dh first as their husband. So, when asked to name their best friend they naturally think of female friends. The husband on the other hand may have no one other than his wife with whom he has any deep meaningful discussions, so she is the only person who comes to mind.

 

So, many males (not all of course) will do better when writing has a purpose. When teachers stop asking them to tell about their favorite season and start asking them for reports with specific information, they start writing better. This why a program like IEW (actual IEW and not the books attempting to add frou frou) well with boys. It gives them concrete things to include in their writing instead of being touchy feely. My dh is now in his mid-forties and he can very much discuss the evening news, but if you asked him how a field of tulips made him feel he would be brought up short. This has nothing to do with the act of writing. A lot of writing programs for young writers ask students to write about thing in touchy feely ways without giving the student concrete objectives.

 

And it has been my observation that once they are comfortable writing with concrete guidelines and objectives that my boys can write amazing stories. So, maybe boys often need to move from concrete to abstract- like in math- but girls are often more expressive of their feelings so the sort of abstract touchy-feely writing prompts just seem natural to them.

 

I am not saying this is true of all boys or all girls. It has just been my observation (in granted my limited experience) that it is true often enough to at least take note of.

HTH-

Mandy, typing from my phone so plz excuse typos and format

These phones were not made for my wide thumbs!

[TeacherZee]

I know there was research in Norway that found that boys who learned to type before they learned to write by and read and wrote better than those who learned to write by hand first. I think it is often a case of not being ready with regards to fine motor skills, then they learn that they are "bad" at it because they have had to re do their writing so many times. In teaching high school I often see students who claim they are "bad" at something and when you start to dig into it I often find that they have been "told"* by a teacher that they are "bad" at it and they have internalised that.

 

 

*not always in words but in having to repeat things such as handwriting or through body language etc.

[Χά�ων]

Uh, that kind of feeds into what I think is happening.  I think they sit at home being sissified, reading books on cushions, rather than out hauling wood and getting strong.  If your core, hands, arms, etc. aren't strong, it's GOING to hurt.  

 

Seriously? Wow.

 

My DS works out almost daily. Yesterday he did 6 hours. 6 hard hours. This is a NORMAL activity day for him. He has been doing this level of activity since the age of 7. Oh and we live on a farm. Monday, he spent 6 hours hauling, stacking and cutting wood to get ready for winter. We tend to put in long hours a couple of times a week rather than a few extra hours a day but DS does work around here daily anyway. He hauls wood in the winter, takes care of the trash, compost and chickens. When the cows are loose he gets them back in their fence. He weed eats around all the buildings, solar array and well. He also helps with the laundry and works at the neighbors as needed. He can sit still and focus on a task as needed.

 

I am sure we can agree that he does not meet your definition of sissified.

 

 

Are you ready for this? He hates writing.

 

I hate writing.

My mom hates writing.

My dad never writes so I am not sure if he hates it or not.

[Elfknitter.#]

/scratch head. What if you don't live where chopping and hauling wood would be a norm? Are suburban and urban boys naturally "sissified?"

 

My son did Judo from ages 3 -7 until he wanted to try karate. Now he's working toward ice hockey and has done gymnastics and aerial circus. But I guess he's sissified since we do our work on the sofa. I mean, it does have cushions on it and all...

[Χά�ων]

/scratch head. What if you don't live where chopping and hauling wood would be a norm? Are suburban and urban boys naturally "sissified?"

 

My son did Judo from ages 3 -7 until he wanted to try karate. Now he's working toward ice hockey and has done gymnastics and aerial circus. But I guess he's sissified since we do our work on the sofa. I mean, it does have cushions on it and all...

Hockey players are sissified!! The play with broken ribs/jaws but stop playing when they break their neck. If they were REAL men, not sissified weinies, they would play with a broken neck.

 

 

DS played goalie and only wore the padding because the ref insisted.

[Mandy in TN]

Hey, before it is buried, any thoughts on this observation? Have others found this to be true?

 

My oldest had week muscles in his hands. We did things like play doh and using a hole pounch. I found hole punches in different shapes and using them was a big hit.

