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Cannot get son to use capitals and periods.
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I am pulling my hair out over here. My dyslexic son is 13 and he will not use capitals and periods in his sentences. He will edit when I point them out, but just does not use them spontaneously. He has done lots of copy work, knows the rules in his head. He will start an entire paragraph with a capital and end with a period, but within that there is no distinction of sentences. Any suggestions?
I have a dyslexic 11 yo, and although she is not yet writing paragraghs, she often forgets these same things, especially the capital at the begining of the sentence. I don’t know what advice to give. I just wanted you to know you are not a lone. I am usually watching her when she writes sentences, so if she forgets, I remind her immediately, so it gets fixed immediately, hoping this will help to program her. But, she will still often forget her capitals. The ending marks she usually catches. Not sure what else to do.
I don’t have any personal specific experience to share but when I read your post I remembered a bit from one of the SCM books on habits- I think it was Smooth and Easy Days. To paraphrase CM said that when trying to train a habit you should not nag the child “close the door, close the door, close the door” every time they leave the door open. Instead you help them to remember for themselves and build those brain pathways. So you would say “uh-oh” or “did you forget something?” rather than doing the thinking for them and and saying “close the door”. It strikes me that for your son pucntuation may be like those habits of closing the door or hanging up a coat- something we know we should do but don’t unless we build the habit because its too much to think about if we have to make the decision to do it every time.
You may have already tried this but if it was my son I would sit by him with the sweetest attitude I could muster and pay close attention and as soon as he skipped any punctuation I would say “uh-oh” or “oops” and let him figure out what he missed. At 13 I would probably tell him what I was doing and why, so he would understand the annoyance and he we could work together to build the habit.
curlywhirly – Thanks for that reminder. When my daughter forgets, sometimes I will do just what you said, but other times I just say “You need to……” or something like that. Now I need to make it a ‘habit’ to not do the thinking for her:) I needed to hear what you said.
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