My suggestion when trying to get your son to practice writing without it seeming like punishment would be to give him some tracing paper and put it over something with letters on it, such as a cereal box, or a magazine cover, etc, then ask him to draw you a picture of what he sees through the paper. Make sure you let him do it however he likes, whether you think it is messy or not. If he does “draw” a letter or word, praise him like you have never praised him before and try to read the letter or word to him.

One other option, talk to the teacher to let him/her know that your child is becoming frustrated with writing or printing because he thinks he is in trouble when he has to write things over and over. Maybe the teacher isn’t aware that learning by rote or being so stern isn’t effective.

If that doesn’t work, then sit down with your son and “play” with him to try “race-printing”. Have a short sentence on a separate piece of paper and tell him that you bet he can write that sentence faster or neater than you can (use your opposite hand to even the playing field). Try to keep the “race” close so you can ask for a rematch a couple times before moving onto the next sentence. My son was born competitive, so something like this would work great. This will help him practice printing without it seeming like a chore or a bore. You can also get other family members to race too.

Hope this helps.

Do NOT pull him out! I am going through a similiar problem infact i googled help for 5year old in kindergarten when i got your question. My fiver year old (he turned 5 mid aug) started kindergarten three days ago. Yesterday and today , we get calls from the teacher that he threw hs paper back at teacher refusing to do the work,did not eat at lunch time..was disrupting the class by making noises and not behaving in lines. He like your son , showed great interest in school, the bus..was telling me every day what happened and that he made freinds..what they did in school etc and I was so happy that he loved his school! He infact has been going to daycare for 2 days a week for the past two years. and I never heard of these things from his daycare teachers so I was very surprised and shocked! I am wondering if this is a kind of policy for schools these days because there are 20 kids in his class with one teacher!

That is not at all appropriate and is pretty much guaranteed to make a child hate school and writing. Even writing a sentence like that once is difficult for many kindergarten kids, especially this early in the year. Perhaps she was once a Fifth grade teacher. If she is doing this I wonder if she knows anything about Early Childhood education at all. Talk to her, go over her head if you have to and if you don’t get anywhere demand another teacher.

I do not think that is too harsh of a punishment. It’s definitely better than a “timeout” or not letting him have a treat or something. Where they don’t get anything out of it at all. The more important thing is that your child senses that following rules and listening to teachers is important. And know that there are consequences if rules are broken. Granted your child is 5 but its never too early to instill values, and at that age they know if they’re bad or good. As far as hand writing if you make him practice enough he will be good at it no matter if he hates it or likes it in the future. He might just impress his future teachers later on =)

Well, the way I see it, there are 2 conflicting principles here.

1) The good one being that of “positive affirmation”, meaning that, if you repeat something enough, it becomes programmed deeper into the mind and eventually becomes habit.

2) The bad one being that of “negative association”, meaning that, since reading is how I am punished, it must be a bad thing. (like getting spanked or something)

Yeah, im probably the best worst case screnario of that, the amount i hated writing when i was younger is probably the reason i write as little (and most of the time, as fast) as possible and my handwriting is very, very barley legible, im smart i just write like, well….a 5 year old :S

I say, try and make him love or at least not dislike writing. Good luck.