 

But, I have another theory (in addition to the hand muscle thing). Many writing programs for young writers are often of the creative writing/ expressing yourself sort. OTOH- many men enjoy golf as an adult. It is parallel play where they don't actually have to make eye contact and interact with another person. Males are often much more reserved with their emotions than females. I do not believe that this is a cultural/ environmental/ nurture thing. This is a nature thing.

 

Try taking blind poll of couples. Ask the men and the women their best friend. I would lay money on the men saying their wife more often than the wife saying her husband. Not because the women love their husbands any less but because women develop deep, caring relationships with their friends far more often than men and may think of their dh first as their husband. So, when asked to name their best friend they naturally think of female friends. The husband on the other hand may have no one other than his wife with whom he has any deep meaningful discussions, so she is the only person who comes to mind.

 

So, many males (not all of course) will do better when writing has a purpose. When teachers stop asking them to tell about their favorite season and start asking them for reports with specific information, they start writing better. This why a program like IEW (actual IEW and not the books attempting to add frou frou) well with boys. It gives them concrete things to include in their writing instead of being touchy feely. My dh is now in his mid-forties and he can very much discuss the evening news, but if you asked him how a field of tulips made him feel he would be brought up short. This has nothing to do with the act of writing. A lot of writing programs for young writers ask students to write about thing in touchy feely ways without giving the student concrete objectives.

 

And it has been my observation that once they are comfortable writing with concrete guidelines and objectives that my boys can write amazing stories. So, maybe boys often need to move from concrete to abstract- like in math- but girls are often more expressive of their feelings so the sort of abstract touchy-feely writing prompts just seem natural to them.

 

I am not saying this is true of all boys or all girls. It has just been my observation (in granted my limited experience) that it is true often enough to at least take note of.

HTH-

Mandy, typing from my phone so plz excuse typos and format

These phones were not made for my wide thumbs!

[LucyStoner]

Socially boys are, at least at times and at least by some, stigmatized for being readers and writers.  As shown by words like sissified and girly-man even being in our lexicon.  

[PinkyandtheBrains.]

Uh, that kind of feeds into what I think is happening.  I think they sit at home being sissified, reading books on cushions, rather than out hauling wood and getting strong.  If your core, hands, arms, etc. aren't strong, it's GOING to hurt.  

 

I don't understand the use of sissified here. can you clarify?

[Mena]

Yeah, I can accept that there may be some actual developmental reasons too, but I suspect a lot of this is down to social attitudes.

I agree. Several of my boys enjoy writing, probably because they see how much my Dh loves to write. He shares his stories with them and encourages them to write their own. He often talks about how important it is to have strong writing skills in his profession, college and their dream jobs, and helps them see the purpose of their writing assignments. My FIL still brags about the writing awards Dh won while he was in school, which has encouraged two of my boys to participate in essay and poetry competitions. They'd probably be too embarrassed to write the way they do if they were in public school and had to "peer edit" or read their poems aloud, but I'm hoping they'll be over that by college. 

[Farrar]

Uh, that kind of feeds into what I think is happening.  I think they sit at home being sissified, reading books on cushions, rather than out hauling wood and getting strong.  If your core, hands, arms, etc. aren't strong, it's GOING to hurt.  

 

I think your point is that doing lots of core-strengthening activity is necessary for small motor skills as well.  Of course, it's completely lost in the layers of sexism that are evoked by the word sissified.

 

I have read this and even had OT's tell me this point.  I want to believe it but it has been hard because my experience has never shown it to be the case.  I've worked with a lot of kids on writing over the years and their level of physical activity has never correlated with their comfort for the act of writing.

[umsami]

My eldest is that way.  Absolutely hates writing with a pencil.  We worked a bit with an OT at school, but

it really didn't help much.   We used a lot of play dough designed to strengthen his hands, etc.  Different pencil grips.  Nothing really made a difference; however, now that he's moved on to cursive, it seems to be a little better for him.  So maybe it was a printing thing?

 

He does love dictating to me...but ask him to write it himself and it's like pulling teeth.

