The visitor or the nurse at the clinic asks, "Is he writing
yet?" when a child is about eighteen months or two years old.
Mothers of a first child may be astounded at the question.
Those who have older children will know that their toddler
loves making marks on paper. It is a strange phenomenon that
if you give the child a sheet of paper with one blank side
and one side which already has writing on it, the child will
invariably scribble on the used side, presumably thinking
that that is the side meant to be written on!
Between two and three years old, children vary tremendously
in the way they use the pencil or crayon. Some draw long
lines right across the page. Others draw dozens of neat
little `flies.' There are those who draw many small circles
and others who scribble thick heavy concentric lines. Some
graphologists now claim that they can tell the mood of the
child and also his character by the `pictures' he draws at
this tender age. What concerns us as mothers and teachers is
not so much what the child draws, but the way s/he holds the
pencil and paper while scribbling. Is the child developing
fine motor skills as he should? Are his movements firm and
steady?
By the time a child is about six years old, he should be able
to copy shapes without too much difficulty. However, many
children, particularly boys, do not develop neatness and
legibility in their handwriting until they are about
eight.
Researchers have found that a certain percentage of children,
mainly boys, and frequently those who were born prematurely,
tire very easily after writing only a line or two. Mothers
are told to put sleeping babies on their backs to prevent
crib death. In Israel, some doctors claim that this is not
necessary, notwithstanding that the consensus of world
medical opinion disagrees. Unfortunately, many of these
babies are also not put on their stomachs when they are
awake. They are put into baby bouncers or baby swings which
do not encourage them to develop their shoulder, neck and arm
muscles, which they do when lifting their heads and trying to
reach out for things. As a result, by the time they are
eight, they get tired when they write.
Writing is a sophiticated form of communication, based on
reading, where every letter counts. There are two aspects to
the skill of writing. The first is physical. The writer has
to learn to sit correctly, hold his pencil the right way, at
the same time exerting the exact amount of pressure required
for writing. He has to learn how to present the letters on a
page, which means leaving spaces between the words, not
leaving spaces between the letters of individual words,
starting at the top of the page and continuing line after
line. All this while working at a steady pace.
Teachers frequently use words which are meaningless to
children, without being aware of the fact. What is a word?
What is a space between words? The term `finger space' is
often used, to the child's immense confusion. If these things
are not learned, the writing may not be legible, which means
it will not be a form of communication.
The second aspect of writing is learning how to put ideas
onto paper. How to formulate sentences and how to connect the
sentences. Neither of these skills is self understood; they
have to be taught and learned. We all use one of three
methods of learning: visual, audile and tactile, or a
combination of all three.
If a child has a visual preponderance, in the end he will
have to be shown exactly how to formulate the letters. For
the child with a preference for tactile learning, the study
of handwriting is frequently a most pleasurable experience.
Slower children need to be instructed in all three ways to
make sure that they grasp what is being taught. Children who
copy words from the blackboard or from a book often get into
bad habits by forming the letters wrongly. Letters need to be
divided into groups which have the same movements in their
formation. This will later facilitate the flow of writing.
Whether we like it or not, computers are here to stay. More
and more children who leave school are computer literate, yet
are unable to read adequately. An even greater number in
English and American schools are unable to write legibly.
With the emergence of cell phones and email, letter writing
is almost a lost art. Fortunately, our boys, at least, strive
to write their divrei Torah and chiddushei
Torah, notwithstanding the fact that many of them type
them out on the computer. Copperplate handwriting is largely
a thing of the past, but having said this, many people will
agree with me that learning to express one's thoughts on
paper in clear, legible or even pleasing handwriting is an
art well worth acquiring.
