Our guest writer this week:

Handwriting: Unlocking Your Child's Personality      

By Elsa Gonzalez    

Thinking back, I can still remember those early summer mornings when my mom had me sitting at the kitchen table practicing handwriting. It was hard to concentrate on those curvy lines when I'd rather be outside watching the butterflies and dragonflies flittering about in mom's garden of cosmos and phlox. She didn't use any kind of program or special paper. She simply wrote capital and small letters for me to copy. Mom didn't have beautiful writing. In fact, it wasn't even pretty! As she strained to shape every letter, I would notice how they would come out rather wiggly. But she was the boss and I had to practice anyway.  

Mom was another wonderful example of how an ordinary person with ordinary skills can accomplish much. You see, my mom never got past second grade in her formal education. Her family lived on a farm, and my grandfather thought that he didn't need his daughter filling her head with a lot of useless information that wasn't going to help put food on the table. She was needed to tend to the pigs and the bees. So my grandma taught her to read, write, and do basic math-she homeschooled, too! As an adult, my mom had the opportunity to teach her four children and two nieces to write in manuscript and cursive. She didn't let a lack of formal education stop her from doing her best with these children. We all learned successfully by the hand of one woman.   

Personality comes out in all we do. Though we all had the same teacher, as adults, our style of writing in manuscript and cursive was as unique as our personalities. The styles ranged from messy, doctor-style (sorry, doctors!) to smooth and elegant, to somewhere in between-like mine.   

Fast-forwarding to my personal experience in teaching my own children, it has also shown that personality comes out in each child's writing style. I started out each of my nine children in copying the manuscript letters that are on the inside of the writing tablets you can find in most grocery stores. I would first write the letter to be learned while she/he watched. Then I'd put my hand over the child's and guide her as she wrote the letter. With repetition, she would eventually be writing lovely letters in manuscript that we would proudly show her dad when he came home from work. However, by the time they reached fourth grade, I'd realize that they weren't writing those big, round, wonderful letters anymore! I still wanted proper, neat writing, and I would get it, but it had taken on a whole new personality.   

Teaching children cursive has been more of a challenge. Many parents are teaching cursive to their children by the third grade. I'm not in a hurry, so I wait till I feel they're mature enough to better handle that pencil. I teach my children the cursive style I was taught. It seems that trying to make those smooth, curvy lines requires finer motor skills, so when I see them flying across the paper in manuscript style, then I begin to teach them cursive style. Of course, by then their personalities are stronger, so they have an opinion about how I shape those letters! They are also easily disappointed to see how unattractive their first attempts are, too. But as they say, "practice makes perfect," or legible, anyway.   

Many programs are available to parents these days. It seems that many people are turning away from the cursive style my generation grew up with. Italic handwriting has become very popular. For many, it has simplified the connecting of one letter to the next. Reading it is simple since it's so similar to manuscript. My reason for choosing to teach my children "the old-fashioned way" is that this would enable them to more easily recognize the writing of the older folks around them. I also happen to like the look of the traditional cursive style. Following in my mom's footsteps, I keep it simple. I write the letters on a tablet of practice writing paper. Then I put my hand over theirs and guide them as they make each letter. Thankfully there are several writing programs out there to suit your needs and taste.

Teaching our children handwriting is like unlocking another aspect of their personality. You might be thinking their writing will be lovely like yours-or ugly, if you feel that way about it. But you never know-in the end it may look just like Dad's or Grandma's! You are simply giving them a tool for expressing themselves. "Enjoy the process," as my husband likes to say. You're on the verge of discovery!  

~Elsa Gonzalez

Blessed mom of nine great kids

thefarm@chartertn.net