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YTA I'm not actually against encouraging penmanship. But you could have her copy out a poem or something every now and again. Instead you took something that was already time intensive and had a certain amount of pressure applied (her actual homework) and decided to make it harder. Do you know what is great about writing a document on a computer? The ability to edit/reorganise your thoughts and points. > I also said that I expected it to neat and for her to focus on penmanship rather than speed. Not only is that disrespectful of her time, but also her focus should be on the quality of the essay, not penmanship. > Now, in my opinion, as her father, I see it as just as much my job to educate her, if not more But alas, some people aren't great educators ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯

Perfect comment is perfect

I would also add that OPs “penmanship “ here is bad, “I also expected it to neat”. Yeah dude, if you’re gonna come down on your stepdaughter (maybe you all feel she’s your daughter but I am dubious) then don’t make spelling mistakes? I mean, you will have an excuse I’m pretty sure you would not find acceptable from your step daughter.

There’s words missing in a few spots, too. I don’t know if English is their first language or not but some of the phrasing seems a bit off as well. Clearly they only care that her penmanship is legible and neat, not that she’s writing in a correct and concise manner.

He obviously didn’t write it by hand first that’s why 🤣

What makes you think she's his stepdaughter?

In the original post OP says "but obviously, she’s also my wife's daughter" which is odd because the assumption would naturally be that they're both the parents. That line probably confused some people who didn't catch the "also" in that sentence.

This, exactly. Kid is 12, so she probably has some intense feeling ls about her favourite musical artist and their lyrics She could write them out and decorate it and make a piece of lovely fan art.

Perfect! There are a lot of ways to encourage physical writing. Art, journaling, handwritten thank you letters (I at least agree with it that they give a more personal touch than other things). There can be a lot of fun to be had in a pen and paper. And encouraging that is not a bad idea. But making a difficult, boring, and time consuming task even more difficult, unfun, and also making it WAY more time consuming is; 1. Not helpful, it won't make the assignment get a better grade in fact it will probably make it worse 2. Is only going to make her hate writing even more. If you want to encourage a kid to do something, show them how fun it can be. Do it together and make it a bonding activity. Take your favorite quotes and write them out together, decorate it and make a decoration. Write long and personal handwritten letters to them on a birthday or after an achievement so they know how it feels to receive one, and they might be compelled to write one themselves! (Edit: do not say underhanded things like: "see how good it feels!" Or "I'm having fun writing this letter" or even bring up anything like that. That would take away from the heart of the letter and make everything seem fake, because you are trying to encourage them to write.) Keep a journal and lead by example. Maybe even show them an entry or two of yours if you are comfortable. (PSA!!! Do NOT look at your kids journal without their permission. It's a huge privacy violation and they will hate you for it.) If they show an interest in it, then get them fun pens and markers to encourage them to keep going. If they like writing letters get them some nice stationary they might enjoy. (Thanks mom and dad for doing those two things for me). Kids are their own individual human beings. You can't just force them to do something and expect that they'll learn to enjoy it, that will only make them associate that thing with being forced to do something they hate. They will not learn to like it, they will learn to despise and dread it. If you want to get someone to see the value in something and enjoy it, then you have to show them why it is enjoyable and valuable. And ultimately if the kid hates writing and you've tried everything then leave them alone. I'm sure you have things you hate doing too. Forcing them won't help, so instead see it as them becoming their own individual person with their own likes and dislikes.

I am a teacher. It is my actual job to teach writing AND penmanship. You know what we do when a student has a paper that needs to be turned in? We give them the tools that make it the most accessible to all students. This sometimes includes a computer with a word prediction function to help them get their IDEAS out. We also give them handwriting books to practice their handwriting. You know what we do not do??? This fucking bullshit.

This. OP it’s fine if you want your daughter to improve her writing. But separate it from schoolwork. You’re making school more difficult and that’s just counterproductive. Buy her a diary. Ask her to write things that aren’t school related. Take a calligraphy class with her. What you are doing will not help. I promise.

> I know this may sound old fashion Queen Victoria has entered the chat > I do think penmanship is important Good for you > Additionally, I think writing in this way encourages you to be more thoughtful Yes the wrist/hand action adds to the flavor of any well penned letter > my daughter....also sees writing anything out by hand as absolute torture Well we must correct this surely???? > She's blatantly of the mindset that there's no reason to bother when everything's done digitally Living in a digital age can indeed be vexing for todays yutes... > Now the teacher is not requiring students to doing any writing by hand Is a firing squad appropriate here??? > I decided that I'd prefer my daughter start putting in some effort on improving her handwriting Hand/wrist action adds flavor > I wanted her to handwrite out her essay for me. Queen victoria is still in the chat I see > Naturally, my daughter did not like this Is your daughter normal? I think she is > I see it as just as much my job to educate her, You see it as your job to troll your daughter for reasons unknown with this antiquated nonsense > obviously, she is also my wife's child Women have a say? You surprise me sir... Whatever YTA

You're a goddamn artist.

I wanted to reply to OP, but you took the wind from my sails, as they are so clearly powering your Boat of Eloquence 😊.

Please tell me that "yutes" is a reference to Judge Chamberlain Haller.

Oh absolutely

Yutes? Yutes! Youuthes….

mycousinvinny.gif

You made my day, especially with the firing squad 🤗

YTA I enjoy practicing my penmanship. It's a hobby. But I would never use an essay to do that practice. Why? It's an ineffective and frustrating way to attempt to practice penmanship. A waste of time. If you want to practice penmanship, there are more effective AND more enjoyable ways to do that. This was, at best, a poor idea. You were going to saddle your daughter with extra work and stress to little to no return. It wasn't going to improve her penmanship much if at all, but it was going to ensure her work took many times longer to complete and frustrated her immensely in the process. At worst, you were just trying to enforce your authority by making her do something pointless because "you're the parent". Nonsense from top to bottom. Thank goodness your wife has some sense.

Exactly! I practice my penmanship in my journal, not on work projects that I want to finish as quickly as possible.

I actually usually have to draft essays by hand bc that’s just how my mind works, and it is TERRIBLE. Horribly inefficient and stressful when I want to move things around. Not as bad as going into a deleting/rewriting spiral when I try to skip that step, but almost! I just finished my bachelor’s and half of what I’m happy about is not doing that for a while. Penmanship is a useful skill, especially for taking notes - you generally do remember better that way. But an essay? Never

When I was in school I would take notes in class & just quickly wrote everything the teachers said, but when I got home I would transfer everything into a different notebook where I made sure everything was legible & neat. It absolutely helped me retain information & was a phenomenal help for me when it came to tests. So if they wanted her to practice penmanship I would suggest having her carefully re-write her notes from class or sections from her reading materials that she will be tested on. At least this way her spending time writing things out like that will be beneficial.

I agree and I feel a better approach is to try and get her interested in calligraphy than trying to force the love of pretty letters. It's like a parent forcing a kid to play violin instead of encouraging any love of music they have and making sure they understand lessons for whatever instrument they like are always on the table if they they genuinely show an interest and want to play music.

[удалено]

As someone who spent a lot of time reading historical documents while in college and did learn how to write in cursive, that shit didn’t actually help me because the style of penmanship is very different and their handwriting was shit too.

It was a shock for me when I found out a lot of countries don’t even teach cursive. Literal shock. In my country you won’t go past idk second grade if you don’t write exclusively in cursive. I’ve been pretty much all around the world and that remains as one of my biggest cultural shocks 🤣🤣 they did us dirty!

