Last week I wrote about a child who didn’t want to do their work and just wanted to “play around” all the time.
I see and hear about this a lot - behavior struggles that are the result of children refusing to come to teacher-planned writing activities.
I got several amazing comments in response to what I wrote last week.
…BUT one was special because it came from my childhood best friend, Mel!
She was writing about her son.
(BTW She wrote to me even though I tell my friends they are only allowed to subscribe to the emails if they promise not to write back or acknowledge they are getting the emails. It makes me feel super vulnerable and inhibited - Ack!)
Anyway…
Mel said:
“You often refer to picking up a child’s interest… Kyle really avoided writing…
It wasn’t super easy for him but I don’t remember being too worried about it. I’m sure I was also picking up the pressure from public school but I don’t quite remember.”
(He’s 13 now).
“...We were working on his fine motor skills and executive functioning with a fantastic OT, Linda.”
“…At home, we would race Hot Wheels cars often, which luckily I also found super fun...And we would name the cars!
…Kyle would write either an initial or a name on a piece of paper and we would rip it off and tape it to the car and send it down the racetrack.
Whichever car won would go on to the next race….”
YES. PEOPLE. THIS. IS. HOW. IT’S. DONE!
“…Sometimes I would also write all the car names out on a big piece of paper and Kyle would make check marks as to who won the most. Or, I would write out which cars won and moved on to the next round until one car is left at the top, like in the U.S. Open.”
(Honestly I had no idea what Mel was talking about here about the U.S. Open. She later called it a “pyramid” and sent me a link, HERE it is if you want to check it out.)
She says...
“It didn’t at all feel task-like or like work. It’s making me want to go play this right now. Seriously!”
Mel went on to explain that this play with the writing woven in all happened organically and it was super fun.
It wasn’t intended to be educational. But yet it was.
How can you do something like this with you-know-who?
For the rest of this week…
…can you look for FUN opportunities to bring writing to a child during play rather than bringing the child to writing?
Don’t force it! YOU do the writing. Just integrate the writing organically and over time the children will see how it can enhance their play.
And guess what?
Now, almost 10 years later Mel reports:
“…while Kyle still doesn’t love writing by hand, he does it successfully.
And, in addition, he excels in language in all of those administrative state-level tests (that many of us loathe) that measure verbal/language achievement.😊”
Kyle learned to write and is excelling on verbal/language tests!
Even though he was slow to warm up to writing as a preschooler.
I wonder how that amazing support for learning to write through play may have helped…
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
And in case you didn’t know you can actually learn more about what to do about challenging behavior during writing activities in one of the conference sessions/interviews from the most recent Transform Challenging Behavior Online Conference.
Check out the speakers, topics, and how it all works by clicking the button below.
