Before answering this question, let’s first understand a situation of a child in his early years. One fine day we see a child of two years starts walking, he takes a few steps, falls down and again walks. We become very happy to see this development.
But do you think this development happens abruptly?
No, this developmental is not a sudden happening. Before he starts walking, he was moving his legs to and fro for many months. Then he starts crawling on his knees again for a few months.All these activities were naturally strengthening the muscles of his legs. Slowly he/she gets confidence, stands and starts walking a few steps.
The same aspect applies to Handwriting skills. The writing activity doesn’t happen all of a sudden. In this case also, the muscles of the child’s hands and fingers should be strengthened.
Parents and teachers should concentrate on the child’s fine motor skills. It should start from the age of two years onwards. Holding papers, crayons, balls, and plucking leaves, and grass are some good activities at this age.
As he grows up, the child should be given other physical exercises to do, like picking up the small things from the ground, holding pencils, and sticks using his three fingers, thumb, index finger and middle finger for a few minutes. He should be encouraged to scribble with crayons and pencils on paper.
By the time he reaches five or six years he should be able to draw, colour and make shapes properly, and understand different types of lines, sleeping line, standing line, slanting line and curve line.
So we have observed that a child needs three to four years to develop his fine motor skills and mental coordination to match his writing. But again all the children are not the same. They may not have been given proper practice to develop their fine motor skills.
Assuming that, we can now discuss, which handwriting is easy to learn.
Let’s talk about learning cursive handwriting at the age of five or six years, when the child may be in class one. At this age parents fancy that their child will artistically write beautiful cursive handwriting without giving any thought to whether his fine motor skills are developed or not.
Cursive handwriting needs well developed fine motor skills and proper mental coordination. If not, then the child will suffer like anything to write and his handwriting will be very poor and not legible. Parents will be stressed and teachers will be scolding the child for his poor handwriting.
Psychologically it will lower his confidence and self-esteem, and he may lose interest in his studies and avoid writing. The more he neglects the more he will suffer.
In this digital era, we notice children are less involved in physical activities since their childhood, busy with mobiles and games. It directly hampers a child’s fine motor skills and writing ability. So in this scenario, what do parents and teachers do?
Instead of forcing a young child to write cursive handwriting, he should be encouraged to write legible handwriting that he could relate to. The alternative is Print handwriting which he/she sees in his book and can easily relate with.
Why is Print handwriting easy to learn and write?
Unlike cursive handwriting where many twists and turns are there and well-developed motor skills along with proper mental coordination are needed, Print handwriting is somewhat easy to write. Here the child gets enough time to concentrate on letters and gets rest while writing letters. So his handwriting will be legible.
He finds print handwriting easy as there are only four different lines, he has to concentrate on. He sees the same writing in his book, which is print. So up to ten or eleven years, the child should concentrate on Print handwriting. Once he is found good in his fine motor skills, he can be encouraged to write cursive handwriting if the child shows interest.
A few things parents and teachers should keep in mind.
1) Improve the child’s fine motor skills from his early years.
2) Don’t force children to write cursive handwriting at a very young age.
3) Always evaluate the child’s fine motor skills.
4) Encourage the child to write a few lines every day and check.
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