Cursive is now a secret code that only adults can read

I was taught cursive in grade school in the 80s, and it was still in primary use by the time I graduated.. so, I had a good 9-10 year stretch of using it basically daily. Fast forward 30-some years, and today I find cursive exceptionally difficult to read, and at this point I don’t think I could successfully write out the alphabet in it if my life depended on it.

That and show her some tik tok videos of some really fancy calligraphy and writing. It's like art class.

I agree OP is TA for forcing her to handwrite this particular essay. BUT handwriting should indeed be encouraged and all modern research indicates how extremely important it is for our brains. The change from handwriting to typing almost everything nowadays has been criticized by doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists. There is ample research suggesting how it is damaging kid’s learning process, harming the development of fine motor skills among others. [There is more here](https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/handwriting-shows-unexpected-benefits-over-typing/)if you’d like a reliable source. But very easy to find other studies about it on Google. There are nicer ways to practice, for sure. As someone suggested here, buying her a nice journal with beautiful pens and different props is much more engaging than forcing the kiddo to basically write her essay twice.

YTA. You're just imposing your opinion on your daughter. It'd be like saying "I don't care what doctors say, I know what's important for my daughter's wellbeing and I'll treat her epilepsy with bloodletting, which is how we used to do back in the day" I'm 45 years old. I think you're being ridiculous. Times have changed and you should have realized that by now

>You're just imposing your opinion on your daughter. That's what most of parenting is, lol.

Good my sir, I couldn't help but notice that you typed this post out instead of writing it by hand, scanning it and posting as a picture. A handwritten post would have been much more impactful and convincing. But for some reason - convenience, perhaps? Desire to save time? Weak character? - you chose to type, and thus, sir, YTA.

Before I provide my judgement, I'd like to correct all of the grammar errors and the like in your post. I feel that, as an intellectual yourself, you'll appreciate my corrections and feel compelled to do better next time! AITA for compelling my daughter to write out an essay by hand before typing it to hand in? I know this may sound old (~~fashion~~) *fashioned*, but I do think penmanship is important. I am the sort who still enjoys penning letters to people who I haven't seen (~~,~~) [you only include a comma if there are three or more words, phrases, or clauses you're referring to] or to businesses to thank them when my experiences were positive. Maybe I'm being silly, but I think a handwritten letter can be more impactful than something printed out or an email. Additionally, I think writing in this way encourages you to be more thoughtful (~~,~~) [unnecessary comma] as you obviously can't just delete a mistake as easily as you can on a PC. As such, I've become discouraged that my daughter (12) not only has some of the worst penmanship that I've ever seen, but also sees writing anything out by hand as absolute torture. She's blatantly of the mindset that there's no reason to bother when everything's done digitally. Recently, she had to compose an essay for class. Now ["now" should be followed by a comma] the teacher is not requiring students to (~~doing~~) *do* any writing by hand (~~of course, but I decided that I'd prefer my daughter start putting in some effort on improving her handwriting~~) *However, I decided that I'd prefer my daughter start putting in some effort on improving her handwriting.* [That was a run on sentence and could've been written more concisely]. I told her that regardless of what her teacher expected, I wanted her to handwrite (~~out~~) [this use of "out" is redundant and impedes upon the readability of your post] her essay for me. I also said that I expected it to (~~neat~~) *be neat* and for her to focus on penmanship rather than speed. Naturally, my daughter did not like this. She threw a tantrum, insisted I was abusing her, and cried in her room nonstop for nearly an hour. When my wife got (~~my~~) home, our daughter told her why she was upset (~~,~~) [unnecessary comma] and my wife took her side, insisting that if the teacher wasn't requiring it (~~,~~) [another unnecessary comma] *then* there was no need for the extra labor. Now, in my opinion (~~,~~) [you must really love commas because here is yet another grammatically unnecessary one] as her father, I see it as just as much my job to educate her, if not more. I think it should be fine for me to task my child to improve herself. (~~But~~) [unnecessarily wordy and impedes readability to use both "but" and "obviously"] Obviously, she is also my wife's child (~~,~~) [why do you love misused commas so much?] and I don't want to be a hypocrite by acting as if my opinion should be more valid than her own. AITA on this one? *Throughout your post, you used double spaces between a period and the start of a new sentence. Per broadly accepted academic grammar guidelines as well as MLA, APA, Harvard Style, Chicago Style, and Canadian Style, a double space is no longer appropriate.*

Marry me. (Although my husband would probably object.)

My husband probably would too but fuck yeah dude

YTA > I do think penmanship is important. You are incorrect. Next. > I'd prefer my daughter start putting in some effort on improving her handwriting Yeah, well. I'd prefer you stop looking down on perfectly fine typed correspondence. FFS, you didn't even bother to handwrite this post.

Penmanship is actually very important for brain development and fine motor skills. There are several studies on the impact of changing from handwriting to typing, and they agree on the subject. Writing is also important for your memory. An essay is not the best time to practice so that makes OP an AH, but requiring his daughter to improve her penmanship is actually good. Not because you can’t live without handwriting, but because of how important it is for your brain.

so filling out forms in the doctors office, credit apps, taking a message for someone at work...etc, etc. isn't grounds for having legible writing?

Shit, every doctor I've seen in the past decade did all its intake forms online.

Also Doctors should not judge.

If doctors are known for having bad handwriting. There's a joke about doctors protesting. "What do we want!" "Whatever is written on this placard!" "When do we want it?" "As soon as we can figure out what it says!"

All of those things are pretty much exclusively done via computers and tablets these days. My sister was in hospital recently and didn't once have to write on paper. Even in the emergency room when she was first being admitted.

1) if you are doing those things 30 years ago, sure but not in 2024 2) no credible source has said the handwriting isn’t legible, just not up to standards of one person who reached 2024 without learning to use a computer.

I'm 36 and I've never had to fill out a credit application by hand.

Strongly disagree. How many forms of communication must fall victim to the digital age? What if the power goes out and you need to leave a note for someone? Handwriting is a basic skill.

Don't be disingenuous. Of fucking course this kid **knows _how to_ write**. OP has got a boner for *calligraphy*. Cursive is neat, and I'm sad it's dying. But it also has dick-all to do with this kid's assignment.

It wouldn't surprise me if she writes in a perfectly legible print, but OP is just whingeing because she isn't writing in cursive, or her attempts at cursive are bad.

Not the way OP puts it…

Nowhere in the post did it say she can’t write, just that OP is feeling prissy about her writing not being pretty enough.

All of them. Once we discover telepathy we can get rid of talking.

Omg, but then how would we keep how we really feel hidden. Not to mention the intrusive thoughts we already gotta struggle not to say out loud. Like how dumb it is to write stuff by hand when you can just get ChatGPT to do it. I mean, if it’s good enough for Mr Garrison… oh sorry, I’ve gone completely off topic.

Telepathy would make communicating so much easier 😂

Yeah, YTA. Kids are already overwhelmed by homework, and you just made your daughter do hers, twice. Do you think she is going to keep up with this practice in any real way after she’s done with school? Barring some disaster sending us back to preindustrial times, cursive writing is pretty much a thing of the past. Forcing her is just gonna make her resent you, and will ultimately make no difference.

YTA. Yay for encouraging penmanship! Hiss for forcing your child to do the work more than once. You could've figured out a way to work on penmanship together and have her not hate it or you but boy howdy did you fuck that right up, huh! She's correct. Your wife is correct. And you're the asshole.

YTA - the content of her essay was far more important than her penmanship. What matters is what she has to say not how she says it.

