Bad handwriting

[DadDeAvery]

Hello! My young teenager is at grade level for everything but handwriting. The handwriting looks like a young child's; but if I tell my teenager this, there is little desire to improve. How can I get the importance of good handwriting across to my child (or is it important?)? Also, what methods do you suggest for improving handwriting at an older age?

[Gil]

Yes, handwriting is important in my experience and opinion. It's a hill I will die on when my kids are young.

But I'm direct about it

Explain that their writing is terrible and it's time to fix it and that it's important that they know how to write neatly with fluency.

1) Give them an ink pen.
2) Teach how to form letters stroke-by-stroke and make them practice well for several minutes, multiple times throughout the day.
3) Teach them to proof read as they write and how to neatly strike through something and keep moving.

After a month or more, however long it takes for them to have good exposure to the basics, and can write neatly we get to the point that any time that they produce work that is subpar, simply tear it up and require it be redone on their time.

With older kids, there's nothing to it but to teach them better, make sure that they're getting sufficient and intelligently designed practice to set a new baseline for them. Then hold them accountable to produce up to a certain standard.

Rinse and repeat.

 

 

[HomeAgain]

Have you considered the disappearing ink books?  Amazon has several from print to cursive, and they're oddly satisfying.  A person can practice their muscle memory with grooved copywork.

[Clarita]

A lot of people think it's important and it certainly is important up to a certain age. My husband has handwriting bad enough that sometimes he can't read it and I don't think anyone at this point can convince him it's important for life. 

I had bad handwriting until about middle school. Then I decided, because my family was teasing me, to have better handwriting than all of them. The way I did it is to find handwriting samples I liked and then work on replicating it until it feels natural. Then find another passage to work on write that and repeat writing that same passage until it is to my liking. 

I've also watched some tutorials from Paul Antonio (a master calligrapher) and he has given some great pointers on the placement of the paper, where my body are suppose to be while writing that have functionally made writing beautifully less taxing. Of course I can't imagine forcing anyone not wanting beautiful handwriting to go to these lengths.

[DadDeAvery]

Thanks for all the tips! I do still wonder why it is important. I'm not saying one way or the other, just trying to figure it out. I'm thinking about my use of handwriting in my adult life: I think I only hand write when I'm making notes to myself as reminders/To Do's. And at the DMV, I guess. Still, when I see my child's handwriting, I worry. Even though I know handwriting won't affect his scores even on written exams like AP.

[mathmarm]

In our homeschool, we value writing as a form of communication.

 

The ability to effortlessly communicate in writing gives you the option too.

 

I know many young adults and teens who refuse to write by hand because they are embarrassed by the way their writing looks.

If your child had a severe speech impediment would you want to get them help or let them go  dwrrough theiw whowe  wife taking wike thwis?

The ability to read and write by hand will never go fully extinct in their life time.

 

Also, the handwriting they have in English translates into any other language that uses the Latin Alphabet. Many European cultures do not feel handwriting is obsolete and when your child can't write in English, they can't write in French, Norwegian or Romanian either.

 

 

[HomeAgain]

2 hours ago, DadDeAvery said:

Thanks for all the tips! I do still wonder why it is important. I'm not saying one way or the other, just trying to figure it out. I'm thinking about my use of handwriting in my adult life: I think I only hand write when I'm making notes to myself as reminders/To Do's. And at the DMV, I guess. Still, when I see my child's handwriting, I worry. Even though I know handwriting won't affect his scores even on written exams like AP.

I write when I:

take notes from lectures (complex subjects have me jotting down information more like Cornell notes)

write my kids snail mail at camp (summer camp, sports camp, boot camp..)

write checks

fill out forms at the doctor's office

send cards

explain concepts

create diagrams

 

Much of my writing is done on a computer now, but these are things that are literally easier/faster to do with a pen than with a keyboard. 

 

Could a kid's writing improve if they decided to do something?  Well, yes.  My oldest sent me a card that had beautiful handwriting and I kept it because he put in the effort - but he decided to put in the effort because he was tired of getting things marked wrong because they couldn't be read by his other teachers.

[Tanager]

when you say his writing is like a young child, I wonder about dysgraphia. 

