QUESTION: My son is in eighth grade. B"H he is very clever
and is learning well, but his handwriting is terrible. His
rebbeim complain that they cannot read what he writes, even
though he is probably giving very good answers. What can I
do to help him write clearly?
ANSWER: Many people with fast minds have bad handwriting
because their minds work faster than their hands. First
watch him as he writes. Check how he is holding the pen and
note how he moves the pen. He should be gripping the pen
with the tips of his fingers and writing by moving his
fingers, but he might be grasping the pen with his hand and
writing by moving his wrist. Some children were taught to
write before they learned how to control the small muscles
of their fingers. Therefore, they learned to grip the pen
with their hand and to move the pen using the larger muscles
of the wrist.
If your son is writing incorrectly, then you will need to re-
teach him how to hold the pen correctly and write by moving
his fingers. He can practice writing while resting his wrist
on the table.
A good pen can help writing look nicer. When ball point pens
first became readily available, in the late 50s, they were
banned by schools because they ruined good handwriting.
Fluid ink pens write very smoothly and permit the "thicks
and thins" which give character to handwriting.
Rabbi Yitchazk Angel suggests the following way to help a
person improve his/her writing. Explain to the writer that
we undersand that when performing a mitzva, we need
to do it in the best, most esthetic way possible. Beautiful
tefillin, an exquisite esrog, even the cover
of a sefer should be attractive. So, when we write
Torah, we should do so with as beautiful a handwriting as
possible. Now ask the writer to write something, perhaps to
copy a text, but in such a way as to make the letters as
beautiful as possible. Let him practice developing a nice,
well- rounded handwriting. Then, whenever s/he writes, he
should remember the extra mitzva of enhancing his
written words of Torah.
QUESTION: We have just been blessed with our first baby. Of
course, we want him to become a big tzaddik and
talmid chochom, and reading will play a major role in
his life. How soon can we start preparing him for reading
and what can we do?
ANSWER: Please do not try teaching him to read now!
Actually, that is not such a joke because a child's vision
skills start to develop as soon as he is born. However,
rather than trying to teach a child to read before he is
ready, it is far wiser to invest time in helping him develop
basic skills and maturity. Then, when the right time
eventually comes, he will learn to read effortlessly and
quickly.
You can help your baby by hanging a mobile above his crib;
giving him objects to look at, reach for and touch; using a
dim nightlight in the baby's room so that he can look around
when he wakes up; changing the position of the crib in the
room and his position in the crib so that he learns to see
things from different angles and perspectives. While you are
in the baby's room, walk around and talk to him. Preferably,
position your baby so that he can see you as you move
around. When you feed, alternate right and left sides. And
lay him on his stomach when he is awake so that he can pick
up his head and look in all directions.
When you give your baby an object to look at and touch, make
sure it is too big for him to swallow. Your baby can now
focus only to about eight to twelve inches, so try to place
the objects at that distance from him.
Play with him, moving his arms and legs up and down and
around. Hold him in your arms and gently rock him back and
forth. All these prepare and train the baby for his future
reading and writing skills. The baby will only be able to
develop these skills easily if his brain has been prepared
beforehand, and those first three months are the most
important months in his life for that task. Your constant
chatting and rocking and playing with him are stimulating
parts of the brain which are vital to the reading and
writing process.
During the first three months of his life, a baby is
learning how to hear, see, move and to interpret the mass of
physical stimuli which are swamping his expanding brain. The
learning process is most efficient if subject to them
simultaneously. Then, each type of stimulus helps the
learning process of the others and together they help the
baby coordinate the sense together.
When you come into your baby's room cooing and chatting
away, the baby hears the sound coming closer. He feels
himself being picked up. He opens his eyes and sees the
vague, familiar figure of his mother. The lifting and
rocking stimulates the balance centers of his brain. Soon,
he will learn to recognize the details of his mother's face
and see how it differs from others who pick him up. He will
learn to use his two eyes together, to see in 3 dimensional
perspective how his mother comes closer to the crib. He will
match this with the increasing volume of her voice and
thereby learn to use his ears to track the position of his
mother as she walks around the room, talking all the time.
Hang objects across the baby's crib within the reach of his
hands and/or feet so that he can play with them or make them
move. Give him lots of different objects to touch, feel and
explore. Try to vary the textures and shapes -- smooth,
shiny, rough, heavy, light -- plastic, wood. Careful! No
splinters! Metal -- careful, no sharp edges or lead-painted
surfaces. Cloth, paper (not soluble or chewable) and so
on.
Later, when he is older, the baby will use his balance
center to enable himself to stand up and walk around. It is
also necessary for the development of the vision system and
he will also use it to learn how to control a pen for
drawing and writing.
Essential skills need to develop continually over the next
six or more years and they are most easily developed through
various games and activities.
QUESTION: I feel guilty when I send my son to bed at night
because I know he can easily stay up longer and he so likes
reading and learning. Should I be allowing him to go to bed
later?
ANSWER: Sleep is not a waste of time! On the contrary, sleep
is essential to good physical, mental and emotional health.
A USA Government study estimated that $160 billion are lost
to the economy because of impaired working ability due to
lack of sleep, and insufficient sleep costs the health
programs a further $16 billion.
Furthermore, insufficient sleep seriously reduces a person's
ability to learn and remember. By staying up past bedtime, a
person causes himself to forget what he has already learnt
and also impedes his ability to learn the next day. So, one
late night spoils two days of learning!
I recently screened an eight-year-old boy who was
misbehaving in class and performing badly. One test showed
that he was severely learning impaired and that his vision-
processing was very immature. Questioning the parent
revealed that the child drank a lot of cola and went to
sleep very late every night. I asked the parent to try to
cut out the cola and get his son to bed earlier every night
and to come back a week later for retesting. When he came
back, the boy performed perfectly! All the `problems' had
disappeared and the boy himself declared that he felt much
better.
QUESTION: My son is eighteen years old. He is very
intelligent but he does not like learning. He rarely picks
up a sefer, but he cannot have a reading problem
because he likes reading exciting adventure novels which I
feel are a total waste of time. He is now beginning to
despair and feels he is not "cut out for learning" and his
self image is going down rapidly. What can I do to help
him?
ANSWER: At a recent conference of leading roshei yeshivos
and educators, after considering all the factors which could
cause the increase in dropouts, their final conclusion was
narrowed down to two factors: firstly, poor reading skills
and secondly, not getting clarity in learning.
The fact that your son likes to read fiction does not
exclude the possibility that his reading skills might not be
sufficient for his needs. You can read and enjoy a novel by
scanning down each page and getting the gist of what it is
saying. But to enjoy reading the teachings of the Tanoim and
Amoroim and Rishonim, you need to be able to comfortably
relate to every letter of every word [see a previous article
on the problems of reading Hebrew]. There are many reasons
why efficient reading is more of an issue than it was in
previous generations, but one major point is that in former
times, talmidim aimed to know chumosh,
mishnayos and gemora by heart. Nowadays, learning
is much more analytical and text-intensive and, from an
early age, talmidim are expected to delve deeply into
the works of the Rishonim and Acharonim from the sources.
It is not possible to give specific advice because there are
so many variables involved in this type of situation which
is, unfortunately, common nowadays. Your son needs to go for
a screening to check his reading efficiency and style of
learning so that he can attain clarity in his learning.
Often, there are side factors involved which prevent people
from accessing their potential. The FRAMEWORK System was
developed specifically to deal with this sort of situation,
so perhaps you should refer to your local FRAMEWORK
branch.
Rabbi Zobin can be contacted at Panim Meirot 17, tel. 02-537-
3340.
