Introduction
Parents often tend to tailor their child’s career path towards professions like Medicine, Engineering, Law, Science and Inventions, Architecture and other exciting professions which society see as prestigious and have high regard for those practicing them. Of course, there is nothing wrong with channeling children’s interest towards these ‘prestigious’ professions. But are children at liberty to explore other professions? The truth is, as disclosed in our previous episodes, most children are limited from seeing farther and are restricted from knowing how infinite the horizon is.
Our concern today is not on making career choices for our children, so to say, but on discovering if parents have young budding writers as their children and how to discover writing traits in children.
You know, when we tell people to try out writing as a career, they can’t help but wonder if we fell from the moon. But we should not blame them because their minds have been restricted to view the professional world through a lens given by the inexperienced. They forget the underlying advantages and the fame that writing brings. People like JK Rowling, Chinua Achebe, Shakespeare were notable and influential figures in the field of writing. Yes, writing is a great profession and it pays too.
Let us not forget the focal point of this essay, is your child a writer? In this episode, we will look into how to determine if your child is a writer, what your child will gain as a writer, and how you can help your child nurture her writing skills. So let’s take them one after another.
Signs your child is a budding writer.
How can you identify if your child is a writer waiting to shine? Of course, there is no particular formula for identifying a writer in a child but there are some traits that may give you some clues if you find them in your child. Here are the traits or behaviours that can show if an individual will be a good writer when given the chance to learn and use the skill…
She is assertive.
She pays attention to details.
She is patient.
She is resilient.
She is not a perfectionist (writing is an art and can never attain perfection. So a perfectionist can never make a good writer).
She is creative.
She has the desire to teach or talk to others (this doesn’t mean she must be an extrovert; introverts make good writers too because they have mastered the act of listening to their inner voices).
She is willing to learn and take corrections.
She loves telling stories.
As you can see, there is no mention of qualities and achievements, such as good spelling skills, high proficiency in the use of the English language, computer literacy, and making good grades in school. The reason these skills were not included is that being a writer requires mastery of expressive, organisational, and creative skills. Yes, mechanical accuracy is necessary for every text but having challenges with the skill cannot stop an individual from being a good writer. This may sound absurd until you realize a writer’s grammatical and spelling errors or mistakes can be corrected with technology (such as Grammarly and other editing tools) or by an expert editor (writers hire editors for this purpose, anyway). This is not to downplay the importance of academic excellence but to make it clear that a child, who encounters academic challenges, can be a great writer if given a chance. So, if your child is not doing well academically, you should find out if she has some stories in her head that she won’t mind selling to others and how interested and willing she is to sell them.
What benefits would a child derive from being a writer?
Being a writer comes with a lot of advantages. First, writing is therapeutic. This means that when someone feels stressed, pressured, depressed, or in despair, she can turn to writing to help her unwind and pull out of that state. Writing helps people to unburden their minds when distressed. So, writing will equip your child with a potent weapon for handling social, mental, emotional, and psychological pressures when she is older and burdened with the reality of life.
Furthermore, writing helps people to express their opinions, emotions, ideas, discoveries, and achievements. Note that when someone is able to express herself through writing, she is not just talking to herself or the people close to her but to the world. That is, if your child becomes a writer, she is bound to be discovered by the world. Think about Shakespeare, Chaucer, Samuel Johnson, and other great writers of old, whom we still speak of, study, and hold in high regard because of their works. What about contemporary writers, such as J.K. Rowling, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, and Chimamanda Adichie, among others, who have paved a permanent way in the world today? Would we have known these people if they were not writers? You can give your child the chance of speaking to the world through her pen. You can let the world hear her voice and know who she is just because she talks to them through her texts.
Thirdly, we all know that writing is a great source of income. The writers mentioned above and many others out there made their wealth through writing. The good thing about writing is that you can be a writer and still have another job. Your child won’t stop going to school if she starts writing. She can become a medical doctor and still be a writer. Most of the great writers you know have primary jobs that are not related to their writing profession. So, writing can be a hobby, a side job and an additional stream of income.
