Your schooler comes home after lessons sad. Teachers have assigned an essay and a book review, but both tasks are challenging to write.

Look:

Most children struggle with writing tasks. Writing is about creativity, self-discipline, critical thinking, and structured and logical expression of chaotic thoughts. It takes work to do. That’s why schoolers often procrastinate on writing assignments or experience a blank page syndrome. They sit and stare at a blank sheet, don’t know how to start, get stressed, start thinking they are stupid, and get angry at teachers and school.

When they are college students, they can ask for assistance and buy an argumentative essay from professionals. But while your children are in school, help them fall in love with writing and overcome writer’s block when they struggle with assignments or need inspiration to write about their experiences.

Here’s how:

Below are five actionable strategies and creative exercises to nurture your child’s love of writing and tell them what to do when their Muse doesn’t come.

Organize a Writing Space

Give your child a space where they will feel comfortable and inspired to write. It should be a correspondingly designed room or corner with a table, an ergonomic chair, and a bookcase (bookshelf) to place all the learning materials for easy reach. Allow your schooler to make this corner their happy place:

Let them equip it with everything they love: favorite books, posters with favorite movie characters, stickers, colored pens, notebooks, toys, motivational quotes, illustrations, garlands, etc. It should be a space that unleashes creativity and inspires them to craft.

Try Freewriting

Freewriting is a practice of unceasing writing when a person follows the mind’s impulses and allows their thoughts to appear on paper with no prescribed structure.

In plain English, you sit and write what comes to your mind at that very moment.

Freewriting is a super popular technique among those who write. It helps eliminate fears and perfectionism, train critical thinking, and unleash creative selves for alternative content ideas and better writing skills. Try freewriting with your child:

Their writer’s block is often about the fear of criticism or the thought that someone will evaluate their work and find it weak. Freewriting will help overcome this as it allows your child to release their imagination and write without the prescribed rules or deadlines. Tell them there’s no need to show that writing, and they can keep it private if they want.

Let them choose a time and a place for freewriting. Explain the principle of this technique, turn on soothing music in the background, light candles, and leave your child alone with their thought flow.

Provide Creative Writing Prompts

Help your child start writing when you see them struggle with ideas for compositions they need to craft. Offer them creative prompts that you know they’ll enjoy writing about:

1. Brainstorm with your child to help them choose a character, a setting, and a problem for their future story. Give them some options as an example and ask them to write one sentence that describes each item, then expand their writing to one paragraph about each.

2. Try mixed-up stories. Take your child’s favorite TV character and ask them to write about this character in the plot of their favorite book. For example, let them imagine what Frodo would do if he appeared in a Star Wars movie.

3. Give your child an opening line and ask them to finish the story. This exercise is an excellent way to kill writer’s block: Most authors struggle with introductions, wondering how to start a story; with the first line ready, it’s easier to catch the flow.

Here are more ideas for creative writing prompts to share with your child:

• Write a dialogue between two little fishes who have just survived a shark attack. What would they say to each other?
• Write a story from the perspective of any object in your room (a chair, a lamp, a cup, you name it).
• Imagine yourself as a time traveler. Write a journal entry about your latest trip to the past: Where did you go, and what did you see there?
• Choose two famous personas from the same historical period and write a dialogue between them sitting in a cafe.
• Imagine you’re a superhero. Write about your powers, suit, and mission.

Write Together

Become a role model for your child who doesn’t love writing or struggle with this activity in school. Sit and write alongside them: They will see it’s possible, not as terrible as they could imagine, and that they can do that.

Show your schoolers that writing is a natural, not forced, process. Let them see we write a lot regardless of our career: emails, social media, blogs, communication at work, etc. Modeling the writing process helps children understand that it is all around them, and they can do it for pleasure, too.

Give Feedback and Reward

It’s valuable for children to hear your feedback about their work. Encourage them to share their essays and other writing works with you: It will help them overcome the fear of failure; they won’t get stuck writing because of doubts about whether it’s good enough to show to the audience.

Important:

Please don’t force your child to share every text with you. Let them show their masterpieces only if they want, and do your best to give constructive feedback and encouragement. Don’t blame for spelling mistakes; focus on the positives and offer suggestions on how to improve their stories.

Create a supporting environment that will instill your child’s love in writing.

Demonstrate your interest in their homework and achievements. Your support is essential for boosting their confidence and building trust.

Introduce rewards in your child’s writing routine, and celebrate a finished essay or other related achievements. The reward doesn’t need to be expensive: a treat, time for video games and walks with friends, whatever. It’s a great motivator for children to go ahead and work.

Final Words

We all need writing skills regardless of the career we choose as adults. Help your child develop their writing skills and not think of writing as anything awful, dull, or worthless: Try some of the above techniques for your children to find their writing voice and come to love writing.