"Children want to write"

I can't remember hearing about the late Donald Graves before. I found an old book about his Australian tour in 1980. Published in 1981, it's as old as me.

I resisted the urge to dismiss what looks out of date and found wonderful guidance and reassurance. It is helping me to mentor my kids into written communication in a way which doesn't kill their confidence or love for communication. You can read an article by Graves here. I have found the following observation to be true in my older children,

Very young children, ages 5 through 7, have very little difficulty choosing topics, especially if they write every day. As children grow older and experience the early effects of audience, even under favorable learning conditions, they begin to doubt what they know. From that point on, all writers go through a kind of doubting game about the texts they produce. They learn to read better and are more aware of the discrepancy between their texts and their actual intentions. If, however, overly severe, doubting teachers are added to the internal doubts of the child, writing becomes still more difficult. From here.

We often panic about the mechanics of writing (handwriting, punctuation, spelling, grammar) and hurry children through what could be a really rich learning process if we gave them time, space, freedom and encouragement. I will post in the near future about what I am doing to develop writing with my kids.

I was reading an interview with Donald Graves and like his response to this question. It sums up my teaching and learning aspiration; learning alongside my children.

Q: If you had to choose one thing teachers should do when teaching writing, what would it be?

Donald: Write yourself. Invite children to do something you're already doing. If you're not doing it, Hey, the kids say, I can't wait to grow up and not have to write, like you. They know. And for the short term and the long term, you'll be doing yourself a favor by writing. All of us need it as a survival tool in a very complex world. The wonderful thing about writing is that it separates the meaningless and the trivial from what is really important. So we need it for ourselves and then we need to invite children to do what we're doing. You can't ask someone to sing a duet with you until you know the tune yourself.

So, my first step in helping my kids grow into writing is to slow down and write myself.