Enforcing handwriting standards...in other words

[battlemaiden]

Banging your head against the wall. Day after day after day after day....:glare:

 

I'm here to admit that this particular child has done the Italic D workbook three times.:001_huh: Well, he is on his third go around. He does great in the workbook! But on day to day writing assignments he chucks all that *neat* stuff out the window.

 

If you are blessed to have never encountered this, I hope you go through each day mindful of your blessing. :lol:

 

If not? Can I get a big ol' "I hear ya' sista'!"

 

Jo- wishing she could live on east coast time so she could sit back and watch Lost with a glass of wine RIGHT NOW.

[abbeyej]

Have you tried telling him that any *other* work turned in with substandard handwriting will be considered "incomplete" and returned to him to redo until it's correct? It could make for a few days of misery for all concerned, but in the long run, I think it would be worthwhile...

[Ria]

How old is this child? I honestly believe that some kids will just have crappy handwriting, and at some point you just need to teach them to type and let it go. My 16-yr old is one of those kids. He was delayed in fine motor skills, and to this day does his own strange mixture of print and pseudo-cursive when taking notes. He can sign his name in cursive, and that's okay with me. Typing was a blessing to all of us, lol.

 

ETA: This child was typing when he was 9. It saved both our lives. LOL.

 

Ria

Edited January 22, 2009 by Ria

[MeanestMomInMidwest]

Okay, I'm right there with ya, banging my head. My ds7 not only has horrible handwriting, he hates, with the white-hot intensity of one thousand suns, hates writing anything. I have resorted to letting him do his math verbally. He knows the answers in all his subjects, but it takes him forever to finish any work because of his loathing of handwriting.

Enforce standards?!?! Puhlease! I just want to get to the point where he will write anything.

[LaxMom]

I hear ya, sista!

 

I generally forewarn my little darling that she will use her best handwriting or do it over until she does. I find sloppy handwriting rude, as if the person who has to read it isn't worth the time it takes to communicate clearly. :glare:

 

That said, there is something of a disconnect between using skills - such as handwriting, spelling and punctuation - in a narrow context, like a workbook, and writing one's own thoughts out. I have multiple friends whose children can both write and spell, but not when they're answering questions or writing an essay. It'll come.

[battlemaiden]

Have you tried telling him that any *other* work turned in with substandard handwriting will be considered "incomplete" and returned to him to redo until it's correct? It could make for a few days of misery for all concerned, but in the long run, I think it would be worthwhile...

 

It is the definition of "correct" I'm struggling with. He is a very diligent child (10yo). When he does handwriting exercises he does fine. But he this certain **default** setting that makes me crazy. I have had him rewrite many, many times. I just wish he recognized bad writing when it was happening.

[battlemaiden]

How old is this child? I honestly believe that some kids will just have crappy handwriting, and at some point you just need to teach them to type and let it go. My 16-yr old is one of those kids. He was delayed in fine motor skills, and to this day does his own strange mixture of print and pseudo-cursive when taking notes. He can sign his name in cursive, and that's okay with me. Typing was a blessing to all of us, lol.

 

ETA: This child was typing when he was 9. It saved both our lives. LOL.

 

Ria

 

He is my computer kid. This very well could be a solution for us. Hmmmmm.

 

Jo

[mereadeux]

LOL!

[joannqn]

This is one battle I chose not to fight. As someone who was entered in handwriting contests as a kid, I can't believe how bad my kids' handwriting is even when they are trying. My husband's writing is nearly illegible so I figure that they must take after him.

 

My standard...I must be able to read it for them to get credit, regardless of the subject. If it is something that can be easily typed, like writing assignments, typing is allowed.

[Annie N]

Okay, I'm right there with ya, banging my head. My ds7 not only has horrible handwriting, he hates, with the white-hot intensity of one thousand suns, hates writing anything. I have resorted to letting him do his math verbally. He knows the answers in all his subjects, but it takes him forever to finish any work because of his loathing of handwriting.

Enforce standards?!?! Puhlease! I just want to get to the point where he will write anything.

 

He's 7--that's young for a boy to write well, based on my wide experience with my 2 sons :wink: Maybe in a year or so, have him add in handwiting and then after a bit add in spelling written nicely? Just very oft and gradual.

 

That being said, my 2 older children are terrible spellers, and I used to be a proofreader. Well, (gee, I feel like I've heard this before!) my husband is a terrible speller, so I think they take after him... so maybe your son is taking after someone else.

[MeanestMomInMidwest]

He's 7--that's young for a boy to write well, based on my wide experience with my 2 sons :wink: Maybe in a year or so, have him add in handwiting and then after a bit add in spelling written nicely? Just very oft and gradual.

 

 

Thank you. I needed to hear this from someone who has btdt. I feel like foregoing the HWT alltogether for a while, because for us it is not without tears. There are some things he has to write, but I feel like I'm operating a torture chamber, not a schoolroom. Did I hear somewhere that homeschooling was supposed to be pleasant?

