Question: "When our son was a toddler he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. At that time the therapist warned us about issues that would pop up around fourth grade and the beginning of creative writing. Boy was she right! What things are available to help Aspies manage the educational requirements of creative writing when it seems an almost impossible task?"

Answer: Tears and tantrums! Hours of staring, refusals and withdrawals. Parents say, “I just don’t get it. My child is intelligent, seems to know so much, likes to read, has a good vocabulary and excellent spelling. Why is writing such a dreaded task?”

It hardly seems fair that as our children grow older, problems with writing appear to loom up more and more as if they were monsters that have been hiding in the closet, often until fourth grade. Then suddenly, the writing monsters jump out in increasing numbers, seem to get worse grade after grade. Regardless of how bright our students may be, they become victims who are rendered overwhelmed and at times paralyzed by the writing monsters, especially if they have learning disabilities or Asperger’s Syndrome.

What appears to be a single writing monster is in reality difficulties with a host of cognitive capacities and academic skills that require ever increasing complex coordination. Therefore, it is important that you check with a professional tester or educational therapist to discover just what the different components are that add to your child’s writing difficulties.

If these monsters sound nasty, well, they are when they travel in packs, at least for many students. No longer do students have to produce just a few, disjointed, ideas scrawled on paper for tidbits of praise. Writing requires an ever increasing, simultaneous orchestration of neurodevelopmental functions. Wow! Monstrous sounding in and of itself.

When writing, students are now asked to self-regulate a multitude of executive functioning tasks: the generation of ideas, the organization of thoughts, all including the encoding of a multisensory structured language into clear understandable verbal communication.

Then, of course, they simultaneously have to remember all those previously taught tasks of coordinating fingers for the formation of letters or keyboarding, spelling, recall and generation of vocabulary, sentence structure with correct grammar and syntax, while forming multiple synchronized paragraphs that hang together and make sense. Not to mention that each one of these steps needs its own retrieval, execution, pacing, monitoring and correcting. Of course, this takes focus and concentration as they are asked to brainstorm, organize, draft, proofread and rewrite. 

Writing is not a single monster; it is a whole group of little tasks that must be assembled and arranged into a single comprehensive written outcome. Having difficulty with one or two or more of these functions can zap the energy and resilience essential for the finished result.

It is not that any one of these tasks is fundamentally difficult; it is the necessary executive functioning that is the problem for most of our students, that is, the ability to put it all together to form a final product. Unfortunately, the assortment of writing monsters for a student who has dyslexia and one who is on the nonverbal spectrum are quite different, and consequently, there is not a single plan that fits all. 

So parents, take a deep breath, roll up your sleeves, pull out your detective spyglass and search for the specific tasks that are the real monsters that block your student’s writing experience. Then systematically either remediate, compensate or accommodate for the specific monsters (suggestions will be following) so that the collective power of the writing monsters is rendered inoperative or at least diminished. 

Regardless of the specific areas that are challenging, it is imperative that all children with a writing difficulty learn to use the computer from third grade on for which there are multiple software programs or books such as Diana Hanbury King’s “Keyboarding Skills.” It may take several years to become proficient, but it is a must in the long run because computer generated papers are easier to format and repair whether typing on the keyboard or generating through a speech-to-text writer.

Further, if social skills are a problem, be sure they are in social skills groups, especially as they get older since so much of their writing will depend on the understanding and analyzing of human relationships and experiences. Then of course, be sure that the individual tasks necessary for writing are receiving direct attention if they are of specific weakness. 

However, perhaps the biggest help in attacking writing problems is through scaffolding - breaking all tasks into smaller sub-tasks. Teaching the use of scaffolds and providing students with a series of templates for different types of writing can be of great benefit. Having structures into which students can drop their information and with which they can practice helps with the often biggest problem of structuring a paper.

There are many pre-made templates and graphic organizers that can be used like those in books from Language Pathways. Even better are the ones made for computers that provide ready made templates or allow students to make their own scaffolding such as with Draft-Builder, Inspiration, Kidspiration or scaffolds built into the text-to-speech readers like Kurzweil or Read & Write Gold, etc.

Further, many schools have structured programs that can be easily adapted and expanded upon for the computer such as Step-Up-To-Writing or Empower. There are frequent courses for these products/programs that explain how to adapt various programs to work well for each individual student; courses or tutors are well worth the preliminary layout because many products are not initially user friendly, so without a few professional instructions they can sit on a shelf after purchasing.

Central to overcoming the writing monsters is being a good detective, following through by obtaining professional tools and help, while all the time offering calm, supportive encouragement since unfortunately you cannot scare the writing monsters away. You have to ambush them and hold them at bay using well-planned remediation, compensations, accommodations, modifications and strategies. The fact is, our children learn in a different way from that taught in most schools. 

© Lynne Stietzel, M.A., M.Ed., B.C.E.T