[Corraleno]

Uh, that kind of feeds into what I think is happening.  I think they sit at home being sissified, reading books on cushions, rather than out hauling wood and getting strong.  If your core, hands, arms, etc. aren't strong, it's GOING to hurt.  

 

So the reason more girls like to write, compared to boys, is because girls spend more time hauling wood and getting strong?  :confused1:

 

I'm sorry, but that makes no. sense. whatsoever.

 

I loved to write from a very young age, despite spending every possible spare minute "reading books on cushions." OTOH, my DS and DH have always been extremely fit and active, and they still hate to write. DS loved to draw from a very young age, so there's no problem with hand strength.

 

What does seem to make a difference is that DS and DH are both very visual/spatial, and have trouble converting the images they see in their heads into words on a page. I think the "bottleneck" issue that Heigh Ho mentioned is also part of the problem, in the sense that it's difficult for them to hold long strings of words in their minds long enough to write them out by hand. Typing makes a BIG difference for both of them, because it allows them to get the words down so much faster.

 

Jackie

[regentrude]

My son loves to write. By hand. With a fountain pen.

 

Having grown up in a country where school kids begin to write with a fountain pen right away, I always wondered about the wisdom of teaching writing with pencils in the US - more strain, cramped hands, death grip, whereas a pen glides on the ink. OK, at the beginning a few ink spots, but kids get the hang  of it really fast.

 

My son attended elementary school in the US, learned to write OK with the pencil - and positively embraced writing when he spent a semester in Germany in school where he had to write with the fountain pen, cursive only. He now writes most of his school work, his notetaking, and all his dozens of pages of creative writing in cursive with pen and finds that very satisfying.

[Χά�ων]

I think your point is that doing lots of core-strengthening activity is necessary for small motor skills as well.  Of course, it's completely lost in the layers of sexism that are evoked by the word sissified.

 

I have read this and even had OT's tell me this point.  I want to believe it but it has been hard because my experience has never shown it to be the case.  I've worked with a lot of kids on writing over the years and their level of physical activity has never correlated with their comfort for the act of writing.

Soo I should not add 500 sit-ups to DS's daily exercise regime to increase his desire to write?

[awisha.]

[Laura Corin]

I think your point is that doing lots of core-strengthening activity is necessary for small motor skills as well.  Of course, it's completely lost in the layers of sexism that are evoked by the word sissified.

 

I have read this and even had OT's tell me this point.  I want to believe it but it has been hard because my experience has never shown it to be the case.  I've worked with a lot of kids on writing over the years and their level of physical activity has never correlated with their comfort for the act of writing.

 

I think that the core strength issue is real.  If there isn't the core strength, then the child leans with his arms on the table to support himself, setting up tension into the arms.

 

But some children are just born more able to build core strength than others.  I would say that Calvin and Hobbes had similar levels of activity as small children - Calvin didn't enjoy it, Hobbes did, but I made sure they did it.  By age 5, Calvin was already diagnosed with fine motor problems, whereas Hobbes was fine.

 

You can see it in the way they sit: Calvin has always lounged and leaned; Hobbes sits up straight.

 

Sissified?  My five foot ten, fully-bearded 16yo is a poet and a delight.  I am as proud of him as I could be.  

 

L

[kiwik]

ds6 does find "sit down and write two pages on your weekend" frustrating and I suspect he daydreams during handwriting practice but when he wants to he can both write and write neatly. Unfortunately his writing is only year level whereas his maths and reading are advanced.

[VinNY]

My boys tended to be reluctant writers but they did love doing calligraphy. My older boys liked the gel pens, so maybe there is something to Regentrude's fountain pen "theory".

 

  

[GoVanGogh]

I am not sure about the word "sissified" but this is my take on it.

I lived on a farm for part of my childhood. I milked the animals, gathered eggs, made homemade bread daily. When my chores were done, I would run through the uneven pasture land down to the creek where I would play barefoot in the water, toes digging in to the mud.
When we lived in the city, I roamed for miles on my bike, helped my grandparents garden, mowed the lawn, did the dishes.
In kindergarten, our time was spent in active play, marching around in circles to music, walking with bean bags balanced on our heads, doing finger plays to children's music.
Through fifth grade, we had two recesses a day where we were able climb wicked high slides, bounce our partners on a teeter-totter, spin around and around on the merry-go-round. In class, we sat in hard wooden chairs, uncomfortable as they were. We were required to sit up for hours every day.