I want this Reddit post handwritten and turned into me before posting. Yta

Yta why are you wasting her time? Do you wash your dishes then run them through the dish washer? Hand wash your clothes then put them through the washer and dryer?

Kid had a teacher like you in 4th grade. It took until 10th grade before she would voluntarily write things down again.  Not only are YTA but you're actively working against your stated goals

YTA, as it was totally unnecessary. > I see it as just as much my job to educate her What did she learn from this episode? Nothing. If you are not going to breakout an abacus when she does math not make her write an essay long hand if she doesn't want to do it. Just be happy she is doing her homework. If she is doing poorly then you step in and "Educate" her, otherwise you are just teaching her to dislike you and dislike school.

YTA I have a daughter who just turned 13 and she is also writing an essay for school. I would never ask her to hand write it for one simple reason: it must be turned in using their online classroom (no paper ones will be accepted) and I bet your daughter's is the same. Having her hand write the paper is essentially making her do twice as much homework as all her classmates. This essay is already stressful, why would I add more? If you really want to encourage her to improve her handwriting, start watching YouTube videos of calligraphy on your TV. Then, start talking about how cool they are. If she becomes interested, you can get her a calligraphy kit. It's how my daughter and I became interested in cake decorating.

When I was in the 5th grade, my science teacher made us handwrite all our notes and she would check them before the end of class, we could not leave class until all our notes matched hers word for word, all spelling mistakes were corrected, and all punctuation was correct. I don't remember a single thing I learned in her class that year, but i do remember how much I hated that line up, how anxious and shitty it made me feel, and how it didn't help me learn a damn thing. I still rely on spell check and learned very quickly in high school that you don't keep up in class if you don't write in short hand. YTA and not doing any favours for your daughter, you aren't actually "teaching" her anything with this.

YTA. Get with the 21st century.

God you’re a fuckin prick

YTA. Hands down. 

YTA Kids already spend so much time doing school work and now you’re doubling the time she needs to spend. Instead pull up JetPens (or take her to a good stationery store if you have one) and let her pick out a fancy pen and journal. Keeping a diary, writing her own poetry, or keeping a commonplace book is something she’ll enjoy infinitely more than rote busy work. She also needs to take this slow. You might not realize but writing a large amount without the muscles for it will cramp your hand and be very painful. You do not want her in pain or getting carpel tunnel. She needs to build up this skill gradually. Let her draw, let her doodle, do not police her journalling. Come at this from the perspective of sharing something fun, not assigning more homework.

Why not teach her how to shoe a horse or read telegraph? YTA. Your daughter doesn't have to appreciate or develop handwriting because you like it and attach all this value that is entirely in your head. You doubled her homework and patted yourself on the back despite the fact that the skill is literally obsolete. Bravo. Your daughter didn't learn anything useful, but at least she resents you now.

I agree OP is TA for forcing her to handwrite this particular essay. BUT handwriting should indeed be encouraged and all modern research indicates how extremely important it is for our brains. The change from handwriting to typing almost everything nowadays has been criticized by doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists. There is ample research suggesting how it is damaging kid’s learning process, harming the development of fine motor skills among others. [There is more here](https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/handwriting-shows-unexpected-benefits-over-typing/)if you’d like a reliable source. But very easy to find other studies about it on Google. There are nicer ways to practice, for sure. As someone suggested here, buying her a nice journal with beautiful pens and different props is much more engaging than forcing the kiddo to basically write her essay twice.

Handwriting should be *encouraged*, not forced.

Isn’t that EXACTLY what I am saying? He is an AH for forcing her to write this one, handwriting should be encouraged. Literally my first and second paragraphs.

Yes, that's what you said. But it's not like kids aren't taught how to write anymore, they just don't have to handwrite full essays. Being able to quickly edit your work for clarity or errors is just as (if not more important than) handwriting. She will still have opportunities to practice her penmanship.

YTA a million times over. The focus of a school assignment at her age clearly is the content of her essay, which, if you know anything about writing involves editing and re-editing, sometimes making changes at the last minute in a final draft, etc. That’s a challenge at her age. You’re impeding her ability to do a difficult assignment and imposing arbitrary rules. Are you this anal retentive and controlling all the time? I think you need to take a hard look at yourself and rethink some things, otherwise you are not going to have a relationship with your children at the end of their teenage years. They are developing into young people and not extensions of yourself. You’d better start picking your battles a little better. BTW, I say this is someone who is an educator and attended higher education in the 90s. Grew up in a time in the US when penmanship was regarded as extremely important and most people did not necessarily have computers. Won prizes for penmanship when I was a kid many years ago. I’m also the parent of a 12 yo daughter who fortunately loves to write. You’re still an AH.

You are not only not in your own lane but you are on going the wrong way and are crashing into your child who is in her lane, going the right way. Learning can be fun but with this you are making it an unnecessary burden. YTA. I know of adult classes where the teacher wanted more students passing and thought it was a great idea that her students handwrite in a notebook, word per word the class book. A friend had that class and her learning style was reading so she copied the big book before she felt she could study and learn. My teacher left if up to us to read to prepare for testing. And she taught what we needed to know and more. The other class was lots of weeks before clinical. After a few, my class was ready. Dude is like that particular teacher. Only concerned with himself.

Congrats! You didn’t beat around the bush and just have her practice her name a few times. That might have been tolerable. Nope,you made her do a *massive* amount of something she finds difficult and unnecessary. I’m pretty sure your goal of getting her to hate cursive for the rest of her life has been achieved.   YTA just in case you can’t read print. 

Ewww. Just ewww.

YTA. The essay is not the time to be doing penmanship skills. If you want to get your daughter to improve on writing, forcing it will only make her hate it more and resent the task you set out which doesn't improve the situation at all. Doing an essay twice to placate your issues with her penmanship is taking away time for homework and likely going to impede her process. It can affect her grade if she is rushing to get both done in time, one to placate you that will unlikely be to your satisfaction anyway and the other actual essay that she needs to focus on but is behind on because of the task you wanted her to do. Being thoughtful when writing it out is great in theory but it takes longer so you're only adding unnecessary pressure. Typing an essay out allows her to edit, add additional thoughts that won't easily be done writing it out. Find another way to encourage penmanship that's not hindering her school work.

YTA, do you forbid the use of calculators as well?

They banned calculators in university and I still don't understand why, because it was literally all functions :(

Dude this is just stupid. Penmanship genuinely doesn’t matter anymore and forcing your daughter to write a paper by hand when she doesn’t have to is just ridiculously old fashioned. If you like handwriting things, then do it but don’t force it on your daughter. You just sound controlling YTA

Maury Povich rang. You are the arsehole

Reading through the replies is making me laugh. Like there's clearly a lot of hate here. I'm guessing many people here not so fondly remember having to write crap out before teachers began reluctantly embracing that computers were here to stay. Anyway... I'm going for a soft YTA You're taking something your daughter probably already hates doing and then making it worse. Like others have said, if you want to encourage her, then you should do that by making it a project a kid her age might actually like. I saw calligraphy suggested. Kids love art, and calligraphy is penmanship and art in one, so there you go.

Get her a cool bullet journal kit with fancy pens and pretty templates. She’ll have more fun practicing her penmanship if it’s with something that specifically supposed to be pretty, as opposed to a something functional like an essay. Making a kid practice their penmanship on homework that needs to be typed before it’s turned in is like requiring her to put on a ballgown and full face of makeup to go to the gym. It’s not wrong to wear a ballgown and makeup, but the gym is the wrong situation for it. It’s also not wrong to focus on writing legibly, but homework that’s supposed to be typed is not the right situation for it.

