In article . com,
"beeswing" wrote:

Scott wrote:

Better organizational skills should allow your daughter to
break up her work into less intimidating chunks, however.
I don't think the teacher missed the boat -- maybe you're
just sailing parallel paths rather than paths intersecting
at a common point.

She missed the boat when she said that she thought we could get my
daughter to motivate herself by using rewards such as computer time,
TV, and ice cream. My daughter wants to do well -- that's her main
motivation. The main thing that froze her on the assignment she's
working on is writer's block. Carrots won't solve that. I don't think.
And neither will added pressure.

I think a point to discuss with the teacher is how to teach
your daughter to divide tasks (maybe repeatedly) until each
individual task that comprises the whole is not so overwhelming.

To her credit, the teacher sent us an email that gave us some ideas
very similar to what you wrote above.

If this were my DD, I might also ask her if the things she
was spending most of the time on (in DD's case, this would be,
oh, the cover page of the report) are vital to finishing. In
other words, finish the most important stuff first, then the
slightly less important, etc. That way if you run out of time,
you can still hand something in.

What if the hard part is getting words on the page? Would you recommend
setting that assignment aside and working on something else? The Kid
has been stuck on writing the same thing for three days
now...precluding getting any other homework done.

On the other hand, apparently this written assignment is the one the
teacher wants first. According to my kid. Then again, what The Kid says
needs to be taken with a huge grain of sand. On yet another hand...it
*was* due last week.

Scott DD 12 and DS 9

Thanks, Scott. I appreciate your insight. Have you ever dealt w/the
writer's block issue with your kids? How did you handle it?

beeswing


I found with two of my kids that becoming their scribe helped with the
writer's block. They dictated, I wrote (or typed), resisting like hell
the urge to correct their grammer or improve their syntax.

I didn't have to do it often, but they were able to do the creative part
of writing provided they didn't actually have to put pen to paper.

(Note that I didn't do this regularly -- or even that often -- but I DID
do it when they seemed significantly blocked. Being able to just talk
helped those two kids.)
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care