Positive Relationships: A parent's guide to ... writing

This proud statement may be followed up by a slow and possibly torturous attempt at showing you just how it's done. The final result might be wobbly, a few letters might be in the wrong order or even upside down. But nevertheless, it is a turning point. Your child is now officially writing. JK Rowling and Terry Pratchett better watch out. There's a new kid in town!

Well, maybe not. Writing, it turns out, is quite a complicated affair. For fluent writing, children need to have cracked reading and then mastered the art of spelling and punctuation. This means that most children do not get going until they are in their third year of school.

Having said that, there are three important things that we can do to support their children in the meantime.

LANGUAGE

A good starting point is to understand that writing, like learning to read, requires that children have good levels of language. In simple terms, they cannot write anything down if they have nothing to say. This means that one of the most important things that we can do to help children is to encourage their speech and also their love of rhyme and books.

Doing this means spending time reading books. It also means seeing how much your child can tell you about something that you have done together. Look at photographs of family events or outings and see if your child can tell the story behind the photograph. This will really pay dividends later on, when they are asked to wax lyrical about their summer holidays or to explain the demise of the dinosaur in less than 300 words.

MOTIVATING CHILDREN

As well as speech, children also need to be motivated to write. In previous generations, this was not a problem. Children saw adults putting pen to paper to write letters and cheques and to fill in forms. Now we have keypads and phones everywhere. The need to whip out a pen and paper has been replaced by online transactions, e-mails and i-phones. Not a problem in terms of children's knowledge of ICT, but it does mean that some children are not as interested in writing, with some settings commenting that some boys can be quite reluctant.

The need for children to be interested in learning to write means that your child will be encouraged to do 'mark-making' activities before they start writing. Mark-making activities include using white boards and pens and using brushes and water outdoors as well making patterns in shaving foam, pasta and sand.

The results may not at first seem impressive, but if you keep some of your child's early writing, you will see that little by little, their writing changes. Early circular marks and broad zig-zags will often give way to individual letter shapes by the age of four or so.

As interest is key to early writing, avoid forcing your child to sit down and write. Instead, make a bit more out of the times when you need to write. Seeing mum or dad busy with a pen is far more of an incentive to practise writing than slogging over a tracing book or being made to write lines.

SUPPORTING EARLY HANDWRITING

Handwriting is a tool for writers. It is the first one that children are meant to master before going on to typing. For your child to develop strong handwriting, they will need plenty of sensory play activities that involve hand skills - for example, playing with sand, dough and water.

At home you can help your child by encouraging them to do as many small hand tasks as possible. Things such as peeling a banana, laying the table or pouring a drink will also help strengthen your child's hand preference.

QUICK TIPS

• - Don't worry if your child is not writing their name before they start school. If they are talking well and enjoy mark-making, it really does not matter.
• - Look out for forms, bank slips and envelopes when you are out and about. Children love pretending to be in the grownup world.
• - Don't worry if your child misses out letters or reverses them when writing. This is normal and will sort itself out when they are reading more fluently.
• - Find out from your child's setting how they support early handwriting so that you can do similar things at home.
• - Look out for opportunities for your child to see you write with a pen and paper.
• - Find out more by visiting www.early-education.org.uk to download a leaflet called 'Making Their Mark: Children's early writing'.

CASE STUDY

'It's not that I wanted to be a pushy parent or anything, but when I saw that Matthew's friends were starting to write their names, I started to get a bit twitchy. I went out and bought a tracing book and tried for a few minutes each afternoon to do a little bit. It was a real battle to get him to sit down and when he did, he often just scribbled over the lines.

'Looking back, that was the point at which I should have stopped, but his lack of interest just made me more determined. In the end it got to a stage that whenever he saw the book, he just ran upstairs.

'It was my mum who came round one day and reminded me that he was only three years old. It set me thinking, and so I went into the playgroup and spoke to the supervisor. She told me that they had noticed that Matthew was doing fine, although they had noticed that he avoided anything to do with early writing.

'The supervisor showed me the different stages that children's writing went through and suddenly I realised that Matthew was not behind. Scribbles, lines and funny shapes were totally normal.

'I went back and threw out the tracing book. Instead, I put out some large chalks on the patio and we just had fun together. He's now in Year 1 and writing is one of his favourite activities.'