There are dozens of things that go in to "writing" - both the mechanics of it and composition.
Balance, vestibular, bilateral coordination, core strength, gross and fine motor skills, spatial awareness, sensory awareness. All of those are built by the childhood described above.
No you don't need to be out chopping wood to build core strength, but the popular image (Sonlight and Five in a Row, in particular) of a mom and child on the couch reading does nothing to build up the body and prepare it for writing.
How many moms ask, "Why can't my child sit still? They want to roll around on the floor and play while I read." I say, "Let them. It is far better for them to be active than sitting on the couch."
 

I had been hesitant to post to this thread because my son has  c e r e b r a l   p a l s y  so is anything but typical. (Sorry for the spacing, I didn't want this post to pull up on a general internet search.)

A year ago we were told repeatedly by doctors and therapist that he would never physically be able to hold a pen and write. Ten months of intensive therapy to work on the issues listed above and he is now writing. Not beautifully, but it is awesome in my eyes.

As for the composition side: He does have to have a purpose. He prefers to write non-fiction, just state the facts type of writing. I do allow him to use Dragon (speak recognition software) or type for school writing assignments. He just recently started writing a bit on his own.



To go back to the original question - do more boys hate to write than girls? I would take my experience and research back all the way to birth.  

Our son was premature. We were told daily that boys in NICU fare so much worse than girls. Girls were admitted to NICU, only to be discharged home a day or two later. Our boy - and the other boys around him - lingered in NICU, unable to warm themselves, unable to nurse or take a bottle, unable to regulate their breathing.

Fast forward to today. There is a fairly new study out that says that premature boys now 10-15 years old (like my boy) are now being diagnosed with learning issues at a much higher rate than their peers.

C e r e b r a l  p a l s y  is defined as a brain injury that causes a neuromuscular movement disorder. Scale that back and remove the movement issue and you are left with a slight brain issue - rewiring, maybe?

New research in autism, dyslexia and dysgraphia are looking at brain abnormalities. What is the cause? It just took a blip, a few missed breaths, to cause our son's CP. The neuroscience behind learning issues and autism will be interesting to follow over the next decade.



There is also a lot of research now on retained primitive reflexes. The specialists stopped counting when my son tested for his 5th retained (un-integrated) reflex. (At that point, they just work on all of his reflexes.)

Now pediatricians test for retained reflexes, but - in our quest to find a new pediatrician - I cannot find a single doctor that knows or understands the importance of retained reflexes or tests past newborn stage. The last pediatrician we went to said the ATNR reflex is just a "cool trick to show new moms." I almost fell over. A child with an un-integrated ATNR will struggle with writing as it hinders his/her ability to move the fingers freely from the eyes. (This is not nearly as noticeable as it sounds.)

When I asked this pediatrician what he did with an infant that still displayed the ATNR reflex at three months, he said, "Nothing. We never recheck, but assume it has integrated."

Checking for retained reflexes takes just a few minutes and doesn't take any special equipment. The internet is full of information on how the average person can check. Why are children not checked before entering kindergarten? I think it would greatly reduced learning issues down the road if ALL children were checked before being required to sit and write.

 

 

My son, despite his CP, is a good example of how specific fine motor skills and brain issues can be. He has been rocking out his electric guitar since he was eight, but didn't learn to tie his shoes until nearly 11. He loves to solder and is quite good at it, but struggles with holding a toothbrush to brush his teeth. He can run and mountain bike, but cannot walk a balance beam. He can build detailed Lego sets, but cutting his own food is challenging. He can memorize long passages of poetry on the first reading, but can't recall math facts. He reads and understand his dad's computer/electronics book from college, but can't remember how write contractions.


