Why is it that my children have the worst handwriting in the world?

Not really… I am sure there is worse but theirs is barely legible.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the cards and letters they give me on Mother’s Day and I plan to keep and cherish them forever.  But I wish they would practice their signature a little so that the cards don’t look like a first grader signed them.  Seriously, my high schooler’s penmanship looks like that of a first grader.

How did this happen?

With technology integrating into every aspect of our lives, schools are opting to drop cursive handwriting from the elementary curriculum and replacing it with keyboarding.  While I understand the need for keyboarding, there is a need also for handwriting.  How is a person supposed to sign a legal document if he can’t sign his name?  Or should everyone associate with a symbol as their legal name like Prince did?  And what should we do when a letter from grandma arrives in the mail written in cursive?  I suppose we can get a computer to read it aloud to us.

Really?  That just doesn’t make sense to me.

Research suggests that learning cursive handwriting improves cognitive development in ways that keyboarding and even printing doesn’t.  Why would we want to stop teaching it in our schools?

What to do now?

So how can I convince my children who are in middle and high school that they need to practice their handwriting?  I can’t imagine they would simply voluntarily practice just for the fun of it.  I have a few thoughts:

1 – For the three still living at home with us, I hope to shame them by comparing their handwriting to that of our second grade granddaughter’s handwriting skills.

2 – When school starts back, they will have to memorize a verse of scripture weekly for Bible class.  What better way to memorize a verse than to write it repeatedly?

3 – And lastly, one of our youngest has expressed an interest in writing a blog of his own.  Now he actually has a talent in writing (I’ve no idea where he got that talent from) and I am going to require him to write out his posts before I allow him to publish them.

Do you have any other thoughts or suggestions?  I would love to read your comments. 

Till next time…

Coventry