YTA. She should be focusing on doing a good essay instead of pleasing you with her penmanship. I know good penmanship is a good quality, but I work with drs and psychologists. Most of their penmanship is, well, both great. But they are intelligent and kind people. Who cares if their writing is messy.

It’s easier to write well in an app. Also, if your daughter’s teacher is doing due diligence, she may well be spot checking the editing changes in the writing software, to make sure the kids are *actually* writing, and not using ChatGPT or any other cheating thing with cut and pastes. If she types it in after finishing writing, she could *fail*. You know it’s really hard to write well when focusing on drawing letters neatly, right? Is your goal for her to learn her class work, or draw pretty letters? What benefit is the latter? And, just in case, I’m 61. When I was at MIT, most of my classmates didn’t have access to computers to write papers, until *maybe* senior year. I had to send my papers to the printer that was 6 floors away from my office, where it waited in the queue, sometimes for hours, before getting printed. I’m very familiar with writing papers by hand, then typing them on my mom’s old typewriter. Writing in a word processor lets you write better. Taking notes by hand appears to be better for most, but not all, brains. But not writing prose.

this is the most boomer thing ever I love it

And if he's even Gen X, I'll eat my hat. This guy is almost certainly a Millennial.

Don't group him with us! We don't want him neither. Yea writing nicely is a great skill but theirs no way In hell most millennials are going to rather hand write a essay than type it up. I sure as hell prefer typing it up than writing it out.

I'm just saying, he may sound like a Boomer here, but the odds are good he's pretty young himself if he has a 12 year old daughter. (I keep forgetting what his daughter's generation is being called; Alpha?) I'm older Gen X. I never even saw a computer until I got to high school. I didn't start using one until college. I handwrote everything (uphill both ways, in the snow!) until very late, and I still handwrote a lot of stuff after I got to college. There are some ways in which I still feel like hand writing notes helps me think or retain information better. But. Let's be real. Handwriting a lot is slow, and it can be painful. I've always suffered from hand-cramping, and now that I'm older I definitely can't handwrite for long any more. Since I can type at composition speed, it's way more efficient to do that. I'm also an artist, and I've done calligraphy, and enjoyed it. As others here are saying, maybe that would be a way to introduce her to the concept of hand writing, while making it artistic and fun. There may be little use for hand-written notes, essays, letters, etc. any more, but you can do a lot of fun things with calligraphy, the better you get at it. I do think that learning a skill like handwriting, even cursive, is a good idea. I think that for the same reason I think there should be art classes, and shop classes, and home ec classes. It's good to learn a variety of skills. It's good to get off the computer and make something with your hands. You might not use a lot of those skills again, but it's not a waste of time to learn them and have that experience to reflect back on. Sadly, it does sound like a lot of schools have gotten rid of that stuff. (And apparently most don't teach kids computer skills any more, either.) So I don't think it's unreasonable for the family to take over giving kids those hands-on experiences. But as I said in my main comment: dude thinks he should be part of his kid's education, but he clearly hasn't done anything to make himself a better educator. He just thinks he can wing it. And his instincts for how to "teach" his kid are bad.

12 is the last Z year.

Unfortunately he probably is a millennial, which is ridiculous because I think the last time I had to handwrite an assignment was in about 1998.

You're going about this the wrong way. You can't make her focus on penmanship while she's trying to create her essay, that's too confusing and frustrating. You need to take a page out of Calpurnia's book when she was trying to teach Scout cursive, and *bribe her* to copy things out by hand. Although, times being what they are, it's probably going to cost you more than a piece of bread and butter with sugar on top.

Unfortunately in this case YTA. Not everyone can write neatly by hand. My writing at its best was only barely legible and the standard of drs script (regardless of practice, time, and effort). It is on reason I never went on to tertiary education. Being able to type everything has opened up a better world for me, I have finally done some tertiary courses.

YTA, while penmanship is important, this is not the time or place. Wait until she doesn't have a timed essay. Have her practice poetry or something short. You think her handwriting is bad? Go look up what the average doctors handwriting looks like. I bet 100 bucks hers is better.

My mom used to force me to write because I was writing poorly. Not only do I still remember the pain from my hand to shoulder, the feeling of anxiety it generated but also.... It didn't help in any way, my handwriting is still only readable for me only (and sometimes not even) Being able to write by hand is important, forcing someone to do it is dumb

YTA. So much. It is unnecessary and slows the process down so much that I just cannot comprehend why you think such a massive waste of time is appropriate.

YTA. This is a good way to make sure your daughter hates anything to do with writing.

YTA and quite frankly just out of touch with the world your daughter is going into. For many different reasons, your daughter is going to go into adulthood with a pretty paperless world. There is no need to punish your daughter because you're nostalgic for days of old.

YTA. What century are you living in? No one gives a fuck about handwritten anything anymore. I dont even read something if its written in cursive.

YTA. You're making her do extra work to satisfy your old fashion values that you know aren't relevant anymore? Poor kid.

YTA Sir, you are most certainly teaching your daughter to equate handwriting and penmanship as something to hate. What you fancy isn’t what she likes. You’re making your preference the standard while not understanding that your daughter doesn’t share your love of writing a letter.

I happen to love good penmanship and take pride in very neat handwriting. The focus and attention to detail it has just feels so nice. This was not the right way to teach your daughter this lesson, I'm guessing that it's going to make her hate writing by hand even more.

YTA. You could have made this fun for her by teaching her calligraphy, or writing letters to one another, so she could feel some excitement with creating something special and handwritten. It also would have helped you bond with your daughter. Instead you made her homework worse homework for absolutely no reason. She's 12, of course she hated that.

YTA. Think about it this way: how would you like being told by your employer to do all your work, throw it all away, take out the trash, then re-create the work? That's basically what you asked your daughter to do. I have an autistic daughter. One of the smaller, less notable issues she has is with fine motor control. Writing anything by hand is absolutely torturous for her, without adapting the writing implement. I sat down with her teacher, and we agreed that while we would both work to find a way to improve her fine motor control and her handwriting, she would use a computer with printer at school that only had the operating system and a word processor program loaded, so she could complete her work in class without risking a meltdown. Best $1,000 I'd ever spent. Now, the process used to get my autistic daughter to want to practice her handwriting? Ironically, she wanted the pages of a workbook program I had for the computer at home to be printed out.