All that to say - I think people can speculate why boys hate to write all they want, but there are so many sub-skills that make up writing it is hard to grasp each and every portion. I do feel that doctors and parents need to be more aware of the issue and not brush it off or rush to put a child to typing. A good example - the therapy facility my child attends recently started seeing a 16-year-old girl. In talking with the mom, this girl has had problems sitting and writing all of her school life. It wasn't until she wasn't able to pass her driving exam that they were sent to a specialist who diagnosed the girl with a retained ATNR reflex. What had affected this girl's writing ability all of her life was now preventing her from being able to turn her head properly to drive. So it isn't 'just' writing and can't or shouldn't be blown over so easily. The skills that go into writing are needed for every day life, now and in the child's future.
 

[Mom-ninja.]

My oldest loves fountain pens. He hates to color. Hates to draw. With a passion. Loves to write. He doesn't like to come up with original thought to write, but the actual hand writing....loves it. He is my not so into athletics son. He loves to read. I guess some here would call him sissified. I'm glad that I always have ongoing discussions with him about stereotypes and sexism. At 12 he seems to have more maturity about such issues than many adults. 

 

My middle ds hates hates to write. He has very sloppy handwriting. However, he loves loves to color and draw. He colors amazingly. He draws well. But writing? Not so much. He's also very athletic and always on the move so according to some he is not sissified.

 

Pesky kids not falling into neat little categories.

[Critterfixer]

I don't know. Mine didn't seem to mind it. When we started K, both boys were far more eager to learn how to write than they were eager to learn how to read. I'm not sure what the difference was unless it had to do with the fact that they saw me writing all the time. I write stories, I love to write, and I prefer to write on paper when I am drafting. They saw me with a pen and a notebook scribbling away all the time. So the first thing they wanted to do was write. It was pulling teeth to work on reading. Writing was easy.

 

NOW, neatness in writing is something else. :laugh: But art seems to have helped with fine motor control. I gave them free reign with the paints and paint brushes early on and that was a non-writing activity that seemed to help them work on motor control.

 

So I don't know why boys hate to write. Hasn't been my experience. But I understand that it is a common problem.

[lllll]

..

[PeterPan]

Uh, that kind of feeds into what I think is happening.  I think they sit at home being sissified, reading books on cushions, rather than out hauling wood and getting strong.  If your core, hands, arms, etc. aren't strong, it's GOING to hurt.  

 

 

sissified?

 

I can't even take what you said seriously after you used that word.

 

He does plenty of things with his hands (soldering, building computers and electronics, woodworking, crafts, etc.).  He just isn't into sports and running.  My point was that he can sit still.

 

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you and spoke unclearly, mixing ideas.  One is that there can be actual physical reasons why a dc doesn't gravitate to sports, running, etc. etc. and moms can assume it's just personality.  How you deal with it, whether you are concerned about it, that's all your deal.  I've dealt with that in my house and the hating writing, and I know the physical why in our house.  Apparently it isn't on your radar or an issue to you.

I don't understand the use of sissified here. can you clarify?

Thank you for being exceptionally polite.  :)  I shouldn't have even said it, because it's just a can of worms I've thought about for years.  It had NOTHING to do with Wendy (which is why I shouldn't have used the word) or anyone here.  I've just seen things over the years that have made me wonder if maybe our curriculum approach is too sedate (sit at a desk for hours, sit on the couch listening to books), keeping them too busy to do the things they really need to do to be healthy and active.  

 

My kids are low tone, as am I.  If we sit around and don't move, we LOSE our muscle tone.  So the idea that sitting around on a couch listening to SL three hours a day could have consequences for some kids is very real to me.    If it doesn't apply to someone else, move on.  To me it was personal in the sense of my own PERSONAL question of whether I was focusing on the mind so much that I let the body go.

 

I also think curriculum attempts to be too androgenous.  We shove boys into fine motor work and girls into political history and act like all of humanity needs to study the same things the same way to be educated.  Textbooks and curricula are very gender-biased in this way and skew our expectations, with no differentiation for gender, bents, or interests.  Pudewa talks about this quite a bit, as does the Sax book I mentioned.

[mathnerd]

Uh, that kind of feeds into what I think is happening.  I think they sit at home being sissified, reading books on cushions, rather than out hauling wood and getting strong.  If your core, hands, arms, etc. aren't strong, it's GOING to hurt.  

