What happened to my son's handwriting?

[Nicole M]

Ever since penmanship was phased out as an actual subject and typing became the preferred method, my son's writing has gone down the toilet. And it really was beautiful once. I don't even think he remembers cursive at all anymore. Goodness.

 

I know I read a thread here about older kids learning (or relearning?) cursive, but I can't find it. Any tips? At this point merely legible would be the goal.

 

Thanks!

[Tenaj]

I don't know how old your son is and this may sound stupid, but have you changed the kind of pencil he is using. My 7 yods and 11 yods both had fairly decent handwriting last year and this year it disappeared. I finally connected it to the kind of pencils they were using. Last year I had purchased them each a mechanical pencil that was a slim design and this year at Walmart I purchased mechanical pencils that were chunkier, with a rubber holder. When we switched back to the old pencils, their handwriting improved immediately.

[rafiki]

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[Nicole M]

I don't know how old your son is and this may sound stupid, but have you changed the kind of pencil he is using. My 7 yods and 11 yods both had fairly decent handwriting last year and this year it disappeared. I finally connected it to the kind of pencils they were using. Last year I had purchased them each a mechanical pencil that was a slim design and this year at Walmart I purchased mechanical pencils that were chunkier, with a rubber holder. When we switched back to the old pencils, their handwriting improved immediately.

 

Well, he just turned 12. He is extremely persnickety about his writing utensils, so I don't think this is the problem. His numbers, interestingly, are perfect, when he does math. Very legible. It's the words that leave quite a lot to be desired!

[Nicole M]

Oh, we were there. My ds learned to write cursive, once he was writing nicely, I left him decide if he would print, use cursive, or type the following year. His writing went down hill quickly. Halfway through the year I had to reteach him cursive, and now I require it full time. I've learned my lesson, even with my middle ds, once he learned cursive and no longer had to think about letter formation, he was required to use it full time. The same with typing, don't teach them how, if you are not going to require it regularly to keep the skill current.

 

I think we'll have to go this route, re-teaching cursive. I even dug around and found our StartWrite (or WriteStart, whatever it is...) program and typed up his geography vocabulary in cursive for him to copy. He was aghast, but sucked it up and did it. Poor fella.