Slanting Backwards (Penmanship)

[Jane]

What is the hive's opinion on handwriting and slants?

Here's my situation. One of my children has never mastered the forward slant. She holds her pencil incorrectly (wrist above words) and tends to slant backwards. (She's a righty.)

At this point, given that handwriting and backwards letters were a prolonged problem for her, I'm inclined to allow a slight backwards slant in cursive but will encourage her to focus on vertical letters as much as possible, ignoring the full forward slant for the sake of neatness and consistency. I've had no success getting her to hold her hand differently, but am open to suggestions and opinions.

[Stacia]

I don't think it's really a big deal as long as others can easily read her writing.

I hold my pencil "incorrectly" (according to whom, I'd like to know -- is there an international pencil committee that makes up these rules? :confused:) & never had a problem -- people can read my handwriting, I could take notes in college w/out having hand/wrist tiring issues, etc....

I'm sure you'll hear many arguements otherwise, but I don't think it's a big deal at all. Let her be.

:D

[Ellie]

I've had no success getting her to hold her hand differently, but am open to suggestions and opinions.

My younger dd tended to write that way (wrist above). How she came to be 10 years old before I noticed this is beyond me :-/ When I did, I saw that it was because of the workbooks we had been using...not that there were many of them, but still, it was easier to leave the workbook open and hook her hand around the top of the page to write.

So my solution was to tear out every page (and if it the pages were not perforated, I took the book to Kinko's and had the spine cut off, then the book drilled for three holes to be stored in a three-ring notebook) and lay it flat on the work surface. For awhile I even taped each piece of paper to the table at the proper slant. When I slanted the paper, she automatically turned her hand to write. It didn't take that long for the correction to become *mostly* permanent.