[NicksMama-Zack's Mama Too]

He can perform intricate slight-of-hand magic tricks, juggle, speed-stack, deal black-jack and pick your pocket....:eek:

 

but he writes like.......a doctor...

 

He has taken to typing and he's a thoughtful writer.....

 

I think he's going to want me to burn his handwriting book when he finishes it --

 

K

[SapphireStitch]

Thank you. I needed to hear this from someone who has btdt. I feel like foregoing the HWT alltogether for a while, because for us it is not without tears. There are some things he has to write, but I feel like I'm operating a torture chamber, not a schoolroom. Did I hear somewhere that homeschooling was supposed to be pleasant?

 

Well, it's not always pleasant. Sometimes it just has to be done even if it hurts.

 

BUT, he's really young for handwriting competence, let along excellence. Here's what I'm doing with my 7yo DS...and I hasten to add that at this point I have no idea if this will result in him ever having good handwriting.:001_huh:

 

We did Kumon workbooks for manuscript handwriting, and since we did uppercase letters first, he knows them best. So his preference is to write in all caps...eek. I talked to him about cursive writing and he thought it looked cool, so we are working through an Abeka 1st grade handwriting book VERY SLOWLY.

 

We are still near the very beginning of the book. We do one tiny line on a page each day, that is all. We've done lowercase i, e, and u, and are now working on a. It may take several years to get through this book, and right now I'm okay with this. I make him focus on doing that one line SLOWLY and carefully and doing the absolute best he possibly can.

 

After he finishes the line, I have him underline which of the letters he thinks he did best. We discuss the shapes of the letters and I point out what he did right when writing his best letter.

 

For every other subject, I let him write however he wants as long as I can read it. He's learning about sentences beginning with a capital letter, so he's starting to pick up that he can't write everything in caps. Some days I think I can see some improvement in his manuscript writing. Some days he surprises me by writing a whole word or two in very nice cursive...we use a couple of Abeka language arts books and they usually have instructions, etc. at this grade level written in both manuscript and cursive, so he's seeing how the letters join together.

 

For now, this is what's working for us. I'll let you know in 10 years whether it was a good idea or not. :lol:

[hornblower]

I would say that if you've done it 3x already, it's time to try something different.

 

I would suggest typing for whatever can be typed just to separate this out for a bit.

 

For the writing, I'd suggest trying one or more of the following:

 

-Barchowsky Fluid Hand http://www.bfhhandwriting.com/

-Callirobics http://www.callirobics.com/index.html

-Drawing or cartooning lessons ---- handwriting is drawing & doing certain styles of cartooning or manga or just general drawing, may help him to "see" the letters better.

 

Also, I'd encourage him to try different 'fonts' for handwriting. I know someone by junior high was writing in his own 'architect' hand, kind of like this:

http://www.fonts.com/FindFonts/Detail.htm?pid=406475&/cgi-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id=0&page_id=10894&query=ARCHITECT&SCOPE=Fonts

He was smoking fast too - I know because I used to borrow his notes from Socials :D.

[Deidre in GA]

at 10, another vote for moving to typing. i would still press for legibility with the pen, though, even if it's a print/cursive amalgam.

[CalicoKat]

How old is this child? I honestly believe that some kids will just have crappy handwriting, and at some point you just need to teach them to type and let it go. My 16-yr old is one of those kids. He was delayed in fine motor skills, and to this day does his own strange mixture of print and pseudo-cursive when taking notes. He can sign his name in cursive, and that's okay with me. Typing was a blessing to all of us, lol.

 

ETA: This child was typing when he was 9. It saved both our lives. LOL.

 

Ria

:lol: I just ordered a typing program for the kids. . . .. yesterday!

 

My kids are doin the GD Italic too. I just have to say though my lefty is much more legible than her lefty dad. I guess legibility is my bottom line. I have read her work back to when it's illegible. She is horrified when she realizes that IF I can't read the write answer then it's wrong and she'll have more corrections to make. Numbers are the biggest problem here. She finally adopted my method of writing sevens in the French manner with the bar in the middle.

[Peri]

I HEAR YA SISTA!

 

Sorry I didn't mean to be that loud but I was practicaly jumping out of my seat when I read this. My 11 yo DD drives me crazy with, what I like to call, her selective memory. It's not like I haven't told her time and time again that she needs to head her paper properly, indent, do her work neatly, and the list goes on. She just choses not to remember any of it. And yes I have given her back her work and asked her to rewrite it. She is getting better but she regresses at times. Lately what I have been trying to get her to understand is that everyone has to rewrite their essays. There is what we call a rough draft and then there's the final draft. She turns in the rough draft as neat as possible with as little errors on it as possible (or at least in her mind it has very little errors) and she will throw a fit when I had it back to her with all my notes and ask her to now write the final draft. I just hate having to be so repetitive with her about the basics.