I expected my kids to be able to write beautifully, and when my daughter seemed lazy, like she wasn't trying I did make her rewrite things, which were never as neat as I hoped. She'd complain her hand hurt, she'd break the tips of sharp pencils pressing so hard. I was correcting her grip every other month as she reverted. She did learn to write neat and can when needed, but it will exhaust her. Cursive helped her keep letters together with the right words (fo rexa mpl e) and help keep her letters sitting correctly on the baseline. I’ve also read cursive can be harder for some with dysgraphia. For years we really worked hard on handwriting. Then I learned about dysgraphia and it all made sense. If I did it over I would be more compassionate.

I call hers mild dysgraphia. These days I don't expect writing to be neat because it just takes so long and the energy is better spent learning. She does have to be able to read her writing and is allowed to type whenever. She does slow down for math to make sure her answers come out right. She also has issues getting thoughts from her head to paper, but loves to write/type stories. Her dad has the same disconnect and same handwriting. 

For a young teenager I would make sure they could type correctly really well. We used a typing program. I’d also try a class on shorthand. Taking notes when a teacher is lecturing is hard for my daughter, she can’t keep up and keep her notes neat enough to read them herself. If your young teenager wants to write neat then I’d work on helping them with that at their pace.

[Mona]

My oldest doesn’t have the best handwriting, and all those lists online on why you should have good handwriting really wasn’t convincing. One of our English books said that good penmanship is showing kindness to others, so maybe having a pen pal or handwriting weekly letters to someone would help improve your teen’s handwriting. If you don’t have someone to write to, you may want to try postcrossing.com. You can send a postcard to someone and receive one from another country and keep track of where you have gotten them from. It could be fun and get some geography study in, too. Our local post office lady gently corrected my kids and gave them a little talk about neatness when using the usps which helps when the message was coming from someone other than me. My son did very well at university regardless of his handwriting.

[prairiewindmomma]

Are you familiar with dysgraphia? Dysgraphia is literally bad-writing, as in poor handwriting skills.  Odds are if you're dealing with a young teen boy, his chicken scratching is coming more from a place of motor difficulties rather than laziness.  From an occupational therapy perspective, if he has a functional cursive signature and can fill out a basic form (like medical stuff at the doctor's office), your time is better spent working on teaching speed and accuracy in touch typing or in using speech dictation add-ons to a laptop.

One of mine didn't have a functional ability to write.  We took him to occupational therapy appointments a few times a week for a few years, and while he can laboriously write in legible cursive, tens of thousands of dollars later, the speed at which he has legibility is so slow that it's not ever how he is going to functionally write anything beyond the things I mention above.  We had him formally diagnosed so he could get accommodations for the SAT/ACT/etc. and he is now finishing up public high school.  He types or texts for nearly everything, using the grammarly add-on to his browser to help catch mis-typing errors (remember, the root of the disorder is poor fine motor function), and it's been no big deal at all.

If he's not interested in improving his handwriting, I wouldn't make this your hill to die on. Work on touch typing speed (aim for 60wpm+) and move on.  It's not worth a battle of wills on this one, especially as his actual motor ability is largely out of his control. 

-------

If he actually wanted to work on his handwriting, I'd first do a visual-motor assessment through a professional (there are pediatric occupational and vision therapists that work on this) and find out where the breakdown is.  I'd also do a technology assessment as part of that same process. Occupational therapy for my kid looked like 50% gross motor work focusing on cross-hemispheric strengthening, 25% visual motor work, and 25% actual handwriting. You have to fix the body and the brain before you can fix the hand as the hand just expresses what the body and the brain are telling it to do. Handwriting without Tears is still the kind of go-to handwriting program, but honestly, it makes sense to fix the body issues first.  Research supports this: https://research.aota.org/ajot/article/76/Supplement_1/7610505010p1/23577/Relationship-of-Retained-Primitive-Reflexes-and

Edited July 22, 2023 by prairiewindmomma

[Clarita]

On 7/20/2023 at 10:36 AM, DadDeAvery said:

I do still wonder why it is important. I'm not saying one way or the other, just trying to figure it out.

I wonder too. 

I see a lot of information about it helping reading, knowledge retention, etc. It's does always make me wonder if otherwise academically you are fine or great even. After that what does good/great handwriting serve?

[Green Bean]

Tell him to write in all CAPS. Easy to read and fewer curves to navigate. Other than that, make sure he can type very well. The only thing he will need to be able to write somewhat clearly in cursive is to sign his name.