Why are handwriting grips now so varied in kids?

[queenceleste]

I was helping at a school do where I saw a number of kids sign their names in quick succession and the majority held their pens in very varied ways, some almost clenched in a fist.

When I was at school we had a classic pen hold with thumb and index finger holding the pen against the first knuckle of the the middle finger.

My dd has a slightly odd variation on that but it still looks traditional. But these kids were holding their pens in such extreme ways and they looked so awkward and unsuited to writing.

Did schools stop teaching handwriting holds at some point? It’s the pen in a fist which looks so crazy to me with my lens from the past!

Did schools stop teaching handwriting holds at some point?

Probably depends on the school or the teachers - but I don't think mine were taught it but we had huge problems so perhaps they were and we were always going to have issues.

I also found they failed to pick with numbers and letters being formed wrongly starting in the wrong place - and when we raised it shrugged. I saw it doing support work at home round spellings - and corrected - and also tried grips and pens shapes that tried to correct the hold.

We spent a lot of time on handwriting over the years at home- and other basics - but handwriting seen least improvement.

But if the result is legible handwriting, then does it really matter?

Obviously some ways will make getting to legible handwriting much harder and could be corrected (grasping it in a fist is not going to be great, for example). But there isn’t just one way, and something like the adapted tripod grasp is a perfectly reasonable way of holding a pen and writing legibly. Forcing a child who finds the dynamic tripod grasp uncomfortable to still use it rather than allowing the adapted tripod is just a pointless exercise, and has shades of left handed children being made to write with their right hand because it’s the “correct” way.

Schools try but the attitude has shifted to 'let them do what they feel comfortable with' and because we don't expect children to do what is expected any more it isn't pushed so unconventional grips are not corrected. It means huge numbers of pupils struggle to write comfortably, suffer from writing fatigue, can't see what they're writing, can't get a proper flow etc. It also means that other activities like painting, sketching, sewing, using a knife and fork, doing buttons, zips etc. that require a similar grip are all hindered too. Believe me, I encounter their difficulties every day!

@BadBadCatI agree completely… the correct grip might be difficult to master at first, but it makes writing SO much easier later on and for public exams it’s a godsend as you can write lots and lots without getting tired and hopefully some of it will be relevant.
I teach young adults and most of them struggle with writing and find it hard to finish the paper.
If you look at older people, the vast majority can hold a pen correctly
Its not just about how it looks ( although the correct way looks far more elegant), it’s about ease and speed
The same applies to swimming… we could all thrash around in the water doing doggy paddle and eventually get to the other side of the pool, but the person who has been taught the correct technique will get there faster and without expending too much energy

mine is awful and i remember being encouraged to change it but i have never been able to

I’ve never seen a British person holding pen properly since we moved here, only different forms of clenching. Maybe they teach it only in private schools these days?

My kids have been taught it - my son is 8 and was the first person in his year with a pen license due to having lovely handwriting and found the 'correct' grip easy to master.

My daughter is 6 and holds it in her fist because she is extremely hypermobile and can't hold it in the standard way, it hurts her and she can't control the pencil.

They are both at private school, taught the same way, no screens at home etc.

Children are not robots and have different ways of adapting. As long as the writing is clear why do you care how they hold a pen? Just don't look! I honestly think this attitude is a disgrace and much more unattractive than holding a pen in a unique way.

Beaky bird!
Teaching correct pencil grip is really important, as is positioning at a table and how to angle an exercise book or worksheet for optimal angle. Taking letter formation and joins seriously makes a big difference to learning spellings too.
I'm a handwriting nerd.

I was. I was at primary school in the 1960s and we were all taught to hold a pencil properly - just how @queenceleste describes.

No matter how many grips, explanations and incentives i was given i never learnt to hold my pen right. Mine is not too bad, just have ny middle finger alongside my index rather than curled round the back. I knew a girl on uni who wrapped her entire index and and middle finger round the pen.

our infant kids are Def taught to hold a pencil "properly" , they've worked really hard on DS not using the Palmer grip, as you've described

Children aren't learning their gross motor skills early enough. There's less tree climbing and running and more sitting in front of screens. If they haven't got their gross motor skills then it makes the fine motor skills harder to perform.

Our son writes with a wrist grip, despite the fact he kind of can’t see as he is writing, his writing is very neat. I have a traditional pen grip, my writing looks like something a babboon on crack would do.

It very much is taught in England. Children are expected to start joining before the end of Year 2 (around age 6) and be fully joining by the end of Year 3. You cannot 'pass' (reach Expected standard) primary school writing without fluent, joined handwriting. A tripod pencil grip is the usual grip taught but lots of children use a slight variation.

