Just last week I went for an appointment, getting there I was given a form to fill and you know how these forms can be unending. It took me a while, but I eventually completed it in the end. By the time I handed it over to the person in-charge, the first thing she said was you’ve got beautiful handwriting, you write really well, I love it.
Aww! thank you I replied.
You know what? She literally reminded me of the efforts my dad put into making sure my handwriting was good and readable. Growing up, in primary school precisely, I could still remember how my dad after dinner, will be going through our books on a daily basis to see what we did in school, especially for maths and English that is a different topic for another day. He’s usually very impressed with my sister and brother’s handwriting, they both always get accolades from their teachers in school as the best in handwriting in their classes.
So, when he gets to my turn, with the expression on his face you can tell that he’s not very comfortable with my handwriting. That’s when you’ll hear him say things like,” this your letter S looks funny, your handwriting generally isn’t readable, some letters are not readable at all and we need to work on them”. Guess what he would do next? He would get me a full-scalp sheet of paper, sit with me on the dining table and ask me to start writing letters A-Z. I will do this about two-three times before going to bed. This was more important to him than my assignments.
I don’t know how he found out about MY COPY BOOK for letters only, he bought loads of them, he would ask me to trace the letters. While my siblings are playing, I’m literally sitting on the dining table tracing letters. It wasn’t funny for me at all at that time because I always felt I had passed that stage and also being the eldest in the house, for me, that shouldn’t be what I was supposed to be doing. He also, started buying IKA weekly newspapers for me. He would ask me to read it for him because he can’t read and afterwards, he would instruct me to start copying it in a full-scalp sheet of paper.
At some point, he felt I have improved, but needed to work on some certain letters like S, W, M, R, G and a few of them. so, instead of copying the entire newspaper, I graduated to tracing the letters on my COPY BOOK paper only. I must say that my dad spent so much money on these books back in the days, honestly applaud him for that. I did this for a long period of time until he was satisfied before I stopped, but time to time, he’ll intentionally ask me to copy a page of a book and any opportunity he has to do with writing, he would ask me to write it for him e.g. bank tellers, cheques, letters of agreements, I do this a lot due to the nature of his business. Remember he can’t read nor write.
I know you may be wondering why I’m sharing this? I’m sharing this to let you know that as a parent you do not have any excuse not to give your child that gift of parenting advantage. What do you think would have happened to my handwriting if he hadn’t worked on it? Do you think it would have been readable today? Absolutely not, see how far I have gone with my writing skills today; don’t you think my handwriting contributed greatly? Oh! Yes!
My Dearest intentional parents, what is that skill or skills your child needs help with? Do you know that you’re the only one that can help your child master it? your child was not given to you out of coincidence. Your child was given to you for a purpose. Like I always say, every child is a STAR, but will only shine depending on who raised the her. My both parents are not learned yet they didn’t use it as an excuse. look if you find an excuse, you’ll see it. See how far he was able to help me master the skill of writing. Today, writing is fun and easy for me because of parenting advantage. I leave you with this question to answer: what advantage will your child have because you raised him or her?
