“Help! My teenager can’t even write a paragraph by himself.”
“My child loves to ‘journal’, but won’t write an organized paragraph for anything.”
For many children and teens, writing comes naturally. For others, the writing process needs to be taught in detail, but after the instructional and practice time, their writing becomes independent and continues to get better. But for some children and teens, writing never becomes easy, and they avoid it like the plague. If you have one of these really (not just a little bit), struggling writers, then you now have about 3 different curriculums. Your other children are doing great with them. This child continues to struggle greatly with the process of writing a cohesive paragraph or paper.
Many of these children and teens have an undiagnosed Dysgraphia, or blocked writing gate. They are the ones who reversed letters and numbers longer than their siblings, switched handedness when younger, exhibited many visual/spatial issues like lining up math problems incorrectly, writing letters below the line easily, spacing, etc. In other words, the act of writing, or “head to hand” processing did not transfer to their automatic brain hemisphere. For this reason, “thinking and writing” at the same time takes so much more battery energy for them, than for others without this visual/spatial block. (Read the article, “Smart Kids Who Hate to Write” to see a checklist of the symptoms of Dysgraphia, and the corrections for this at home.)
Early implement Dianne’s Right Brain Writing for one school year to help your student organize their thoughts easily!