As a certified teacher, I want my children to work to their
full potential. The curriculum that we
studied in college and the one that I taught after I moved here are constantly
in the back of my mind. Trying not to
hold my children to those standards can be difficult.
As a mom, one with a degree in early childhood education, I
know that many of the curriculums in place are not developmentally
appropriate. That it’s okay for my child
to do something when his body decides that it’s time, even if that’s far later
than when the local public school would require it.
Those two parts of me battle at times about what to ask my
children to do, and they’ve come out in full force about one particular
issue: handwriting.
When My Little Man first began to write, he didn’t like
it. He only knew his capital letters
then and so I didn’t require him to write anything else. When he started to write more independently,
I decided not to force the handwriting issue because he suddenly started
writing big words. I was so happy with
his content that I didn’t push for great handwriting.
But as he finished kindergarten and began first grade I
started to worry. Had I done the right
thing? Should I have insisted that he
write properly as he learned so that he never had to relearn any part of it?
And then one day he asked to learn cursive like his
sister. I explained that we couldn’t
study cursive handwriting until he could write in both capital and lowercase letters. Now,
I know that it really doesn’t work that way.
Lots of kids learn to write in cursive before they learn to print, but
my patience level doesn’t extend to teaching two types of handwriting at one
time. Give me a historical event or
writing lesson to teach any day over handwriting. Yick.
To my surprise, the next day he brought me this thank you
card. I had asked him to write one in
response to a field trip we had taken, and since he had proven that he was
great at thank-you cards, I didn’t sit with him while he worked on it. I was
probably switching the laundry. When
I came back, he proudly showed me this card.
Do you see it? There
are lowercase letters in there! He
worked really hard on it, and it was all his idea. He got out his handwriting book and practiced
the letters we haven’t gotten to yet and then added them into his card.
This doesn’t mean that our lowercase letter struggle is
over, because it isn’t. After a few days
of lowers he went back to all caps and is once again trying to stay in his
comfort zone. I know now, though, that
he can do it. He knows how, and he will
switch over. I’m grateful to know that
progress has been made, and my capital-letter stress is gone.
But if he decides to stick with capital letters, and he ends
up with horrible handwriting, then maybe he’ll go into the medical field.
Just kidding. Kinda.
