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How to Teach Kids to Grip a Pencil

Teaching a child to hold a pencil correctly can be one of the most challenging aspects of teaching your child to write. Allowing your child to write while not gripping the pencil correctly and comfortably is likely to cause your child to become to accustomed to handling a pencil incorrectly. This may cause discomfort when writing. According to Stephanie Capshaw, a pediatric occupational therapist, it is difficult to change a child's pencil grip after the age of six, so the sooner you intervene, the better chance you will have of encouraging good pencil technique.

Instructions

- 1
  Sit with your child and manually adjust the pencil for comfort. Place your child's thumb, index and middle finger on the pencil about 1/2 inch from the writing tip. Some children will have a tendency to either grasp the pencil in a fist or will grasp the pencil with their wrist bending down to make the tip of the pencil contact the paper. You can avoid this by setting up the proper grip in advance.
- 2
  Angle the pencil slightly to the right or left, depending upon the hand with which your child writes. explain to your child that the angle will help keep her hand relaxed. Some children have a tendency to make the tip of the pencil contact the paper, which places undue strain on the wrist and can cause your child's hand to tire quickly.
- 3
  Hold your child's hand and work through some of the letters of the alphabet. Release your grip on your child's hand periodically to see how he is adjusting. This may take several attempts, but eventually your child will begin holding the pencil in the manner in which his muscles have been conditioned.

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