Help! My Kid Hates Writing
This is the first book I’ve written that my mother hasn’t read.
It’s odd, really, since in a very real way she’s on every page. As I was finishing the final draft, my sweet mother was declining in health. As we got ready to launch the book in January, she died on New Year’s Day. We pushed pause on all launch efforts. I haven’t been in a very book-launchy kind of mood.
The other day, mid-webinar, my eyes flooded with tears as I retold the story of how my mother, a well regarded author, taught me about revising my writing without causing me even a hint of shame or distress. The administrator of the charter school on the zoom call started to cry. We sat there for several moments, dabbing our eyes with Kleenex, trying to pull ourselves back together. I appreciated her not being disappointed in my lapse of professionalism.
Truth is…
There’s something so touching about imagining a kind interaction between instructor/parent and student/child over writing. It’s so rare these days.
My book about writing is a love letter to my mom—it’s the fruit of growing up with someone who saw me as the writer I am. She found hundreds of ways to encourage me, to give me helpful suggestions that felt like insight, not like criticism. I asked her to read everything I wrote.
And because my mom saw me for who I am, she never made me feel like I was failing at writing. She called forth my best words and celebrated my ideas. She collaborated with me and let me know that what I had to say mattered. It feels really weird that I never got her thoughts on this book—this one that is about all the wonderful writing advice I learned through her.
When I look back now, I can see that the seeds of my beliefs about writing started when I was not even old enough to handwrite. Incredible.
It’s these ideas that we’ve now tested in Brave Writer with hundreds of thousands of children, and have expanded over the last decades, that I describe in my new book: Help! My Kid Hates Writing.
I would love you to preorder it.
I believe it will help you—even if you already use Brave Writer materials. I’d love you to share it with friends, too. Parents of kids who go to traditional schools will find real help here—the kind they don’t get from traditional education.
May it be a joyful guide to better writing and more love between you and your children.
