Forced to Write

Let me state for the record - that is, before the rant - that my ex-husband is a good father. He's present, he participates and he and our son have a great relationship. We were fairly much a disaster together, but I have so much gratitude for his fathering our son.

However.

My son has trouble with the actual act of writing. His brain just can't get his hands to work in conjunction with all that is going on his brain. I'm not making this up. He was actually doing some tests for school and they figured this out. Anyway, one of the things you can do for this is to practice the physical act of writing.

So my ex makes him write for half an hour a night. I looked at my son's journal and I saw that what he was writing was a countdown until his writing time was over. Numbers. And last night when I called him over there he was pissed off because he was having to write. Ouch.

This is a kid who, not being forced to write, will, on his own accord, write short stories about being in hell and having to listen to the Dead Matthews Band. My personal favorite is about the cookie that rolled through town. I'm not sure forced writing is going to do us any favors. Then again, at my house I ask him to write in his journal and he takes five minutes to write two haikus and although we now have two lovely haikus, we have very little writing practice.