5 June 2019

Analysing Your Child’s Handwriting

A child begins by writing on walls and rough papers and this eventually start becoming their new hobby. They write on whatever they get. Remember your early childhood memories or your child’s events when he/she went crazy writing and you as older brother/sister or as a parent were upset about getting walls dirty. Just like mathematics, abacus, social skills, writing is something that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Next, is to think about the kind of handwriting your child has.

Handwriting has always been a major concern between teachers and parents. Handwriting issues affect a child’s grades along with their attitude towards homework & studies, their self-esteem as well. It is unbelievable, right? How handwritings lower their self-esteem? But it is true because handwritings tell a lot just like our behavior.

If you feel that your child’s handwriting is becoming a concern then this means that they are having problems relating to their attention span, hand-eye coordination and short term memory.

It is not necessary that poor handwriting will cause above issues, but it could part of the issues.

So to begin with you need to first assess your child’s handwriting and decide whether or not your child’s writing is as bad as you may think:

1. Find and read what a ‘normal’ handwriting looks like for a child of same age.
2. Do not ignore the way your child writes. They may be holding the pen awkwardly or maybe putting in a lot of pressure or energy to write. So, do not just look at the end product but also see his/her process of end product.
3. Consult their teachers or discuss with other parents.

Children can definitely grow out of a bad handwriting.

Evidence has shown that meek difficulties can be helped and overcome with practice and more importantly, patience. However, severe handwriting difficulties can persist even to adolescence if no intervention is made.

Poor handwriting does not indicate any disorder.

Poor handwriting alone does not indicate that a child has a developmental disorder. Other problems such as spelling, reading and attention issues might also be prevalent.

A full evaluation should therefore be made by an educational psychologist for an accurate diagnosis of the issue.

If you are worried and keen on improving your child overcome their handwriting difficulties, there are various things you can do.

If they are at primary school age, here are a few things you can do on daily basis:

• Try to get the creativity out of your child. Ask him/her to write short stories or about what they did at school or who is their role model or what inspires them to be cheerful.
• Encourage them to keep a journal of what they’ve done each and every day. You can make this extra special by keeping one yourself and comparing each other’s activities.
• Ask them to use a variety of different colours and types of pen. Tell them the importance of writing with different coloured pens (this helps them to remember points & studies quickly by relating them with colours).
• You can also get them to draw and paint too! There’s nothing wrong with mixing the arts.
• During festival season, get them to write Birthday, Rakshabandan, Holi, Eid, Diwali, Christmas, Easter and New Year’s cards for their friends and family.
• Encourage them to write letters to family members or friends who are far away rather than to digitize.

Writing Guru also has a lot in store for you. We provide free consultation, tailor-made notebooks for children and handwriting improvement sessions specially designed to help children with their writing.