3 Reasons Why You Should Let Your Children Write Letters (by hand)

Summary

Agnes Laurens encourages parents to let their children write letters and stories by hand to foster creativity, language skills, and problem-solving abilities.

Abstract

Agnes Laurens, a writer from the Netherlands, reflects on the importance of writing letters and stories by hand, drawing from her personal experiences and observations of her daughters' enthusiasm for writing. She emphasizes that writing by hand enhances memory, stimulates the imagination, improves language skills, and teaches problem-solving. Laurens recalls her own childhood experience of corresponding with a stranger she met on a train, highlighting the joy and creativity that can come from such interactions. She believes that writing is a crucial life skill that benefits both children and adults, and she is eager to share her passion for writing with a broader audience through her upcoming Patreon page and mailing list.

Opinions

Writing by hand is valuable for children's development, enhancing their ability to imagine and create vivid pictures or movies in their minds.
Regular writing practice helps children learn their language more deeply and become more creative in its use.
Having a rich vocabulary aids in problem-solving by enabling more nuanced and varied communication.
Writing is seen as a fun and imaginative activity, as evidenced by the author's childhood experience of becoming pen-friends with an older man.
The author views writing as a lifelong skill that is beneficial at any age, emphasizing its role in personal and creative growth.
Laurens is passionate about writing and is actively working to share her thoughts and stories with a wider audience through various platforms, including a soon-to-be-launched Patreon page.

My daughters recently asked me to write letters and stories. I always say yes to this. There is a reason why I do this. And I think it is very important to encourage them.

The oldest is going to high school. She has to write stories for the Dutch language. My second daughter just loves to write stories. She made up a story recently. The lit on her face made me smile like a mother. It made me think about why you should let them write stories. Both daughters came up with a great fantasy story. My youngest is 6 and she just started reading. But she also wrote a letter to her grandparents.

It reminds me of my youth when I wrote a lot of letters. When the e-mail came along I wrote tons of e-mails. Just for fun to the people I love. I remember that I was on the train with my father, going to my grandparents. There was sitting a lonely man in front of reading the newspaper and later a book. Apparently, I felt he needed ‘a friend’. I looked at my father and then to the man in front of me. I looked forth and back for a few times. A sudden I asked if I might get his address to write letters with him. Just as ‘pen-friends’, as we called it back then. He looked at my father if he agreed. My father did, so he took a piece of paper from his jacket and wrote his address for me. The next time I was home, I started writing. And we wrote letters for a few years. I don’t where they are now, but it was a good memory.

This is the main reason why I let my children write letters, having the memory of writing, sitting behind their desk and just write.

You can’t imagine these days just asking an older man for his address to write letters. But in the nighties I did and it was fun to do.

There are also benefits to writing letters and stories. I remember that my handwriting was improving much more.

It’s good for their imagination

When your child is writing, the imagination will be more. Something in the brain will do that, I believe. You learn your brain how to see the things you write as a picture or movie in your head. As I write my stories I try to imagine how it looks like in a movie or in a picture. This works very well. You become more creative when you write. The more you practice writing, the more you find your own imagination.

I love to see how I develop my liveliness through my writing imagination. I also love to see how my children are using their brains to write.

They learn how to use their language

As a writer, storyteller or so, you’re learning how your language works. The more you’re writing, the more you become creative to use your language. When you know how to say one sentence in three different ways, then you have accomplished your imagination.

I love to play with my language and I also love to learn new languages. When I write in English I want to learn new words and new ways to give interpretations to my stories. It is good to know one or two more languages than your mother language. The more words you have, the more you can say what you want to say.

Your child learns to solve problems

When you have more words in your vocabulary, than you know which words you should use to solve your problems. By creating more sentences to tell the same things, you become more creative. When you are creative, you learned to solve problems in a proper way.

This is also for adults and for children. The sooner or later, you still can learn to be creative with your language.

It doesn't matter if you’re writing by hand, an e-mail or just texting. Writing is just a good life element.

Agnes Laurens is a writer. She writes for the local newspaper, Medium.com. Agnes lives in Bunnik, The Netherlands, with her husband and three daughters. Writing is — aside from playing the violin — one of her passions since childhood. She is on Twitter and Instagram.

Writing is her passion since childhood. Never had she ever done anything with it until a few months back.

As soon as her Patreon page is ready to be launched, you’ll be the first one who will get notifications when you subscribe to her mailing list.