 

sissified??? OhElizabeth - that was uncalled for. My neice is a 5 year old girl whose handwriting is almost like an adult's. And here is someting for you to consider - she is physically very frail from the time of birth, hardly does any extracurriculars that are physical in nature (she was born a preemie with many health issues and all of them have not gone away), is very weak physically and is either reading a book, playing boardgames or watching TV (never went to playschool or preschool, so no active playtime), sits out PE in K. And her handwriting is better than mine and she can write pages in one go. She has tiny hands and no big muscle mass and her core, hands and arms are NOT strong. She just writes and is happy to do so.

I bring this example so that you can understand that boys and girls have different attitudes to writing and core strength is not the foremost issue where writing is concerned. It is more about motor control and coordination and a "tendency" to do a task. And if being "sissified" stops boys from writing - what about the girls who write so well and have lesser muscle and core strength than the "so called sissified" boys??

[mommymilkies]

Yeah, we don't really like our boy to see loving reading as 'sissy'. What does that mean anyway ? That they are behaving like girls ? Isn't it OK to behave like a girl ? What's wrong with reading a book ? I'm sure many manly men do. Look at Viggo Mortensen. He's Aragorn AND he writes poetry.

 

Anyway. My boy isn't a huge fan of writing. I make him do it anyway :) He is, however, a huge fan of typing, and when I gave him permission to type instead of hand write, lo and behold, he wrote a 10 chapter Doctor Who story.

He writes poetry?  Why do people look for erotica, then?  Don't they know about this?  We need to put out pamphlets. 

[Aloha2U]

Pudewa talks about this quite a bit, as does the Sax book I mentioned.

 

I find it interesting that when I just searched for this book through our local network, in order to place it on hold, I discovered that it has been "withdrawn" from our largest library.  Fortunately, there are two more in circulation from smaller libraries in the area.  Thanks for the tip!

[GoVanGogh]

 

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you and spoke unclearly, mixing ideas.  One is that there can be actual physical reasons why a dc doesn't gravitate to sports, running, etc. etc. and moms can assume it's just personality.  How you deal with it, whether you are concerned about it, that's all your deal.  I've dealt with that in my house and the hating writing, and I know the physical why in our house.  Apparently it isn't on your radar or an issue to you.

OhEllizabeth has been extremely helpful to me over on the SN boards and is aware of my son's condition. But this quote of hers, quoted from a few posts back, is extremely true. (Quick background: DS was initally screened for CP too early and - now we find out a decade later - has an extremely rare form that his pediatricians were totally clueless about and had been going on the assumption that he didn't have CP since earlier screening was negative.)

From my (limited) experience, many people  (homeschool community, parents, pediatricians) brush off concerns about physcial ability and writing. Yeah, some kids are just geeks that don't like physical activity. My DH is one of them, which is why we were never all that worried that our DS couldn't dribble a basketball or jump rope. I remember my mother telling me that I expected too much of my DS when I expressed concern that he couldn't swim after six years of lessons. Even our pediatricians thought my concerns were overblown. It was never looked at from the other point of view that OhElizabth mentioned above: Maybe it isn't personality? Maybe the child isn't physically active because they have a physical condition preventing them from it?

I was certainly seeing that over the past few years and it was alarming me - DS was more content to just lay on the couch and read, said it was too tiring to go biking. He dropped sports that required a lot of gross motor skills and coordination and gravitated towards one sport that involved less "togetherness."

 

 I've just seen things over the years that have made me wonder if maybe our curriculum approach is too sedate (sit at a desk for hours, sit on the couch listening to books), keeping them too busy to do the things they really need to do to be healthy and active.

I agree 100%. This was what I was trying to get at above. This is really the first generation that we have required to sit and study at such a young age and for such long periods of time.

Physical chores and active play are very important for developing core strength, gross and fine motor skills. Even standing and writing at a chalkboard like kids did 50 years ago was so important for building the muscles across the shoulders and upper arms, which translate to better stability for sitting and writing.