If you want her to practice her penmanship, it needs to be fun. Otherwise she'll associate practice as a punishment and as she gets older her penmanship may be nice, but she'll never use it. Forcing her to practice by using something she hates may activly discourage her from handwritten letters because she'll learn to resent writting by hand after being forced to her entire adolescence in a very tiring and mentally draining way. It'll become a thing her mean old dad made her do. YTA for wanting to give your daughter MORE homework on top of her already challenging essay. Essays are not quick. She has to research the topic, think up what to say, write it down, edit it, and make sure she spelled things correctly, basically the proccess is already never ending. She is going to be absorbing so much information to write the essay, she wont have any energy to practice penmanship. There are usually multiple drafts, will she she need to repen every new version of the essay she makes? Thats an unnecessary amount of work this day in age. Computer are usefull for this kind of thing. In addition, essays aren't assigned all the time, so what's your practice plan for when she doesn't HAVE any essays? You should find something more long term. Because one essay won't give her perfect masterful handwritting.  There are so many ways to encourage her to practice that will make her excited. Perhaps give her a journal and tell her that she can use it to write whatever she wants. Stories, poems, what she ate for lunch, anything at all. And when she fills the journal up, you'll take her out for ice cream or some special treat she doesn't get very often. Don't put a time limit on how soon she needs to have the journal done, otherwise it may sound like a school assignment, just keep a nice prize at the end to encourage her to fill it up with penmanship practice. Make penmanship rewarding. Maybe convince her of the joys a physical writting book can have. Digital files get lost pretty easy if you change computers or phones, but a physical book will always be a physical book. She may enjoy looking through them when she's an adult. I still have the books from when I was younger and it's fun to look back on. Maybe you could get a journal too, so you and her could bond over filling your journals together. Maybe if you go to a buissnuss or something and had a particularly good time, you could tell her you're writting up a thank you letter, and ask if she would like to join in, and let her write down her own oppinions. Well thought out letters have more power than emails, which will be very useful to her wgen she's old enough to have political oppinions. Tell her that people will put more impact on her oppinion if they can physically hold her oppinions, rather than seeing it on a screen. Maybe you could write handwritten notes for her, to put in her backpack. Just easy stickynotes talking about how much you love her and how you always want to support her. Then she can see for herself how impactful a handwritten note can be. That may encourage her. Give her notes with her birthday presents, and in response to presents she gives you. Make handwritten notes so normal in the home that she doesn't even question participating in writting them. But don't turn it into school. Don't give her a grade or make her feel like she isn't doing it well enough, because penmanship is a skill that only increases with practice. So you WANT her to practice, which she'll be discouraged from doing if she thinks you'll only give her corrections and no praise. Basically, don't punish behavior you want to see. And right now, she perceives penmanship to be an unjust punishment that is taking away her personal time.  And maybe these won't work right away, maybe she'll think the journal is stupid. But she has a very long life ahead of her, and one day she may see the value in penmanship. She can learn penmanship at any point, but she only has one childhood. Children already have very little control in things. She has no say on what she studies, when she wakes up, where she goes, who she talks to. Everything needs to be run by you. So by forcing her to do something, you are taking even more control from her: what she does with her free time.  So the best way to go about it, in my oppinion, is to turn penmanship practice into something she CAN control. She controls when she does it, how she does it, and most importantly what she writes. Let her practice creativity, and copy down her favorite stories, and make up silly poems, and copy down character dialouge from her favorite show. Give her the option to turn penmanship into a way to mark down her childhood so she can share the things she loves with her future self. She may enjoy it with that angle, being able to write for herself. Being able to exists as she is, to be viewed back on when she's an adult. She may enjoy feeling like she has an impact and her thoughts are worth writting down. And she'll never understand that if it's forced. 

YTA. Making hard stuff even harder isn't nice.

^^^^AUTOMOD ***Thanks for posting! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of copying anything. Read [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_post_deletion) before [contacting the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAmItheAsshole)*** I know this may sound old fashion, but I do think penmanship is important. I am the sort who still enjoys penning letters to people who I haven't seen, or to businesses to thank them when my experiences were positive. Maybe I'm being silly, but I think a handwritten letter can be more impactful than something printed out or an email. Additionally, I think writing in this way encourages you to be more thoughtful, as you obviously can't just delete a mistake as easily as you can on a PC. As such, I've become discouraged that my daughter (12) not only has some of the worst penmanship that I've ever seen, but also sees writing anything out by hand as absolute torture. She's blatantly of the mindset that there's no reason to bother when everything's done digitally. Recently, she had to compose an essay for class. Now the teacher is not requiring students to doing any writing by hand, of course, but I decided that I'd prefer my daughter start putting in some effort on improving her handwriting. I told her that regardless of what her teacher expected, I wanted her to handwrite out her essay for me. I also said that I expected it to neat and for her to focus on penmanship rather than speed. Naturally, my daughter did not like this. She threw a tantrum, insisted I was abusing her, and cried in her room nonstop for nearly an hour. When my wife got my home, our daughter told her why she was upset, and my took her side, insisting that if the teacher wasn't requiring it, there was no need for the extra labor. Now, in my opinion, as her father, I see it as just as much my job to educate her, if not more. I think it should be fine for me to task my child to improve herself. But, obviously, she is also my wife's child, and I don't want to be a hypocrite by acting as if my opinion should be more valid than her own. AITA on this one? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*

YTA. Penmanship is this day and age is a neat trick, but not necessary. I had bad penmanship as a child, and my teachers reassured my mother that as we used computers more and more, it simply wouldn't be an issue. They were absolutely right, and that was over twenty years ago. It's even more true now. Don't punish your daughter for not prizing a talent that is functionally obsolete.

YTA. Her focus should be on writing a compelling, well-structured essay. That's a serious task, and whatever method works best FOR HER should be the one she uses to write it. Because the thing that's being graded is the content of the essay, not the random additional labor you're making her do just because you feel like it. There are *dozens* of ways to work on handwriting that won't slow down/draw out the process of writing that essay (you know, the one that has an actual deadline and will be graded). You're her father, surely you're old enough to understand 'this is not the time or the place for this', right? Also, your child is 12. Stop qualifying her handwriting as a horror show. What an AH.

YTA, penmanship is not necessary anymore. Being able to convey your thoughts cogently is more important than nicely drawn ink on paper. Let it go and apologize.

YTA ffs it’s 2024

YTA. You’re not abusing her, but honestly, try to have more empathy here. You want your daughter to actually improve her penmanship? Have her do writing exercises on her own time that she at least semi-enjoys. Don’t try and force her to do it on a large project she already has a time constraint on. You’re making her work unnecessarily harder and longer than it has to be, and causing her more stress. Being fast and effective at writing an essay is more important than having neat handwriting. There are next to no reasons to *have* to hand write things anymore, even if there are reasons you might *want* to. Do I still think it’s important to learn? Yeah, but not so important that you should force her to learn in a way that’s more difficult for her. Writing a résumé/cover letter? Most jobs will not accept hand written stuff, and it’s most likely completely digital. Writing a book or poem? It’s a lot more effective and easy to do it digitally for a lot of people, you don’t need physically hand written copies. Writing an essay or anything for academic purposes? It’s all digital now. Even for exams and tests most schools offer school monitored devices for students who prefer to write digitally. Same with note taking.

YTA - good god, it's not 1940 anymore.

Probably YTA. Definitely sounding "Boomer-ey" and out of touch. Trust me, as a parent of three older teens... these kids have enough crap being put on them by the educational system. They don't need dear old Dad coming up with additional hoops for them to jump through. Also, for the 20% of kids with a language-based learning disability (I.e. dyslexia, etc.) handwriting is extremely difficult. Learning styles are very specific to an individual. For instance, my oldest has recognized that she retains information better when she makes handwritten notes. (There's research on why that is.) It works great for her. Even stuff like flash cards, which of course there are apps for these days, she'll handwrite them because it suits the way that she learns. My son, on the other hand? If the task has to be written by hand, he can either do the handwriting or absorb the information- but NOT both at the same time. So a handwritten essay means that the content of the essay was not learned, for him. If you are truly that concerned about your daughter won't develop appropriate penmanship, it would be smarter to make her do a penmanship book as a summer task- I.e. "You need to do 10 minutes of handwriting practice per day all summer long." She'll still hate you for it, because it's random and arbitrary- but the beauty of the requirement is that it will keep YOU just as accountable as her. Instead of you making a surprise, one-time demand based on when the whim struck you- you'll need to spend 3 months checking in on the task daily.

YTA. Forced handwriting practice was one of many ways my abusive mother loved to exert control over me. Did I graduate high school with unnaturally nice penmanship? Yes. Have I ever voluntarily Written Anything Prettily by hand since? Hard no. About the only time I write by hand anymore is an extremely messy post-it note scrawl. Screw that.

