For the first year or two of our home school journey one of my biggest fights with my oldest child was his handwriting skills, or more appropriately lack there of. Most days would find both of us in tears: him because he didn’t want to write, me because I needed him to do it.
I don’t remember where it was suggested, but during the ‘05/06 school year someone mentioned Handwriting Without Tears.
I did some research on the internet and ordered everything we could. We started back at the beginning with the Kindergarten workbook and slowly worked our way up through the ranks.
Last year his printing was still pretty atrocious, but we had less tears, so we decided to skip to the cursive handwriting books. I had heard that some kids have an easier time writing in cursive over printing, wouldn’t you know my son was one of them! He started a new cursive book this year. We haven’t had any tears. It has truly been a miracle!
Because the program was so successful for our oldest, we started our youngest with the preschool level. He is slowly working through the workbooks, but his printing at age 6 is much clearer than his brother’s was at that time.
If you have a reluctant writer, I strongly suggest looking into Handwriting Without Tears. It has dramatically reduced the tears in our house while greatly improving the quality of handwriting that has been produced.
If you have used HWT, please let us know how it worked for you. If you overcame the handwriting issue with other curriculum, please let us know also. I love hearing what works for other people!
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When Barb’s not enjoying the lack of tears during handwriting, she can be found at Barb’s Life where she shares her creative talents along with semi-daily tales of her life in Alaska.
photo source: Google Images
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
We use HWT with my 6 yo son. He’s a reluctant writer – to say the least! Because he reads and does math well above grade level, I find myself taking *lots* of dictation in our other subjects, which can sometimes be frustrating.
I do believe, though, that it’s best not to push. So we are slowly working on HWT (he’s midway through the kindergarten book) and one page a day is little enough that he doesn’t protest. We also try to spend lots of time on large motor activities – push, pull, carry and swing – to help his growing sense of kinesthetic awareness. I’m confident that as he grows into his body, he’ll be more able, and willing, to work on writing.
that sounds great. my girl is not quite 3, but i definitely plan to get this for her to use when she’s ready.
We are currently using HWT. It came as part of the packaged curriculum we are using for 2nd grade. We’d never used it before then. My son had pretty good handwriting before we started and it has helped refine it. I skipped quite a bit though because his handwriting wasn’t awful it was like backtracking to start with individual letters, etc. But I can see how using it from preschool up would be even better! I think it’s a great method but we just started really late in the game.
Others I know that have used it rave about it also.
We started with Handwriting Without Tears, but have switched to A Reason for Handwriting.
My seven year olds handwriting troubles are related to her motor skills being a little behind. She just needs time.
This winter I will be starting my 4 year old with HWT, it is a great system.
A friend told me that a Pediatric Neurotherapist told her that HWT is the BEST handwriting program for children.
Knowing “when” to start cursive writing seems a little tricky. Every child is different, but that is what makes homeschooling best.
I enjoy your blog a lot, and read it daily through Google Reader.
Blessings,
Linda
homeschoolblogger.com/faithfulgrace
Thanks for requesting others’ reports on how HWTears has worked for them. Although I know folks who have reported success with the program, as a handwriting instruction and remediation specialist I also see and hear (almost daily) from HWTears “washouts” — not just kids currently/recently in the program and staying the same (or actually regressing in handwriting speed and legibility), but nowadays adults who had the program 10 or more years ago with similar poor results, non-results, or things actually getting worse as they “progressed” through the program.
And, yes, I have seen tears aplenty with HWTears among the folks it doesn’t work for!
Some of the reports that people have given me:
“[Parent:] My daughter’s school uses this program, and she is not the only kid who cries over it. When some of us concerned parents showed the school the very poor results our kids were having, the school had someone call the handwriting program’s office … and the handwriting program office staff only said: ‘Don’t talk to us about negatives. Our program is about positives, so we don’t want to hear any negative news. When you have positive things to report about us, let us know so that we can share that positive news. Saying that our program is failing a student is being negative and is being against our program, which is the same as being against good handwriting.’ ”
“[Teacher:] When I noticed that this program was actually making things worse for a high percentage of my third-graders, I asked the school for permission to use another program with the students that ‘Handwriting without Tears’ harms instead of helps. It turns out that the school’s contract with ‘Handwriting without Tears’ requires every student in the school to use only that program. If even one student needs to use something else, ‘Handwriting without Tears’ immediately doubles or triples the costs of all ‘Handwriting without Tears’ materials sent to that school. So the principal said that we all have to use the program with every child even when it is known to harm some of the children because that is the only way to keep the program affordable for the school.”
