Reasons Why Parents Should Help Their Kids with Writing

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Parents helping their kids with homework are nothing new: sometimes they just need a little extra instruction on mathematics or science. But what parents don’t do nearly as much is help their kids with writing. It’s understandable why this is the case: writing has a higher skill ceiling than most types of homework and assignments, and it’s also a lot more labor-intensive for most people. For many, following a few simple rules to make an equation work is a lot easier than helping their child craft a well-written and provocative essay. But while essay writing assistance is difficult from professional academic writers, there are many reasons a properly equipped parent should help their child with writing.

Multiple Perspectives

Before we begin, allow us to preface these reasons by saying this: if a parent is not particularly gifted in the writing arts, they may not be the right person to assist their children with it. It’s the same with any subject: you don’t bring your math homework to the parent that’s no good at math. However, even if a parent isn’t very talented in writing, there are ways they can help, which we’ll explain now.

One of the major pitfalls of writing that nearly all writers face is blindness to their own errors. Whether they are simply ignoring flaws because they refuse to admit to them or are overlooking them because they’ve read the text one too many times, writers often miss errors in their own work that other readers would see as obvious. This being the case, even a parent who is not very good at writing themselves can still provide some aid to their children, simply by reading through what they have written. A fresh pair of eyes is likely to catch some mistakes the child missed by mistake or simply did not think was important enough to correct.

By doing this, the parent helps the child realize how obvious some flaws are in the eyes of the audience, which will make them less likely to commit those mistakes as a future essay writer.

Imparting Experience and Techniques

Now comes the part that more experienced parents can help their children with. Parents who are good at writing can help accelerate their child’s own skill growth. As a person writes and reads, they are guaranteed to improve over time, generally from making mistakes or seeing other people make them. While this natural process is all well and good, it takes some time and relies on the individual making use of what they have learned.

A parent who is well versed in writing can help their child foster their writing skills much faster, by offering the fruits of their own experience or pointing out technical flaws that your average reader won’t notice. Technical writing advice is generally hard to come by, even in school: teacher’s generally just point out logical flaws in an argument or spelling errors. Unless a student is in a dedicated writing class, they are unlikely to learn technical writing skills all that quickly.

This is where an experienced parent can help improve their writing and their grades. While some parents may find it tedious to have to read and edit the work of their children, make no mistake: it will vastly improve their abilities at a much faster pace than letting them grow alone. Moreover, that writing skill can be applied to a much larger array of things than mere school, so the skill itself is especially worth fostering. 

Catching Poor Arguments before they are turned in

Let’s face it: most children aren’t great at putting together a truly valid argument. Not all adults are either, but statistically, adults tend to be better at it. While finding spelling errors or technical writing errors are all well and good. But if there is a skill that everyone needs to have developed as much as possible, it is their ability to argue and argue well.

This reason for aiding one’s child is kind of a combination of the two previous points: one doesn’t have to be the best at writing to notice a flawed argument, so both experienced and inexperienced parents can offer aid here, and the skill itself will help a student get better grades and serve them well in later life. Finally, if you really want to talk about reasons to help your kid with writing, it offers a way for parents and their kids to spend time together and deepen their bonds. Maybe that isn’t the kind of thing one would expect to see in an article of this nature, but it is nevertheless true.

Either way, there are plenty of reasons, both practical or otherwise, for a parent to help their kids with writing, whether it is for an essay or for homework.