Three Tips to Help Children Love to Write

After having a long conversation with an elementary school teacher friend of mine on how to make children love to write, we had to stop our discussion and agree to disagree. Her theory on making children love to write was drastically different than mine. The main thought she had was that in order to make children love to write, you need to take away their fear of "being on their own" while writing and offer them a significant amount of guidance in the form of the basics of writing (structure, grammar, etc) and offer them a select few prompts to choose from. While she swore this made the children in her class like to write, I am still convinced that the way to make children love to write is to allow them freedom and the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them.

I've always loved to write, even as a child, but I know this wasn't the case for many of classmates that were children or when we all grew up to be undergraduates and graduate students. One of the reasons I think that these people didn't like to write was because they had been over-instructed on how to properly write as children and as a result, harbored a feeling of dread whenever writing was required from that time on. Because they thought there was an exact right or wrong way to write, especially in terms of creative writing, these children felt very restricted and instead of learning to love to write as children, they shied away from it. This is also the case with poetry-teachers have, for years, convinced students that there is only one correct way to read a poem, a complete fallacy and to me, irresponsible teaching.

The first tip that will help children love to write is to simply let them go at it. Although there's nothing wrong with providing a brief bit of guidance, don't hover over a child as he or she attempts to write something and furthermore, don't criticize the child while writing or even ask questions. During a writing workshop I oversaw for fifth graders, I watched the instructor systematically go around from child to child, lean over their shoulders, and ask questions or generally, interrupt. It took everything in my power not to say something to her about it. My guess was simply that she felt bad for just sitting at her desk and not "doing" anything and felt compelled to go around to each child. In short, the first tip to help a child love to write is don't hover and let their process happen naturally.

The second tip to help children love to write is to offer them some criticism, but do it in the right way. By this, I mean, if possible, don't criticize the content of what the child has written, but instead try to help them love to write by making them see the way what they wrote might be different if they took a different approach. In addition, some children are more able to learn by actually doing something, thus if you see repeated grammatical, spelling, or other errors, gently point them out by saying that the story or piece is really great but could be made better without these little technical issues. The truth is, a lot of children naturally love writing, they just are always afraid of making mistakes-if you can make these mistakes not the focus of your critique and instead focus on the content, this will help make children love to write rather than being afraid of it.

The third tip may be a bit controversial. I know we live in a society where every act a child does is supposed to receive praise and while I think some go a little overboard with carrying this out, there is something to be said for this in terms of writing. Again, however, this applies especially to creative writing for children. You must learn to see the beauty of the content and be able to discuss it with them. The key to loving writing, especially for helping children love to write, is confidence. If a child doesn't feel confident about what he or she wrote, that child will go on to develop a complex about writing-thinking that their ideas are not worth putting into words or that they aren't able to do it.

Making children love to write is no easy task and it won't happen overnight. This must be a sustained effort, one that you make with the child after reading what he or she has written. Take the time to really read and see what they are trying to say and they'll certainly pick up on the fact that you're showing interest in what they've written. This will build confidence and will help children love to write.