Summer Camps
HOW CAN PARENTS ENCOURAGE THEIR CHILDREN TO LOVE WRITING?
By Chuck Bernstein (Special to India Parent Magazine)
A t the end of every Write Now! writing camp, parents tell me how thrilled they are
• Start with valuing reading—Make reading an essential activity that must be done every day, without fail, like brushing teeth. Make sure that some of the reading is good, time-tested literature, while still allowing your child to indulge his or her interests in fantasy, science fiction, adventure, and so forth. School and children’s librarians are excellent resources to help broaden students’ reading interests. In order to minimize the temptations of screens, be sure to use traditional books. • Limit screen time—This is a difficult task today, but it is essential to help your child be an active initiator, which writing requires, rather than a passive recipient of information. If you have the fortitude to limit screen time severely (to, say, half an hour per day), do it. If not, have your child keep a log and purchase screen time by reading and writing, using an exchange rate of, say, one hour of screen time for every two or three hours of independent (not homework) reading and writing. • Set a good example—Parents should demonstrate that reading and writing are activities that they value by spending time doing those activities themselves. • Initiate family activities that involve reading and writ- ing—Either before or after dinner, have a 30-minute family reading break where everyone reads a favorite book. It can be done by one parent if the other parent ar- rives home late, but it would be better for both parents to be involved. Dinner table conversation can start with a quick summary of interesting observations or turns of events in readers’ books. Similarly, consider a 30-minute letter-writing session once a week where everyone writes a letter to a friend or relative. This provides an excellent op- portunity to thank people for gifts or invitations and bring them up to date on family news. The letters can be sent by mail or electronically. During a family trip, ask each fam- ily member to keep a journal and make an entry for every day; family members can then take a minute at dinner to read their entries, which are likely to be very different. A family “creativity night” where everyone writes a short story or a poem would be especially daring, and might generate some excitement when the works were read aloud, even if unfinished.
that their children have come to love writing for the first time. That comment is quickly followed by this ques- tion: what can I do to ensure that this new attitude to- ward writing continues? There is much that a parent can do to foster a new- found appreciation and joy in writing. However, a more fruitful first question is, what can parents do to ensure that they do not quash their child’s developing interest in writ- ing? Two years ago, I authored another article for this publication entitled, “Teaching Kids to Hate Writing.” I pointed out how traditional school instruction is inciting students to hate writing: the red-ink highlighting of every- thing that is “wrong” with a paper, the focus on spelling and grammar instead of thought and organization, the typical submission of a single draft, and, unfortunately, the teacher’s dispositional bias against the burden of reading 30 or more papers in a short period of time. The most im- portant thing for a parent to do is to have the courage and self confidence not to reinforce the negative messages stu- dents frequently receive from teachers. Parents should try to take a long-term view of the de- velopment of writing skills and, to the extent possible, ac- knowledge their children’s positive observations, understandings, and expressions. A parent might even suggest that a student undertake a voluntary rewrite even if it that will have no impact on the grade received. Rein- forcement by a parent of a teacher’s invalidating response to written work will not encourage the student to enjoy the writing process or to write more, both of which are es- sential to writing improvement. In short, if you want your student to become a good writer, the first step is to endeavor to not become part of the problem. That calls for thought and sensitivity. If you desire to do more, there is much you can do to inspire your student to honor and cultivate the written word:
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Summer Camps 2023
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