Relearning an old habit

One would think that given the number of years I've been practising handwriting it would be easy passing on this skill to my son.

Not so.

I sat down with Tavish this week to start the cursive handwriting process using the alphabet. We started at the beginning with the letter A. Simple enough.  I put my pen on the paper and told him to watch how to write a capital A.

"You go like this. . ." I said. But my hand didn't move.

I sat there for a few awkward moments trying to remember the proper way to write an A. Over the years my capital A's have taken on a life of their own so I didn't want to begin the lesson teaching my bad habits. He'll have enough time to develop his own.  As I sat there thinking Tavish turned to me and said, "Come on Dad, let's go."

"Just a second, I have to ask your mother something," I said.

Heather said it was just a small A only bigger. But somewhere in the back of my mind I could picture the cursive alphabet above my Grade 3 chalkboard. So what did we do to find the answer? We turned to the Internet. Figures. I go to teach my son an old fashioned skill and I need to turn to the Internet to figure out how to do it.

Most of us write in our own ways. We learned handwriting the proper way but then over time developed our own styles. I'm no different, you're no different. It's only until I was asked to show Tav how to go teach him the basics of cursive writing that it dawned on me that I don't remember a lot of the basics.

We've gone over the letters up to F and Tav's learning just as much as I'm remembering. We're both getting something out of the exercise.