Tips for Helping Your Child Develop Writing Skills.
Discovering you have a writer in your child is one thing but finding how to help her acquire and improve her writing skills is another challenge that may discourage you and your child from taking this huge step. This is why this section will give you some tips on how you can help your child to actualise this dream. But before we continue, you may need to understand that writing skills do not materialise in a day. The skill is nurtured and groomed through mentoring and practising and you can never stop improving the skills. This is to say that learning to write is a lifetime task. All the same, here are some things you can do presently to help your child develop or improve her writing skills
- Find her a coach and a mentor. Sometimes, boot camps are organised for young budding writers. You can find information about them if you follow publishers, writers, and schools on social media. Some magazines and writers’ groups also organise boot camps for writers. If you happen to find any that your child can attend, never hesitate to enroll her. She will find a mentor there.You can also employ a coach for your child. You can ask her teacher to recommend someone. Alternatively, you should contact a writer or a writers association for a recommendation. Please, remember to be cautious here. Your child doesn’t have to meet a coach physically while the internet has made communication easier. Talk to her teacher. Yes, your child’s teacher needs to know that your child is a budding writer and that she needs to be encouraged. When you do this, you have contracted the teacher to help in nurturing the writer in your child. Don’t forget to show gratitude if the teacher helps out.
- Supply her with reading materials. Reading is one of the easiest ways of developing and improving writing skills. When someone reads, she picks up words and adds them to her vocabulary bank. When she wants to write, she will visit this bank and pull up words at will. This means she will rarely run short of colourful words to use in her text. So, supply your child with real-life materials to read. Get her novels, newspapers, magazines, a collection of stories, and any other material you deem fit for her age. Buy writing materials for her.
- Writers learn and improve their skills by practising. You should encourage your child to write for at least 30 minutes every day. Give her random topics to write about so you can challenge her mind and creativity. Encourage her to be free and expressive. Don’t attempt to restrict her imagination and choice of words and, please, don’t judge or criticize her. She is not ready for that yet. But then, for your child to practise her skills, she needs writing materials. Please, always provide those for her. Help her to explore the writer’s world.
- Applaud her in whatever she writes. When your child creates an impressive piece, please do not just let the work end up in her notebook. You should encourage her by sending out the work for others to read. Yes, you can send the work to magazines, newspapers, or publishers that deal in children’s literature. They are few but they are still out there. Find them and let your child shine.
- Another way to help your child find her way into the writer’s world is by enrolling her in writing competitions. Fortunately, schools are notified of such competitions so you can talk to your child’s teacher to be on the lookout for any. Be patient. As mentioned earlier, writing skills are not developed in a day. No writer became an expert in one day. Writing is an art, which must be groomed and nurtured. It takes time for the bud to bloom. The most important thing is that your child loves writing and isn’t under any pressure to be perfect. With time, she will become a great writer and develop his peculiar writing style.
- Help her to explore her environment. You need to give your child as much exposure as possible to build her knowledge and creativity. If she is to become a creative writer, what she sees and hears while exploring her environment will help her to create characters, settings, and language styles in her work. If she is going to be a critical writer, she can’t argue properly in her text if she hasn’t witnessed the topic under discussion. So, find ways of helping your child learn about her environment.
- Enroll her in writers’ groups. You can start with her school’s Press Club. If you find another association like that in the neighborhood, encourage her to join them too. Such groups will naturally groom her and then help her to publish her texts.
To wrap this up, writing is a prestigious profession that is undermined by many of us. We tend to overlook it because we don’t understand how it works. But from all we can see concerning great contemporary and old writers, the profession has a lot of advantages especially as it gives people the opportunity of paving their way in the international space. So, if you believe your child is a writer in the making, do not hesitate to help her find her space.
Ozioma Okey-Kalu.
