Writing

[Guest guest]

There are lots of reasons why writing might be delayed in some of our

kids. One of them is that their fine motor control may not have

developed enough for them to write easily. Jan really learned to write

on computers, at home and at school. She found that the computer

produced the letters she wanted and that it had the patience to live

with her pace. She wrote many, one paragraph, one screen, or one page

sized stories along the way. It wasn't until her late teens that she

developed the fine motor control to write.

There was nothing unusual involved. She used simple editor programs

like 'notepad' today. Then they were Bank Street Writer (on Apple II),

Atariwriter (on the Atari 800), and Personal Editor (on the IBM PC

Junior). In high school she had mastered using WordPerfect (for DOS)

before she really learned to write by hand. When I introduced her to

WordPerfect on Windows, she had about ten minutes patience for help

before she became independent.

All our kids are different, but some might be ready to write, but might

be assisted by a computer in forming the letters. For others, different

approaches might be needed.

Rick