Yes - many children have no problem with muscle tone so this isn't an issue. But it isn't on the radar of many homeschool mothers and - as we learned - it isn't even something pediatricians look at or are concerned with. 

[PeterPan]

I bring this example so that you can understand that boys and girls have different attitudes to writing and core strength is not the foremost issue where writing is concerned. It is more about motor control and coordination and a "tendency" to do a task. And if being "sissified" stops boys from writing - what about the girls who write so well and have lesser muscle and core strength than the "so called sissified" boys??

My dd *does* have low tone, etc. etc. AND the motor control problems, so I've btdt.  My boy does too, again btdt.  He wears camo all day and is preparing to be a professional sniper it seems, so he's probably not hitting anyone's sissy list.  However if you read the rest of the thread, I clarified exactly what I meant, apologized, AND explained why I said it.  If someone has praxis and EF issues AND motor control problems AND low tone, writing is rough whether they're male or female.  Btdt.  Now just to flex your situation, my boy is actually sorta like your girl, with a fine motor drive (because of his apraxia) that overrides some of his tone issues, etc. etc.  But it's not one or the other.  Like I said, we're living it. I totally grant there are more components (gender, motor control, etc. etc.).  I just opened a can of worms without being careful.

 

And as for how he turns out, I'm of the camp that it shouldn't be awful, that you keep trying to connect and find how to make it work, whether it's timing or OT or changing the content, changing the task, changing the medium.  We've had to do ALL those things over the years.  I've got a girl who gets labels they say are dominantly boys, so I do agree there's an *element* of gender to it, as Mandy described, but I also think there's this brain/chemistry/body thing that is actually part of that larger picture that, while it is *dominant* in boys is not *exclusive* to boys.

[PeterPan]

Even our pediatricians thought my concerns were overblown. It was never looked at from the other point of view that OhElizabth mentioned above: Maybe it isn't personality? Maybe the child isn't physically active because they have a physical condition preventing them from it?

I was certainly seeing that over the past few years and it was alarming me - DS was more content to just lay on the couch and read, said it was too tiring to go biking. He dropped sports that required a lot of gross motor skills and coordination and gravitated towards one sport that involved less "togetherness."

 

Exactly.  When you've btdt and realized that something you blew off as personality wasn't, your tune kinda changes.  I've btdt.  Whether that's someone else's situation isn't my deal, because I'm not a doc.  Simply as a matter of courtesy, I try to toss things out.  I think there's strength in seeing a LOT of perspectives on a situation.  Sometimes the most immediate or popular take doesn't turn out to be the correct one, and sometimes that's not obvious for a while.  Lots of voices, lots of answers, and sort out what sticks for your situation.

[PeterPan]

nt

[PeterPan]

My child is physically active.  He just doesn't like group sports.  I don't understand the issue here.  I was simply giving an example of a kid who could sit still because a poster wondered if boys hate to write because they can't sit still.

And on the flip side, you can have kids with adhd who sit still just fine and still have trouble writing.  That has nothing to do with you but is just to say I would hope a person tutoring for money has taken the time to learn about these basic things and doesn't have to use inaccurate euphemisms like "sit still" but can actually use the correct terminology and understand what they're seeing.  (working memory, praxis, EF, initiation hump, dysgraphia, adhd, whether it's in the realm of normal or something to be diagnosed, etc. etc.)  That's why I mentioned some books, because it's way beyond the scope of what is getting presented here anecdotally.  The correlation of boys and these problems is all very well known and controversial, with some people like Guffanti saying it represents a bias toward a visual approach and against kinesthetic learners, etc.  So differences, defects, they start to merge in the controversy.

 

In the end, she should read a bunch of books and learn for herself.  There are books like Freed's book "Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World" that explore how to teach writing to struggling dc in a tutoring environment.  There's software like Inspiration.  She can come to the LC/SN board and find lists of books.  It's not one thing or one answer, which is what this thread most shows.

[Stellalarella]

Writing is work.  The ds I am thinking of does not enjoy work.  Therefore, Ds does not enjoy writing.  

Kindly said with a smile.  

[SweetMissMagnolia]

oh yea sounds like my 10yr old son