Your Child's Writing Life

Lately I have been thinking a lot about education from a parenting and teaching lens. It has been fascinating to watch my daughters grow and develop, gradually approaching my comfort zone of tweens and teens. I have been paying attention to what is consistent among age groups, as well as unique differences. Pam Allyn's Your Child's Writing Life: How to Inspire Confidence, Creativity, and Skill at Every Age fit in perfectly with these wonderings.

Throughout the book what stood out the most was the sense of a patient, nurturing environment embedded in her advice and ideas. She also emphasizes that aside from all the academic benefits, active writing lives serve as an avenue to strengthen parent-child bonds, as well as preserving memories. There was a close match to my writing philosophy.

Allyn starts the book establishing why it is essential to dedicate time to write with our children and foster a love of writing. Then she talks about suggestions for different ages. Other chapters included helping kids work through challenges and stress with writing, mentor texts, and writing prompts. She weaves in experiences with her own daughters, as well as interactions with students through her experiences being a literacy advocate.

I especially loved her suggestions for setting up places to write and supply areas, seeing how it evolved and emerged with the growing ages. Though she often references books throughout all of her chapters, the chapter specifically highlighting twenty mentor texts does a great job of sharing about the books, as well as assets and how they can serve as springboards to writing. Her knowledge about books and skill of connecting them to kids was just as apparent as it was in her Pam Allyn's Best Books for Boys.

I would love for every parent to read this book and implement ideas into their lives. Yet, while reading, I kept on thinking about parents who would buy the book, and it seems like it could potentially be a fairly narrow range, depending on the community, considering that it would be parents who are literate in English and who seek parenting books.

Yet, I also like the potential the book has for teachers to share with parents, whether it is through book talking it to raise awareness or sharing ideas at parent meetings. For example, at our dual immersion school, teachers have bilingual parent meetings. This year I loved a writer's workshop evening hosted by my daughters first grade teachers. Any of Allen's ideas would be beneficial to layer in for the different age groups. It could also be a resource for other community organizations, such as Healthy Start and Head Start that focus on raising awareness for helping develop literate environments and family literacy, which seems appropriate given Allyn's own organizations, LitLife and LitWorld.