What do you do when?

[bnwhitaker]

My two boys 9 & 10 do not want to write much at all. One of them will write the first letter of the answer in his workbooks because he does not want to write the word out. If I ask him to he feels a little overwhelmed and like he doesn't want to.
When doing our science lapbooks and they need to write information on the individual book parts they feel like it to much writing even when I really try to make it as simple as possible and still understandable. They will do a couple sentences when writing their verses down with out to much complaint. They are doing pentime for handwriting and only doing ½ page a day because I didn’t want them to slop through it anymore and they will try harder if they don’t have as much to do.

I just got our new writing program and realize they will need to be writing more than they like to for sure. Im wondering do I go ahead with it and see what happens? OR should I do something else for the rest of this year and get them writing more before I try a whole writing program. We could always start next year in 4th grade. I worried about making them write to much in a writing program and then they wont want to do it. I think they will like making stories up and I also think they could do it as far as understanding goes. Its really just the actual writing that is the problem. But I don’t want it to be so does anyone have some advice?

[happypamama]

My DD was like that for a couple of years. I did as much as possible orally, and that really helped. Over the past few years, she's naturally transitioned to writing more, but we still do things orally when possible. She writes for math and writing but often types for history, and we do Latin orally.

[ballardlm]

My first thought was to teach them to type.

[Chris in VA]

Two things--

 

One, if it's actually a fatigue or fine motor issue, strengthening the muscles would be in order.

 

Two, if it's just a preference, at ages 9 and 10, I have to say it'd be "sorry, suck it up" around here. Writing just one letter for an answer wouldn't fly.  I know that doesn't sound very compassionate, but honestly, I think it's just part of learning that you can't always do what you prefer. It might be time for you to deal with the uncomfortable feeling of their discomfort! I'm sure you don't want to quelch their love of learning and all that, but they might just have to push through.

 

I would, however, make sure you have limited redundancy in your curricula--IOW, for example, use history narrations or science for copywork or handwriting practice instead of a handwriting program once they have learned letter formation.

[SilverMoon]

At those ages I'd start increasing their daily amount and strengthen their endurance. I'd start with no more shortcuts. Give fair warning that the whole answer will need writing out in X days and require it after that. When that's done I'd go back to daily copywork and keep pressure on their comfort level.

 

Something I did to build writing endurance in my kids was to pick an impressively sized piece of copywork for their writing assignment. Then I had the DC break it down into daily bites by marking on the page before they began. By the time they finished copying something like the Declaration of Independence they were so very proud of themselves, and normal writing assignments seemed like a walk in the park. I'd pick a piece that would seem huge in their eyes, but totally doable in daily bites.

[bnwhitaker]

Thank you all so much