[Fifth-grader:] “I had this so-called ‘without tears’ handwriting program since the time I was in kindergarten. I think the name is a typo and it needs to be called ‘Handwriting with Tears’ so I am calling it that. My personal experience is that you might learn to write readably in this program, but it will be a lot of work and you are not going to learn how to write fast enough in ‘Handwriting with Tears’ to keep up with your school work and the other things we use handwriting for. My other personal experience is that when your parents or your teacher mention this fact to the ‘Handwriting with Tears’ people, or when you personally mention it to the ‘Handwriting with Tears’ teacher, you are going to get yelled at for noticing this fact.”
[Adult survivor of childhood HWTears instruction:] “If you ask a ‘Handwriting without Tears’ representative to show you handwriting samples of adults who had ‘Handwriting without Tears’ instruction all the way, they quickly change the subject. People like me are probably the reason why. You just don’t find legible, reasonably fast, adult handwriting among people who learned ‘Handwriting without Tears’ when they were kids. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the program, it just didn’t actually work.”
My own experience as a handwriting methods professional (and my own contacts with the company over the years) back up the comments you have just read. I’d also like to point out that HWTears has one big problem in common with most of the other programs out there: it ignores or contradicts some of the key things we know about what helps a person become a legible rapid handwriter.
To take one of the most significant areas:
According to JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH findings on handwriting (May 1998 — citation on request), the fastest and clearest handwriters join only some of their letters (instead of all letters) and avoid using cursive letter-shapes where these “disagree” with the printed shapes. This contradicts the practice of HWTears and other handwriting programs that include a 100% connected cursive writing stage. (Other aspects of HWTears contradict other aspects of what we now know about achieving and maintaining legibility and speed together in handwriting.)
I hope this information leaves you willing to take a wider look at the pros and cons of different handwriting approaches — you can’t expect one handwriting program to fit everyone, any more than one pair of shoes will fit everyone. If you would like to know more, or to contact me personally, visit my web-site at http://www.HandwritingRepair.info or http://www.HandwritingThatWorks — you will find my contact information there.
Kate Gladstone
handwriting specialist
My oldest daughter was also behind in her motor skills (and there is a family history of problems with the physical work of writing) so we didn’t start seriously working on printing until she was seven. We did our work mostly orally, with a bit of dictation, fortunately it wasn’t important to ‘show’ our work.
When she was able to do simple art and craft activities without asking me to cut or draw for her, we started handwriting practice. Much of her work is still done by reading and discussing (for the first couple of years math was done mentally or using computer programs) but the amount written has increased every year. I’ve found over the years it’s often worth simply waiting until the child is ready.
I have approved the comment that is from KateGladstone (two above this one), but I wanted to make a note after publishing it: Kate Gladstone’s web link leads to a page where she is selling a handwriting system.
Not that I doubt that some people may have trouble with HWT, but I did want to note that the URL in her comment goes to a place to buy her handwriting system.
Thanks!
My boys did a differnt program while they were in public school, but with their occupational therapist, they worked on HWT. They both like it a lot. We actually were using the Catholic Heritage Curricula handwriting books, but may switch to HWT because the kids like it so much. (Their OT even game me a book for our oldest to use, instead of having to buy a new one.)
I compared A Reason for Handwriting and Handwriting Without Tears and found that HWT would be very confusing for my children because they had already started learning with a three line system. We chose A Reason for Handwriting to use this year (book K and book A) and both girls are loving it! My daughter doing book A’s handwriting has already improved significantly in just 5 weeks!
Angie — Rest assured that I’ve no problem at all with you pointing out that I sell handwriting instruction/remediation services (NOT a system — I haven’t even written a book!)