Time to Write
Writing is a real life superpower, strange as that may seem. The simple act of assembling these letters on a page. Letters assembled on a page. L.i.k.e.t.h.e.s.e. Or these:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
In the name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful. Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds, the Compassionate and Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgment.
So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
Despite the power of the written word, when it comes to the education that our kids are receiving, writing is the runt of the litter, with reading and math receiving far more of the vital nutrient of focus in the classroom.
You likely know this to be true based simply on your own education, with your own writing possibly being one of the skills you are least confident about, possibly something that is a source of discomfort, akin possibly to singing acappella in front of a room of strangers.
There are many systematic reasons why writing has been under taught.
For example, on the state tests your kids take in spring, it is much easier to assess math and reading, simply scoring the multiple choice answers. Assessing writing on those tests is expensive, involving human scoring, and complicated (something I am privy to from working at an assessment company for seven years).
As a result, schools expend fewer resources teaching your children to write, though this has nothing to do with whether it is in the best interests of their development to have excellent written communications skills.
(Other reasons for the backseat it takes include: it is more difficult to teach and grading/reviewing also takes more of a teacher’s precious time.)
And to this already unbalanced state, add a pandemic. As schools do their best to triage a generation of kids, try to close the disarming gaps in learning, the areas of focus will, once again, be math and reading.
Meanwhile, as many parents know, many kids of the pandemic era, thanks to online learning, can barely write legibly with their hands, let alone be comfortable putting sentences together.
How does that make you feel? Not awesome?
The good news is that we, as parents, can absolutely help fill in the gap here, supplementing the writing education our kids are receiving, and help set them on the path to being able to make far more use of it as a powerful skill in their adult lives.
But before getting to the guidance, we should first address the relevance of writing in today’s world, as you will hear people mistakenly make the case that in the days of Twitter, texting, shrinking attention spans, and even AI writing, writing’s relevance is waning.
Consider my own example. For nearly thirty years, I have earned a living because of my comfort stringing words together, making possible totally separate careers, first working in entertainment while living in Los Angeles and then in the corporate world while living in Minneapolis.
In my corporate work, the compelling manner in which I have been able to use words directly led to one of my employers winning over a half-billion dollars in government contracts. This ability to generate words that generate corporate revenue, words that make it rain in sale vernacular, means I can always find work.
In my LA days, my writing led to one high moment when a messenger from DreamWorks studio brought a six-figure check to my door. (The money, incidentally, has long since been squandered--don’t give six figure checks to young single men.)
I could go on. But you get the idea. The power of writing is as relevant as ever. Just imagine if the emails that you are writing at work throughout the day were fifty percent more effective at conveying your points.
There are plenty of ways to address the issue and help your kids become rock solid writers, which I am going to be exploring in a number of future posts, but where to start?
There is one way to learn to write: by writing.
We have to get them writing. They have to do it, to put in the ten thousand hours, which starts with just a few minutes of writing. And then a few minutes more.
At our house, our primitive efforts to start upping the writing reps is starting with writing prompts, which, for the uninitiated, are the simple, short sentences that educators have for years used to set kids off writing essays and short stories.
You can search for writing prompts online, including adding the age range of your kids to the search. The New York Times has a number of good resources for writing prompts , which you can also find with an online search. Or you can devise your own.
Or if you want one to start with without searching, how about: Describe what for you would be a perfect day, starting with waking up and finishing with going to sleep.
How we are using that at home is that I am simply providing the kids with a few writing prompts during the week, with the intent to work up to daily prompts, and asking them to write out a response to the prompt.
I have reiterated over and over to the kids that this is free writing. They should not worry about editing, spelling, perfection, anything. None of that matters here. This writing prompt effort is, for now, all about making up for some lost time and practicing. Improvement will come in time.
This approach—which in its emphasis on spontaneous writing and not editing—is a bit inspired by Julia Cameron’s, author of The Artist’s Way, famous morning pages exercise—will hopefully sufficiently liberate your child to just write and write some more.
In reality, they may still be intimidated by the blank page (or blank screen), which can happen early on. If that is the case, you may want to tweak your prompts, experimenting with what most helps your child get going.
To this end, it is good to remember that we are all on some level natural storytellers, so you may have more success with a prompt that cues up a familiar family story (tell the story of the time dad dropped the gravy on the cat at Thanksgiving and started swearing passionately).
Another option I have tried is to have a prompt that asks my kids to recount the plot of one of their favorite books, which is another way to free them up from having to create from scratch.
If you have a kid who would much prefer to be playing video games rather than writing, then give them prompts that focus on gaming: describe all the key moments leading up to your most recent win in Fortnite. To reiterate, in the beginning, we just want them writing more often.
If worse comes to worse, and your child really claims to be stuck or uninspired, the prompt can simply ask them to write down what they are thinking as they stare at the prompt. Every thought. Or ask them to write about what they would rather be doing.
You may want to dedicate a notebook or journal to these writing prompts, which in part will also add a sense of accomplishment as the pages accumulate to something like a book, which also likely shows their clear improvement as time goes on.
(Or another option, which I am following, is typing the prompts in the computer and then printing them on lined paper that is three-hole punched, and then compiling the pages for each kid in their own three-ring binder.)
This writing prompt work is a start. And it is not pretty. There are days when they ‘forget’ to do it. And the writing I am seeing, when I do look, is making one thing eminently clear: writing practice is, as daddy suspected, much needed; the results are evidence for the need itself.
But I know that taking the initiative to increase the volume of my kids’ writing will make a difference in their facility with this superpower, in the same way that I know that my years of capturing my own written ramblings in a journal has made it possible for me to make a living with words.
I look forward to sharing future posts on ways to elevate the quality of kid prose. For now, I am just glad take these first steps, rather than expect schools to save the day. We can all help our kids get writing.