Mum's the Word

I have two children. Neither of them likes reading. Neither of them likes writing. I love reading. I love writing. I often wonder, in the spirit of youthful rebellion, whether there is an inverse correlation.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want children who bury their heads in a book all day – nothing wrong there of course – but it just isn’t going to happen with my two. Equally, I don’t want teachers to gasp in admiration at my children’s prose, although a few words of praise and the odd smiley face sticker or oversized tick on the page would go a long way. All I want is that none of it is a chore and I just don’t know how to achieve this. Some will already be making judgements – she’s an earth mother, a pushy parent, an enlightened would-be teacher, a politically correct uber-guardian? I am none of these. I’m just the busy kind of parent with ten minutes to spare here and there, who takes a deep breath and says ‘so, we’ve got some tests coming up, fancy trying some writing’? I have tried lots of ways, most of them involving moaning or losing my temper, but sometimes, an idea rises above the gloom and works. These are three ideas that have reaped some rewards and got my ten year old writing or at the very least, understanding the writing process.

Top Tip 1. Sweets. Yes…they work every time. Not any old sweets. Sweets that look like …well to use a word that is against the law to the under eighteens, ‘things. I use Rowntrees Randoms, but there are others packets of jelly or biscuit objects on the market to try. Anything with a variety of edible everyday ‘things’ in them. I ask my children to pick out four sweets. We line them up, shuffle them around, squish them into the table whilst we refrain from eating them and then see if we can build a basic story. Three objects to match a beginning, a middle and an end (and the fourth sweet to eat whilst we are contemplating). A reasonable story can be rustled up in just a few minutes and I have never once had any opposition to sitting down and experimenting many times over with this method! The beauty of this instant story crafting is that children realise just how easy it is to build a basic plot. Roald Dahl apparently used to do the same thing with objects on his mantelpiece. It’s the same thing, only my objects are just portable and edible!

Top Tip 2. When writing a story seems like an uphill struggle, or putting together even a basic a sentence interferes with the pressing tasks of playing in the fast and furious manner of a ten year old, then I have the perfect solution. Get rid of the paper. Let’s face it, it’s hard work putting your thoughts together even when you are an adult. There’s so much to think about – the story, the characters, the spelling, the structure, the pace, the flow – and the shorter the story, the harder it all is. But from my days teaching young adults who had been excluded from school, the last thing they were, was lost for words. They had opinions on everything. They had memories and experiences to share. All the poetry, all the emotion, all the pace and structure is right there within a child, but sometimes they just can’t translate that onto the page. If they are struggling, I recommend just taking the flat, empty, white void out of the equation. Use the oldest form of storytelling known to man – the spoken word. Every time you go on a journey, ask your children to try out their descriptions – the sky, the people in the next car, the sounds, the smells. Then you can build upon that; what happened to that car full of people who had beach towels and rubber rings peeking out of the back seat when they arrived at the beach? You can do it anywhere, there is no record of their attempts on paper to embarrass them and car journeys are boring anyway. It need only be a few sentences here and there, but if you can get into the habit of exploring language with your children it helps them to see how their thoughts and spoken language might translate onto the page.

Top Tip 3. I found the purchase of a ‘special book’ very helpful. I bought a leather bound book with the contorted head of a bearded man on the front. My son chose it. It was very mysterious he said, looked a bit like a wizard he said and if anything is going to inspire a ten year old, it’s a wizard! You have to be careful though. Make it too special and it becomes a barrier. ‘My writing isn’t good enough’, “I can’t write neatly enough’, ‘I might spoil the pages’ that sort of excuse. So if it becomes an ideas book, a place where anything can be jotted down – diary thoughts, funny expressions, jokes, then writing becomes living and fun. My son liked the idea of writing a diary (for a while anyway) and we spoke about good diary writing and bad. Feelings, good. Today I ate … bad. In years to come he won’t want to know what he had for breakfast on a given day (well he might I suppose, who am I to say?) but he is much more likely to be interested in what sort of boy he was and how he felt about the world, events and people around him.

So if there are mothers out there like me, who just want a bit of respite from that sinking feeling whenever you suggest a bit of work, then take heart and perhaps these few ideas might help you out a little. Good luck and believe me, there is inspiration in even the most mundane of lives – I should know!