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Handwriting 101
Helping Your Child Learn to Write
By Teri Brown
In this world of keyboards, styluses and Mavis Beacon, some people may think that handwriting is on its way out. Be that as it may, it's not going to happen anytime soon and your children are still going to have to learn how to correctly hold that pen or pencil and make letters go legibly across the page. When and how that happens is a milestone for some children and a nightmare for others.
Anne Pugliese, mother of three from Tangent, Ore., feels that nightmare would come closer to describing her 10-year-old son's struggle with handwriting than any other word. No matter what they tried, her son's fingers just didn't seem to want to work right. "When he was a preschooler, we tried fat crayons, bulb shape crayons, sand writing, wiki stix and vertical writing," says Pugliese.
Nothing seemed to encourage him to write, and to top it all off, he seemed to have texture sensitivities and hated the feeling of most of the supplies they bought him. As he grew older they noticed that his pencil grip was wrong and they tried to correct it. "Instead of a classic tripod hold, he grips the pencil between only thumb and forefinger in almost a fist," says Pugliese. "This makes writing more of a gross motor whole arm event rather than wrist and finger fine motor event, which is very inefficient for letter formation, pencil control and fatigue."
Fine motor skills are the ability to control small precise movements with the fingers, wrists and hands. Children need to develop this ability before they can write legibly. The age during which these skills develop vary from child to child. Some children have amazing finger dexterity at ages 2 or 3, while others are still developing them at ages 5 and 6 or beyond.
Erin Brown Conroy, author of 20 Secrets to Success With Your Child (Celtic Cross Publishing, 2003) and the upcoming series of books on handwriting, Writing SkillBuilders, Book One: A Fun-Filled Book of Prewriting Skills for Beginning Writers and Book Two: A Fun-filled Activity Book to Build Strong Handwriting Skills