These threads both amuse and baffle me with people's vague musings about what might be happening in schools, based on pretty much nothing - oh perhaps it's only taught in private schools, oh children don't write much by hand now, it's all on computers. No, handwriting is on the National Curriculum and schools are judged on their writing data every year.

Exams at university are still hand written. Those with terrible writing are disadvantaged by their lack of skill.

When I start writing I use a classic grip but it hurts or isn’t very neat. Sometimes I look at my hand if I’m writing more than notes while I’m writing and it’s like it’s never held a pen before and isn’t really part of this earth. I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve always been like that. 39.

I don't have a tripod grip, never have. All through my school years they tried to train me to hold my pen "properly", right up to Y11. It was pointless, all it did was stress me out and waste teachers' time. I have perfectly lovely handwriting, and having been a teacher my blackboard / whiteboard writing is a thing of beauty.
It seems ridiculous to try to make children hold a pen a particular way if it's uncomfortable for them - why not let them perfect their writing in their natural grip?

I feel really quite strongly about this - all the years I was made to go to the special needs shed for my handwriting made me feel different to my peers, plus I missed learning in my actual lessons.

I thought this was interesting - I didn't realise that certain types of pencil grasp are developmental stages, or that they are related to where the movement is being controlled from.

https://www.occuplaytional.com/pencil-grasp/

It sort of suggests that if we're seeing more immature grasp show up then it could be that children are missing out more on both fine and gross motor skills practice, which fits with some other general trends (likely higher screen time interfering with the development of these skills).

Oh the fist grip, AKA the toddler grip (in my mind). Lately I have seen more adults (young adults) with this strange toddler-like grip and I must admit I usually just assume they have either never been taught it properly or they have some kind of fine motor skill issue or arthritis or something.

if it’s just poor technique then those people should really learn the correct one if they ever want to sign an important document in front of anyone in a senior workplace or legal situation as people are going to look at their ham-fisted technique and think they’re a ninny who doesn’t possess basic literacy skills.

@Bloau It's not about whether handwriting is neat or not; it's about speed and comfort. The students I teach get very tired writing a couple of pages due to incorrect technique.
If you hold the pen correctly, you hardly notice it's even in your hand and in fact you seem to use very few muscles...the wrist is supported on the table and you just gently nudge your hand along.
Obviously this takes time to master...if I were to try to learn to write with my non dominant hand, it would ache initially and be very laborious, but once mastered you can simply fly across the page

@JustAlice which country did you move from? In my experience international students all seem to be able to hold a pen correctly...it's just the British ones who have been let down by the educational system.

This is something of an obsession with me!
Learning to write in about 1961/2 in England, you had great attention focussed on your every move, until everything was ‘just so ‘.
Holding your pencil in a fist or in some other strange way would not have been tolerated; it would have been regarded as woefully incorrect and requiring further exercises to get it right.

Watching British or American TV dramas tends to get my nerves jangling when a character picks up a pen. Ten to one if they are under their mid-fifties or so they will write in any of a number of contorted ways, but never the obvious, simple fashion.
The thing that boggles me is how much effort it took to learn to hold the pencil correctly, when the hold actually looks so effortless and obvious!
But still, the inelegant, tortured grips you see all around are so unnecessary, surely? People appear to be having great trouble in getting their implements to do their bidding!
I guess there is a great deal less writing going in in general, too, so perhaps for these generations, pens etc are not as familiar in the hand as they are to us oldies. ( Hand-written major theses at university, anyone?)
Of course, one doesn't want people to be forced into conformity and if one did, the answer would be predictable; but it just looks so uncomfortable (and even embarrassed, at times.)

It’s easy to identify the period in primary education when strict rules about such things were jettisoned, along with rote learning of all manner of useful information, such as your times tables.
(But to protest that these old guidelines were worth retaining just unleashes the anti-“Boomer” chorus of course)

Mea culpa then. Ive just posted a lengthy waffle you have pretty much summed up in your last paragraph!

I remember there being such pressure on kids to write properly at primary school and then handwriting and grip type was never mentioned again at secondary. As long as teachers could read it and kids had the stamina to write lengthy pieces of work they didn’t care. Now my son is at uni and he never handwriting writes anything.

I feel like there is less focus on handwriting generally. I am hyper mobile and so are my three children. My hand writing is ok because there is a lot of focus on it. My kids dreadful handwriting is never corrected. I commented on the beautiful handwriting of my neighbour and she told me a nun slapped her hand with a ruler every time she made a mistake….so I’m not sure it is worth that.