Ideas Guaranteed to End Your Child’s Writing Angst

You’re affluent. Successful. Desperate.

Yes, you have your life cosmically aligned, but still, you fear walking in the door of your home at night. Pencils are flying. Children are yelling. Who knows when that daunting, recurring horror story hits your family room again?

• Whether you are the disgruntled kid writer or the frantic parent, this dreaded scenario plays out daily in many homes in a million settings nationwide. Sure, your child goes to a great school, but every time they/he/she gets a writing assignment, the evening goes off the rails. One parent finds the child playing with his pencil while complaining that he has no idea what to write (at best) or crying (at worst).
• You have tried workbooks and tutors—they fail. You recall a few writing rules you learned in high school or college, but wow, that was a long time ago. Most of it isn’t relevant in the computer age, anyway. Teachers, in fact, tell us that in a classroom of 28, only two or three actually lke writing, and only one thinks this is a “fun thing” to do.
• Hitting the issue spot on, California English teacher Melissa Mead says that high school students write essays as if these were just “one great big text.” A clear signal for “911” in regard to children’s writing skills, this dash-out-a-message of tweets, texts, and emails is changing teens’ communications skills radically—and not in a good way.
• Rescue time! Coauthors Diane Stafford has teamed up with Melissa Mead to write a book (to be published in 2019) that takes the misery out of writing and motivates the young to use words smartly while parents get to sit back and take a deep breath. Once equipped with tricks and hacks, the child knows how to use internal resources to flat-out enjoy writing, perhaps for the first time ever.

In short, the blank screen and blank pages lose their reputations as creepers. “I’m a pretty good writer” is a sentence dancing in your child’s head and making him or her or they pretty darn smiley.