I love old Dick Van Dyke Show episodes. He plays Rob Petrie, a television comedy writer. On one episode he was explaining to his wife Laura, played by Mary Tyler Moore, what writing is.
He said, "Pacing is writing. Looking out the window is writing, brushing your teeth is writing, anything is writing. The hardest writing is showering."
When I'm showering, I have the best ideas. I should take bath tub crayons in there and make notes!
I want you to recognize that your children don't have to be writing to be writing. For example, my son makes Lego stop action videos. Is that writing? He makes up story lines. Occasionally he even takes notes instead of relying on his memory. What about when he tells me all about the statistics he read in the encyclopedia? That's usually quite an explanation, full of words.
And my kids are always making up games and stories to pretend. Yes, they're teenagers, but they crack each other up acting out things they come up with. Complete with disguises! Do you think I ever say to them, "Hey, you need to sit down and write that up so I can go over it and make sure your spelling and punctuation are right."? That would kill it for sure. I'm not about to kill that!
Don't worry, they do write for real. My 17 year old just wrote a book--90 pages. She likes family history and she's dying for a DNA test. So she wrote a story about a young woman that has a DNA test and finds out that she's royalty. Her sister is helping her edit it right now, but after that I'm going to go over it for a "professional" edit. I'm not going to assign a grade at the end. You don't have to always assign a grade. In fact, I rarely give grades for specific projects. I love the freedom not to give a grade. I think you'll love it too as you recognize all the ways your children are writing, and shouldn't be graded for.
So your job is to think about all the ways your kids are thinking of things--they're writing! Then be their loyal reader. Be a fan. You don't grade everything you read from your favorite author; you just read it and love it.
Let us evaluate your child's writing at MyWritingCheck.com
I loved this article, Angela. I agree that young people should have time and opportunity to tell their own story. So often children are told to write a five thousand word essay on this, that, or other subject. I remember sitting up late at night counting each word to make sure I had it right. My thesaurus was used for finding twenty different words to repeat the same sentence. But in college writing became a source of pride and joy. Finding my voice was essential.
ReplyDeleteI will always be influenced by both of my grandmothers and what they left for me in their personal papers. My Grandma Daily kept a journal for fifty years. If you need to see what the weather was like on any given day, all you have to do is open her diary. The high and low temperature and wind information tops each entry and the events of that day follow. The diary lists every gift her children got and every expenditure the family made. It gives me a very good picture of everyday life.
My Grandma Bringman did not have the privilege of going to school after she was eight years old, as she was indentured as a servant of a rural doctor in Kansas Territory. Her writings are very scarce and the words sometimes misspelled (they were phonetically correct). But the few words she wrote were written in the pages of her bible and in the articles she clipped and carefully placed on the leaves of an old catalog for farm implements. I treasure those words because she saved what was most important. She wrote of her love for Jesus. She saved clippings about her family and her husbands family. When she was touched by a poem or song she cut it from the paper (yes, papers used to print poetry regularly) and placed it carefully in her book.
These pages still call to me even through the hundred years since they were written. Yes, let your children find their voice. Rejoice in the words they send forward in time and encourage the effort.
Thanks! I love your examples of what your grandmothers wrote and what writing they saved. Everyone has a story, don't they? And those stories are so interesting and important!
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