It was a sweet little dream.
All my boys enthusiastically sitting around our red writing desks ready to brainstorm writing genre that was moral, upright and worthy.
Shocking Things that Homeschooled Boys Want to Write About.
Flashing back to my childhood of reading The Secret Garden, Heidi and then on to my favorite, mysteries like Nancy Drew, I just knew their choice of writing topics would mesh with my ideas.
Reality set in soon when my boys mentioned gore, violence and video games.
Wait! We aren’t those types of parents.
We were raising our boys to be peace loving Christian men. Screen time was censored and movies always had to be approved and besides we never allowed things like that in our home.
Writing about blood and guts aren’t topics that I thought were appropriate to write about. And no matter what we did by not allowing them to play with guns, they would still find some way to form a gun out of a peanut butter sandwich or in one case a picture stand.
As I have learned through the years, writing topics boys want to write about are immensely different than what interest girls, including me.
Understanding that boys are naturally curious about topics that are opposite my feminine personality took me a while to scrutinize.
Knowing too that what fills their minds when they take pen to paper is just as important as giving them free choice, I had to devise a plan or standard.
Six Useful Tips Teaching Homeschooled Boys to Write
I learned . .
- That because of the fact they are boys, their minds go to different places. It means that I need to embrace the differences instead of being miffed over them;
- I had to let go of the thinking that my feminine writing topics were superior,they are not;
- That I can’t give them freedom of choice and then take it back the minute they exercise it;
- That boys, like girls, do need a standard of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable;
- That instead of writing about gore, I had to let go and let them write about games; and
- That instead of writing about violence, write about the valor or find virtue in it.
Boys tend to hyper focus on details that are not important to me when I put on my teacher writing hat.
Instead of criticizing their details, I try to find the good in it because I know as boys they do think differently than I do.
Many times in my journey I have come across passages that my boys are suppose to focus on and model in their narratives.
For many years, I wondered why my boys just didn’t get it. I even switched writing curriculum before I could put my finger on what was the difficulty.
It wasn’t the genre they did not get, it was the undertone in the message that bored them, which was a lesson created by a woman teacher for girls.
No, not all of them were that way, but I knew my boys were just not engaged and that is a must.
To be fair, I had to think about this way.
Give a girl an assignment to write about football stats.
Do I hear shrieks of agony and moans of boring? But, that is just what I was doing with my boys. I can put myself in their boots.
Learning to take whatever elements a writing curriculum wanted my sons to write about and then giving them freedom to write what inspired them, I had more success.
No, I didn’t get why some of what they wrote and read to each other they found drop dead funny. I was the one then that felt out of place.
From that lesson, it helped me to change the way I approached writing.
I adjusted, but setting limits on some subjects. Look at some of these topics my boys find appealing and that I let them write about.
- Video games;
- Sports. All kinds of sports with football being my boys favorite;
- Funny things that I don’t find particularly funny, but it’s also the topic they spend the most time on to get the details just right;
- Describing weapons;
- Science fiction; and yes
- Graphic Novels too.
I have read many boy compositions and now find the humor in them because they are expressions of their inner voice.
Are you struggling with a boy writer who just does make a connection to what you want him to write about?
I hope some of these tips will help you to ditch the curriculum and teach the boy.
Boys will lead you to what topics captivate them. Will you embrace the differences?
Hugs and love ya,