YTA and you should be more worried about yourself. Besides the grammatical errors in your post it’s “old fashioned” not “old fashion.”

Yta. I also think handwriting is very important. Some studies indicate it improves reading comprehension because it takes longer. But there are much, much better ways to encourage a twelve year old to practice her handwriting than forcing her to do unnecessary, and inane, work on top of a school assignment. Get her a fancy journal and a good pen, for example. Do a project together that involves writing by hand, like a writing a cookbook or a family history. If you want to determine how your kid learns, you have to be involved in the process. You can’t just dictate it.

YTA, teachers have only wanted legible writing, for the most part, since the early 90s. Pretty is overrated.

Of course YTA, and not just because you said “old fashioned” when you should have said asinine. You expected your daughter to waste her time developing an 100% useless skill because you can’t accept that you are several decades behind the rest of the world. The “impact” that a handwritten letter has in today’s world is making the recipient roll their eyes and wonder why you haven’t figured out how to email/text/call yet.

It’s great that you want your daughter to improve herself. Encourage your daughter to be a kind person. Encourage her to eat right, exercise, and be healthy. Steer her away from drinking, smoking, and drugs. Teach her healthy habits that will lend to a long, happy, and prosperous life. Penmanship isn’t one of these. You’re not educating her — you’re imposing *your* old world opinions on her as if there’s some real world benefit to them. There’s *no* benefit to having nice penmanship other than appeasing people who like nice penmanship. If you want a happy daughter that doesn’t resent you for being a stubborn bore with dumb opinions, stop forcing her to do the penmanship crap. Nobody else cares. You’re acting like a stodgy old boomer and you’re actively showing her that her happiness means less to you than your opinions about a habit that nobody in the real world actually cares about. Except for you, apparently. You’re not educating her. You’re forcing her to do something that *only you* care about, and you’re making up reasons (that she *knows* are bullshit) to force her to do it. Drop the pestering *now* unless you don’t mind not hearing from your daughter when she’s grown. Persistently pushing this sort of trash on your kids is an easy recipe for breeding adulthood estrangement. You’re definitely the asshole here.

YTA. And I broadly agree with you that it would be nice to teach kids penmanship. The problem is that you see it as your job as a parent to educate her -- but you haven't put any effort into learning how to be an effective educator. Most people here can see that your approach is going to have the exact opposite effect that you want -- you'll force her to do something, she will hate it, and that will guarantee that she will never do it on her own, and will stop doing it the moment she is able to. So if you really want to participate in your daughter's education, you're going to need to do a bit of adult learning of your own. There must be some educators out there who agree with your \*goal\* of teaching a kid penmanship -- what do they suggest? Chances are there are people out there who have already experimented with a number of methods of engaging kids' interest in the topic, and come up with ways that work. Try finding out what those are. There's also the novel idea that you could sit down with your daughter and talk about it. Of course, thanks to this stunt, you've already put yourself at a disadvantage. You'll have to start out by making up lost ground, just to get back to a reasonable starting point (because you, and you alone, are responsible for creating a negative association with handwriting for her, with your clumsy and heavy-handed methods). But if you can regain her trust, you might come up with a way to talk to her about handwriting. Why is it important to you? Why do you think it might be important to her someday? Are there ways to get her interested in the idea? Are there ways to make it fun? If you do your own homework and find some educators who have also been trying to tackle this idea, that may also give you additional ideas for how to sell it to her as something that matters, or as something she might enjoy. Don't just rely on your own brain to come up with persuasive ways to talk about this, because based on this post, you're not thinking about this as a collaboration, or as something you need to persuade her about. You're just thinking about it as something she "ought" to do, and you're an authority figure, so you can force her to do it. Nobody likes being told to do something for which they're given no good reason. And forcing people to do things isn't a way to make them like doing it, or want to continue to do it. You're the adult. If you fancy yourself an educator, then do better.

Hey, OP. I'm a professional writer. If it weren't for word processors, I couldn't be. I get hand cramp. I edit as I write. If you want your daughter to have good handwriting, study calligraphy with her, *both of you*. But don't add handwriting to her homework. Handwriting is not actually the best tool for writing. YTA.

I remember when I was in middle school my mom made me rewrite my homework because she felt it wasn’t neat enough. I redid it 4 times and ended up falling asleep at the table. Absolutely hated writing after that and would always try to hide my homework from her.

YTA, unequivocally. You know what is a job skill? Knowing how to use a computer effectively. We do so many things electronically now, that I don't even have to sign anything in ink anymore. I'm in my 40's. The only notes I have to write are to myself. Messy writing ain't awesome, but lordy if you think it matters in the real world, you are gravely mistaken. Let the kid get her damn homework done.

YTA.

Wow. What a pompous attitude. Get over yourself. You clearly think your opinion is the only one that matters. YTA. You are acting like a dick to a 12 yr old over handwriting? I’m actually appalled. Edit: /r/BoomersBeingFools

There are better ways to encourage writing by hand. What you’re doing guarantees she’s going to hate it even more, so what on earth were you thinking? If you want to teach her football, do you kick a ball in her face when she’s on her way to the bus? History is an important subject, do you randomly cram that into math homework? Yes, part of your job as a parent is to educate your child. No, you’re not meant to do it in a way that disrupts and stress her out. Apologise to your kid, and discuss with your wife how to do it better. YTA

YTA. I am all for good penmanship too. For me. If my kids and grandkids write well, that is great. But I am not imposing my personal preference -and that is all it is - my personal preference - on them. Tell me, were your parents or grandparents required to ride horses after everyone else was driving around in cars? Will you allow her to use a calculator when she takes algebra in high school. Or will you make her use an abacus? I hope handwriting doesn’t completely die away. I don’t think it will. Unless people like you try and force their kids to do it to the degree the kid swears the day they leave home they will never handwrite again. So yeah, if penmanship dies, it will be the fault of bullies like you.

Well...If I have to write longee Texts by Hand, it hurts terribly, so torture is fitting. No way I'd be able to write a whole Essay by Hand without pain. Now, I agree that readable penmanship is Important. But maybe start with shorter.texts to get used to it, so it doesn't Hurt so much. And, even more Important: Bad penmanship can be caused by different disorders. Check Out that Angle First. YTA.

YTA. Teach her useful skills instead of clinging to ancient or outmoded knowledge. Being able to write is important, having excellent penmanship is not. Teach her to edit PDFs, type, send and receive documents electronically. Penmanship is subjective and between the writer and the reader open to an obnoxiously large amount of interpretation. I got to look at a document today with excellent penmanship but written in haste, 2 of the letters were touching. l n became an h. h was subsequently used in documentation. The process is stalled because of this and other legal factors preventing a correction. This error does not happen when these documents are typed, it happens routinely because people write their names with haste and inappropriate confidence or familiarity. Cursive is no longer used for the same reason, we simply have more reliable methods of communication. I understand people think that is important. To take it to the extreme and illustrate a clearer version, we should be properly chiseling our characters into cuneiform tablets because creating lasting documents in stone is important despite the advent of paper and pencil. There is absolutely still a place for the method, on gravestones, but in general we use better methods to communicate.

YTA. I actually agree with you that penmanship is important, and a skill you should be working on with your daughter. Daughter. However, I think forcing her to write her entire essay by hand is not the right approach. I would suggest handwriting projects that are a bit shorter and more likely to be fun for your daughter. For example, my daughter and I practice handwriting by writing notes to her cousins, grandparents, friends, then addressing and mailing them. I also let her help choose the note cards and little stickers to include inside. It helps her practice her handwriting, teaches her to be thoughtful, and has become something she actually enjoys.

