Why Teaching Handwriting Matters in the Digital Age

When I started homeschooling, I asked myself: Should I bother teaching my kids handwriting? Isn’t typing good enough?

At the time, my youngest was unusually good at typing & I wondered if it was a waste of time to teach her to write by hand.

But it turns out handwriting & typing are very different to your brain & handwriting will have a critical impact on your child's cognitive, motor, & intellectual development.

We think of handwriting & typing as the same activity because they accomplish the same thing (words on paper) but they are quite different to your brain.

Handwriting uses more of your brain. Typing requires only distal (finger) movements while handwriting requires the whole arm & even your head & postural control. This means that more parts of your brain are being used. Not only that but more parts of your brain must talk to each other. This process of communication strengthens the connections between different parts of the brain, making them more efficient at exchanging information. It’s like the difference between driving down a dirt road to a small town no one visits or driving down a high way to another really important city.

The phrase “Use it or Lose it” is particularly true for young developing brains.

Study after study has shown that when parts of the brain are neglected or underutilized, they simply don’t grow as well.

I have very personal experience with this.

You see, I was born with a “lazy eye” also know by the fancy, medical name of Amblyopia.

Left untreated, I would have gone blind in my lazy eye. Why? Because the brain doesn’t bother to upkeep things that aren’t being used - especially in children. Luckily, I had great parents who struggled through putting a patch over a 3-4 year old’s good eye - can you imagine? I’m pretty lucky to have them.

I know what you’re asking is not learning handwriting really like losing one’s sight? We’re just talking about writing after all?

But the thing is handwriting seems to tap into something a lot deeper than just movement.

Studies have shown that handwriting alters things like creativity & memory in a way that typing simply doesn't. Neil Gaiman (author of Coraline, American Gods, etc.) famously writes his novels on a notebook saying he can’t write on a computer.

I personally have found the same thing. When I start writing, often I find it much easier to start on paper, especially during the creative part. In my job as a Professor, I had to write grants and papers. I had a physical journal that I would write my ideas down in and even consolidate into a structure before I would start writing on a computer. Even now that I write on here and on X, I have a journal where most of my ideas are first conceptualized. Only later does the typing come.

What’s so special about handwriting then? Why is it so different from typing?

Surely, I can just train myself to “think” differently while typing, to be just as creative right? Maybe yes, maybe no.

I believe it was Bret Weinstein who said “Evolution didn’t skip you.” We evolved to use our hands to do things. For millennia, this is how we worked, created, and built our world. Computers are brand new. Can we use them? Absolutely but that doesn’t mean our brains work best with them.

Now, you might be saying yea but kids today are being brought up on computers in a way that older generations weren’t. Doesn’t that matter? Maybe. But it’s a nearly universally bad idea to bet against evolution. Science has shown us over and over again that our modern lives have deleterious effects on our health. We didn’t evolve for sleep deprivation, or artificial lights, or constant access to food, or being inside all day. All of these modern conveniences have altered our health and not for the better.

So should you teach your kid handwriting? It’s a yes for me.

Tips & Resources to Find an Effective Handwriting Curriculum

Preparation for handwriting actually begins in pre-school - all that coloring and cutting work is strengthening their hands for writing in elementary. My mother says I hated coloring in kinder - it’s probably why my handwriting is still so terrible.

In any case, you don’t need a formal program until kindergarten. Handwriting goes great with learning your letters. Writing the letter at the same time as speaking the sound out loud forms tighter connections in the multiple areas of the brain (speech, motor, hearing) all at the same time. It’s quite powerful and I recommend it.

Print or Cursive?

Most programs will start with print and move to cursive around late 2nd or early 3rd grade (or not at all if your child is in public school). Exceptions are Montessori and Charlotte Mason programs. Print is typically taught first because it is faster and easier to learn - that doesn’t mean it’s the best way to learn. One of my children started in cursive and another started in print. If I could go back, I would have both of them start in cursive. Here’s why.

1. Cursive Makes Reading Easier (yes really). Because all the letters are written so differently in cursive, there is less “flipping” of letters which occurs for a very long time for kids learn print. It helps with reading as well because this “flipping” is also a common problem while learning to read. Cursive smooths this out. So learning to write takes a bit longer but learning to read is easier - that’s a BIG win to me.

2. Print Can be Learned Anytime. Print is nearly effortless to learn once you know cursive. I didn’t teach my oldest print, she just sometimes writes that way because she wants to. It’s easy to switch to print. But it is NOT easy to switch to cursive.

3. Builds Stronger Dexterity. The central point of this entire article is to tell you how important it is to develop the hands through handwriting and how that development makes a stronger, better connected brain. Cursive does this much better than print.

All that said, don’t let this one worry you. Seriously, there are a lot of reasons to stay up night worrying - your kids lack of cursive writing isn’t one of them.

Curriculum Suggestions

Hard to go wrong here but Handwriting Without Tears is considered the best program out there. It was developed by an occupational therapist and has innovative, fun lessons. (This is an affiliate link but I have no connection with the program).

Teaching handwriting through 3rd grade will help your 4th and 5th graders become exceptional writers. Your 3rd grader might start to get a bit bored so try to add some fun options. Let them copy poems, songs that they enjoy. Anything to build their hands up for the actual writing they will get to do starting in 4th. Oh my, it’s fun when they get to start REAL writing. We’ll talk another time how to create exceptional writers.

Final Thoughts

It may seem outdated, but handwriting will serve your child and their brain in ways you can’t yet imagine.

~With love, Claire Honeycutt (aka HippyMomPhD)

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