Recently I was speaking to a mum friend who was tearing her hair out over her 7-year-old son’s refusal to do any writing.
“No exaggeration, it takes 30-45 minutes to persuade him to write one single sentence. He just refuses. He’s so stubborn! It’s so painful for everyone involved. We’re on the verge of giving up… But he really does need to practise his writing! I don’t know what to do.”
Koru Kids nannies help thousands of children a day with their homework, so I’ve heard some version of this A LOT.
Anecdotally, it’s often the children whose gross motor skills (climbing, throwing, kicking) are well-developed but whose fine motor skills aren’t as strong because they weren’t into the types of play that develop those (like Lego, drawing, playdough, and crafts).
If that sounds like it could be your kid, one solid approach is to put writing aside for a while, and focus on games and activities that develop fine motor skills.
When I ran into this with my own son, I tracked down the old board game Operation (remember that classic?!) which is all about precise hand movement.
It’s writing practice in heavy disguise!
When you get back to the actual writing, here are 10 ideas we give our Koru Kids nannies:
1. Start with voice, not pencil. They speak, you scribe, then they copy just the last line.
2. Give choices. “Silly gel pen or whiteboard? Pirates or dinosaurs?”
3. Make the start easy, give control, keep the stakes low.
4. Have a 5-minute messy sprint where handwriting/spelling doesn’t count, then do one tiny fix.
5. Draw then add labels and a caption.
6. Offer three sentence starters and a handful of topic words.
7. Give it a real purpose — like a shopping list, a note to a sibling, a bedroom sign, a dinner menu
8. Copy one model sentence, then change one element.
9. Use a big surface and incorporate movement — e.g. whiteboard, window pen, giant paper on the floor, chalk on the footpath
10. Let them set the rules – e.g. “Two minutes or twenty words?” “Write or edit?”
Check out the carousel below for more details on each of these.
You might have to try a few things before you find the one that actually works.
But have faith, there are lots of different entry points to writing, and the one that your child is struggling with at school just might not be the right one for them at this moment.
Teachers are dealing with so many children at once, and there’s only so much they can do, so personalised, creative and thoughtful support for writing at home can really make a huge difference.