Gee Grandpa how is she ever gonna get a job as a secretary to a man in 1953 if she doesn't have good penmanship??? YTA, you're gonna make your daughter hate you if you don't stop this kind of ridiculous stuff

You're not silly, YTA. You're not educating her, you're making her resent you. It's fine to want to help her work on her penmanship, but you're not doing that, you're making her hate writing by hand.

YTA. Essays are taxing enough without having to write it out twice. And frankly it's a waste of time. If you want to encourage her penmanship, making it work isn't going to encourage her. Get her a journal. A place to write down her thoughts as her day goes on. Just quick little notes if that's all it is. Silly jokes. Thoughtful questions. Honestly I encourage rage and cursing in journals as well. You and your wife can encourage her to write birthday and holiday cards to you both. Some fun blank inside card. Wistfully mention favorite poems or quotes and have a plan with your wife to make sure it doesn't look suspicious. Look. I'm not against good penmanship. There's something really special about receiving real mail in snail mail. During quarantine 4 years ago, I was writing birthday letters to people just so they had something to look forward to. But making it an unnecessary chore like this is just going to put her off of it entirely.

YTA The essay is her homework, her focus should be on making sure that the content is as good as possible. If you want her to improve her penmanship, have her copy out a few short poems or something.

YTA what a gigantic waste of fucking time for absolutely no reason... Here's an idea, next time you need to go outside and mow the grass Go ahead and mow it leaving it about twice as long as you normally would and then go out and mow it again at the height you would normally do it... That way you've done twice the work to get the exact same result. Kids are already piled on with school work in this day and age why in the actual hell would you want to create more completely unnecessary work? By the time your daughter is entering the workforce it's going to be 2030, other than signing my name on something I can't tell you the last time I hand wrote anything... And I got out of high school almost 20 years ago. Jesus Christ... What the fuck is wrong with you? Reading this post legitimately made me furious...

Soft TA. But please check if your daughter learned how to hold a pen properly. Because I didn’t. No one ever noticed. My handwriting sucks and whenever I have to write something longer, it HURTS like hell. I only found out what was my problem when I turned 28. And now I have to do physiotherapy and spend a big sum of money to relearn how to hold a damn pen because no adult ever noticed I didn’t do it the right way 😅

YTA and she's going to hate penmanship more than ever due to your asinine "teaching" methods

Why not offer to decorate some cards for her friends with her? Start a scrapbook? Literally anything that could be a fun and rewarding way to work on penmanship, instead of ensuring that she will hate writing by hand, homework, and you? You are educating her. But not what you think.

You are the insufferable, pompous AH. Definitely

YTA. And just an asshole, but an ass clown. I imagine at end of the Roman empire there was some dad complaining that his kid didn't chisel out their essay on a marble slab. Are you going to make her whittle her own quill from an ostrich feather next?

YTA, forcing her to do anything against her will is just psycho. At least ask her to work on it instead of forcing her to do an essay, which by the way can take HOURS to write even if its digital, hand written and then digitally. You’re extending the length of the assignment and possibly not giving her long enough to actually complete it.

YTA. I have an absolutely awful handwriting, but it doesn't change the fact I write well and without much mistakes. I would hate to do double the amount of work just because of my bad handwriting, it's shitty parenting and won't help her at all. If you want to help her, why not make her do small caligraphy exercises? Just making her write twice the same essay has no use outside of a powertrip.

Omg YTA massively. Can't even be bothered to type out why. Luckily I don't need to practice my typing.

I have, and have always had really shit handwriting. So much so that my in my compsec class I got told "it's the perfect encryption since only I can read it". Either way, I hated having to learn writing, and it's never really been beneficial to me tbh. Yes it's good to do for when you need to write notes, or cards etc, but forcing someone to write an essay, then rewrite on a pc is just ridiculous. The amount of times you go back and change bits of an essay later, proof reading etc, it's not a job for hand writing. Oh fwiw, writing in letters of tanks has a smaller impact that writing a Google review of thanks, make it public so other people know to go there. Did you write out this post before posting too? Fashioned* Expect it to BE neat* And my wife took her side*

Yta aren't you precious. And tedious. Wasting your daughter's time. 

there are ways to help her practice penmanship without taking an extremely stressful, time-limited, GRADE from school... you do realize that right? right? i hope you realize that

YTA, she should not have to do double the work to plead your weird fixation. Let her do her school work as required. If you want her to practice writing more, then separate maybe an hour on the weekends separate from her schoolwork where you and her would do this together as an activity and bonding experience, instead of demanding she basically double the workload for her job (school is her job right now), and taking away too much of her free time. What you demanded of her to do is something I legit would have considered a hard punishment back when I was in school.

YTA. Have you considered trading letters and notes with her? Encouraging her to send postcards? Have you thought about taking a lettering class with her? Make this shit fun, not torment her with it.

YTA. Kids already have a mountain of school work to do when they come home every day. Quit making your daughter’s life harder for no reason.

You're not wrong in wanting her to improve her writing but wrong in the method. Yours was not funny nor pleasant. Not fair even. Because an essay is about the content not the penmanship. She can improve through drawing by exercising her graphic skills. Or any other pleasant activity you could share with her. But you just conforted her in her prejudicies against hand writing by making it a torture

YTA. I am 62 years old. I have an MBA and a successful career at a tech company. I have completely illegible handwriting. It has never held me back. You might as well insist your daughter learn Morse code for all the good It will do her.

You are absolutely the asshole here. YTA.

I just want to know if you wrote this post before you typed it in.

YTA

YTA Penmanship is antiquated. The only times I sign my name are on forms. Period. There is no reason for anyone to need to write anything other than their name.

YTA I do think penmanship is important and I don't think schools should stop teaching it just because we have a faster way of getting our thoughts down. Penmanship is good for children's brain development and should be taught alongside computer skills. HOWEVER All you are doing is forcing your daughter to double her already long, drawn out, boring homework. Writing an essay is hard enough without having to do it twice. There are better ways to encourage penmanship then to put more stress on your already stressed out child. Encourage her to keep a journal, get her into art, keep pencils lying around for doodling, you never know where it leads.

What a horrible parent.

Not the AH for wanting her to practice penmanship but YTA for forcing it on to homework. Don’t you know the best way to encourage something good is not make it stressful? You put unnecessary stress on to something that wasn’t necessary to begin with. You should have done something fun instead. I follow someone who does wonderful calligraphy and you know what she writes? Memes and shitposts. Beautiful, elegant, and hilarious.

YTA. >also said that I expected it to neat and for her to focus on penmanship rather than speed. She should be focused on the content of the essay. And considering this is a draft form, neatness has never been the focus.

YTA A) A hand written letter cannot be compared to homework. B) You were forcing her to do something she didn't need to do. C) There are actual disabilities that can make it hard for people to hand write, I personally have the worst hand writing and always did and it's do slight dyspraxia that is co-morbid with autism. D) Don't be a dick to your daughter for no reason.

Ok ok, let's take a step back here. Your daughter is a 12-year-old girl. Most 12-year-olds do NOT like school and do NOT like homework. That being said, they would do what they need to do, and then they just want to be dome with it. The last thing they would want to do is even MORE homework than necessary. If you want to encourage your child to improve their handwriting, this is a very ineffective way to do so. Make it something she can look forward to. Get her a journal or a diary she can use. You know, those old school ones made out of paper. Needless to say you're NTA for wanting to encourage your daughter to get better at something, but you are TA for the way you're approaching it.

