Posted by Sydney in NJ on 21:47 Sep 12
Only a few days in to the school year and I have discovered my accelerated son's Achilles Heel... (dunh dunh DUNH): writing. OK, sorry for the excessive drama; this was actually not a big surprise to me. The biggest problems we ever had with ps homework last year always centered on writing assignments. Give his math, logic, workbooks galore and he's fine. Ask him to write a few sentences or (gasp) a paragraph and he acts like he's going to his death.
I have actually pondered and pondered this issue over the summer and the past week, and, after all this reflection, am still not quite sure how to proceed. I truly loved writing as a child, so my son's genuine antipathy to it is somewhat difficult for me to understand.
I think his problems are both mechanical and creative. He does not seem comfortable, physically, with the act of writing. I know that has to do with muscle coordination, etc., and I do understand that will probably improve with his age (he is 8 now, soon to be 9). But he clearly is also completely intimidated by the vast emptiness of a blank page. He cannot get started. Even if given a concrete, specific question to answer, he simply cannot get started.
As I said, I somewhat expected this, and my plans for this year have a lot less writing than he had to do in ps last year. I personally felt that his teacher assigned way too much writing for 2nd grade, so I intentionally backed way off. But, on the other hand, his level of comprehension makes your basic 3rd grade workbooks and (sorry to say) the AG pages in the SOTW way too easy for him. I decided to add some "Hold That Thought" notebooking pages to our history work to raise the bar a bit for him, without taking him all the way to logic stage work. I am planning to have him do the writing assignments in the Rod and Staff grammar book, although I only have him copy about half the sentences they assign. I am hoping to add in some Writing Strands 3 later in the school year, after we get comfortable with everything. And I like the WTM suggestion of having a child write family letters. But, at this point, things are not going well and I am a little concerned.
He is battling me on the HTT pages. For grammar today, it took him over 45 minutes to copy 6 sentences. Argh!!!!! I really believe this problem is 90% emotional, 10% physical. I know it is hard for him to write, that his brain moves faster than his hand--I know, I know. I have thought about having him learn typing. But he does have to write eventually.
And you just have to see this whole act he has going when giving a writing assignment. He is not groaning about pain in his hand or anything like that. He slumps, his head may go down on the table, suddenly he is very tired, or uh, thirsty--yeah, he's soooo thirsty, oh, Mom, can he just get a drink first, oh the drama, he's dying of thirst, whimper--no, wait, he has to go to the bathroom, RIGHT NOW--and wow, look at the cat lying on his back with his feet up in the air, that is so funny, do you remember the first time we saw the cat do that, what do you think the cat would look like if he had no fur, no, he guesses he didn't really have to go to the bathroom ....
BOOM (sound of Mom's head exploding). Ok. Vent over.
Anyone else BTDT? Any suggestions on how to deal with this? I hate to give in by allowing him not to do any writing. That just feels wrong to me. Then again, maybe I just need to chill out and wait a few weeks until we settle into our routine better?
Thanks for reading this. You're all going to tell me to calm down and give it more time, aren't you? Just rereading this post has made me realize that I am panicking a little prematurely. Nevertheless, I would appreciate any insight or advice that the wonderful folks here can offer.
Thank you! --Sydney