On writing

Aidan had a much-anticipated birthday party to attend last week. He wanted to make a birthday card (something we usually do before such events). Aidan's birthday cards are usually fairly free-flow, mainly bold flourishes made by large hand movements, sometimes intense marks in one spot, and usually completed relatively quickly.

But this time was different.

I paused from loading the dishwasher to check on what he was doing. He was writing - Js, and one Ja. I was very impressed. This from a boy who up until this point has only ever written an upper case A for Aidan, and an upper case T for Tom. He was very focused, concentrating intensely. But he was getting frustrated and unhappy.

"They aren't good enough!" he said, exasperated. I disagreed, saying they were easily readable as Js, and he had even got the second letter too. But he got more and more agitated, throwing the pink paper onto the ground and demanding a second piece.

I watched and waited as he carefully wrote on the second piece of paper. His friend's name - k in the wrong place, second k not acceptable to him, trying again further up and still falling short of how he wanted it to look.

He tried to write his own name, but the d somehow went wrong and it was just too much. He cried in my arms as to how he wanted his friend to be proud of him, how it wasn't "perfect" and then "I can't even spell my own name!".

It's a hard thing to want to learn to write perfectly all at once, at 4.45 on a Friday afternoon on a Playcentre day when you haven't had a nap.

It was hard for me to help him too. If he were doing art, then I have some tools to help him along while fostering his creativity, ensuring that he owns the process and the product. There are many ways to draw, so many interpretations, so many "right" ways. But with writing - well, there's only so many ways to write a J in which it is recognisably a J. I tried things like "well, if you can draw a circle, you can write a "c". It's just this half of the circle". I tried describing where his pen should go. But I don't know how to teach children to write - and certainly it was hard when he had a very clear goal that seemed just out of reach. Isabelle came over and wrote some models for him to copy - upper and lower case letters. But it was just too frustrating for him.

Anyway, he soon began again, making some attempts then asking me to write the names instead. I wondered if he would copy directly under the models I had provided, but by then I think he had just had enough.

Our different reactions to his product were interesting. I thought he did amazingly well for what was basically a first writing attempt. He showed great persistence (despite rejecting his earlier attempts) and the drive to write came from within, and from a strong desire to do something for his friend (who is older and so who can write himself). I haven't really been aware of the perfectionist streak either - or maybe it was just because this time, it was so important.

The dishes never got done that day, but I think something more important was going down.

The next day, we stuck attempt two onto attempt three. Aidan seemed satisfied - the drama of the afternoon before perhaps ameliorated by a good night's sleep and the deliciously looming reality of the party to come.

And a few days later, Isabelle and Aidan were playing schools (no prizes for guessing who was the teacher!). Aidan was set a task - a colouring-in template that they had picked up at Brendon's work Christmas party. (I'm not big on colouring-in for the usual reasons, but it's not a banned activity!). The result shows a similar process - persistence, focus and sudden attention to the detail that the colour should not go outside the lines. Aidan's colouring-in is usually far more relaxed about where colour stops and starts! It's as if fine-motor skills have suddenly become highly valued, and to be practiced with dedication to a particular end. Brendon also pointed out that this has coincided with an interest in lego. Aidan has quickly got the hang of building models from instructions, easily creating helicopters, mars landers and storm trooper troop carriers and the like out of the tiny pieces of plastic.

I will watch with interest whether or not this interest in writing waxes, wanes, or morphs into something else entirely.