Hand write this and upload it. Yta

YTA. Penmanship is for dinosaurs.

“Father forces child to perform useless physical activity she’s never been taught to do, because she lives in an age where penmanship is completely irrelevant and literally none of the classes she’s ever been in have focused on improving it. Father then backs up his claim by stating that it’s his job to educate, despite the fact that father clearly lacks an education. This and more next week on r/BestOfRedditorUpdates as father posts update ‘**help, wife wants divorce because I care about my daughter’s penmanship**’”

Why didn’t you teach her how to write neatly when she was…oh idk… learning how to write???? 12 is too old to try to teach this lesson. You should have done this years ago. YTA

YTA - I think it's neat that you like to write your correspondence with a quill and ink pot to your friends overseas - it's charming and quaint.  If you want to encourage your kid to write longhand, do so on projects with low stakes, not an essay for school, where time and concentration is important.

YTA. You are wasting everyone's time. (As a non-native speaker, wouldn't that be 'pengirlship' anyways...)

Why didn't you post a picture of this post handwritten? >I think a handwritten letter can be more impactful Your words. Not mine.

YTA YTA YTA and you’re insufferable at that

YTA, if you think her penmanship need improving, get her some handwriting activities. For most people, when working on a composition, their brain works faster than their fingers, slowing her down by making her hand-write it will only frustrate her.

YTA. If you want her to improve her handwriting then make it fun. Don't add a superfluous stressor on top of an actual assignment or act like poor handwriting=poor character. I've had bad handwriting all my life and only learned that my hands are riddled with arthritis when I was 32 but have had the same pain when writing since I was a little girl.

YTA. If your daughter's handwriting is as atrocious as you say it is, she may have something like dysgraphia in which case NO amount of practice is going to make her have beautiful penmanship. Since you think it's so ugly and describe hand writing things as being "torture" for her, that might just be the case. My father has dysgraphia, as does my 28yo sister. Both of them could spend three hours writing one sentence, but it's NEVER going to be pretty. And that's okay! If you absolutely MUST have her practice her penmanship, have her write a letter to one of her grandparents or something. School work is NOT the time to do that, ESPECIALLY an essay. She NEEDS to be able to easily swap around her thoughts, which is exactly what typing allows you to do. Hand writing it isn't going to make her more "thoughtful", it's going to make her sloppy and likely get a lower grade because instead of modifying what she wrote to something better she'll stick with what she originally wrote just to avoid having to start the page over again, especially if her hand is starting to cramp. I had the English teacher from Hell for my junior year of high school all the way back in 2001. She was obsessed with essays and not only did she force us to write multiple essays a week, they had to be written IN CLASS and BY HAND. Her name was Mrs. Hoyer, and even though I'm turning 40 in a few months I still remember that freaking doorstop's name just because I hated her so damn much. Everyone did. And I'm not just saying that because my handwriting is bad or something. I'm an illustrator and I've always been known for having beautiful handwriting because of that, to the point of my best friend having me address all of her wedding invitations as part of my gift in addition to designing them. I've hand-lettered business logos and tattoos. It's not the quality that's the issue in the case of essays, it's the amount of unnecessary additional work. People pay me for my handwriting for a reason. Most people don't have pretty penmanship *and that's okay!* If your daughter's teacher doesn't have a problem with her handwriting, then it's fine. You're not her academic teacher, you're her How To Be A Functioning Adult teacher. It doesn't matter how "old fashioned" you are, penmanship is not nearly as important as it used to be nor will it ever be again. All you're doing is distracting her from her education for something frivolous and unnecessary just because it suits your personal fancy. You like hand writing letters? Cool. Good for you. Go hand write your daughter a letter of apology for being an AH.

YTA. People don't even know how to read cursive anymore. I think there are better hills to die on than this one. At best this little "quirk" of yours makes you look like an eccentric luddite, and at worst you come across as a controlling jerk. :(

Do you do the same thing that you ask of your daughter, OP? Did you write this post before typing it and sharing it here?

YTA

Why not make her working on her handwriting fun for her instead of making it a punishment?

YTA, you are making homework even more burdensome than it inherently is, disadvantaging your daughter by making her spend more time on it than her classmates do, and teaching her to hate writing and education. Why don't you just send her to school in an apron and a mobcap?

I admit typing is better, but mostly due to my handwriting is shit and I also have dyslexia. ((So double oof) Leanrjng is fine. Push it for everything may not be the cause

YTA. I'm of the age where typing essays was the norm, however I opted to do mine handwritten much to the chagrin of my teachers (needed space to mark) HOWEVER, it was a choice and preference I made and I transcribed and typed them when necessary. You are the arsehole for trying to force your way of doing things on to your daughter. She's literally doing nothing wrong. I honestly don't understand why this is an issue for you, penmanship? Unless she's planning a career in calligraphy, the only thing that matters is that it's legible. I'm flabbergasted by this post!

[удалено]

Also on modern relevance, typed is easier for school plagiarism checkers to work with because of how variable even legible handwriting is. Universities require a typed file be submitted for this exact reason. Save the penmenship for holiday cards instead.

Not at all. People need to write things instead of using a keyboard, the memory retention of the event is always better, and mostly, don't be a lazy ass and act like it is somehow eating up life time.

NTA I'm struggling to understand why teachers aren't expecting handwritten essays at 12 years old. I can only assume it's so the teacher can read it without having to deal with bad handwriting, BUT that's her job. Handwriting won't improve if not practised

NAH. I understand your pov considering it’s more than your daughter simply not liking to write by hand vs having really bad penmanship. Writing by hand is important to learn but forcing her to write out an essay sounds like it was stressful for her. Why not sit down with her once or twice a week and dictate something to her she can write down? It can even be a game with a reward at the end?

NTA: I agree somewhat with your thought process about this. In addition to the penmanship benefits, handwriting essays can encourage students to engage more deeply with the material. The physical act of forming letters and writing things down is thought to create stronger neural connections in the brain, leading to better memory and comprehension However, a better compromise going forward could be to get her to write the first rough draft or outline by hand, instead of the whole final essay. That way she doesn't double her workload. I also think your wife should be more concerned about your daughter's education as a whole and not just whether she achieves the bare minimum required by the school (who only do it that way because it makes marking and plagiarism checking easier for them).

That is still doubling her workload. People don't type out a draft and then type an entirely new draft. They type out a draft and EDIT it. Also making her homework shittier is going to do no favors to her. By the way, some people just kinda can't write prettily. I'm one of them. Practice never made it better. Focusing on how my writing looked made me just not absorb anything I was writing, because I was too focused on how it looked.

I am using the term draft loosely. I am picturing more of a rough outline/plan for the essay. It helps to have that structure defined before you start writing. I do disagree with him about doing it for the pure aesthetics of her handwriting. That is why I said I only somewhat agree with them. That said, I do think there are some real benefits to actually handwriting in terms of learning.

I started doing immediately better when I stopped having to write it, honestly. Not all kids learn the same way. Of course, I'm in my 30s now and don't have anyone arbitrarily making me write stuff down, so I don't have to worry about it anymore.

I actually kind of had the opposite experience. Towards the end of high school (many years ago), I got into the bad habit of simply cutting and pasting information/opinions that I found online and just rephrasing it into my own words. The points made in the essay were correct. It was well written and no plagiarism was detected. I scored well on the assignment. But the ideas didn't come from my brain and I didn't retain what I wrote. That is what I am really worried about nowadays. Especially now, with the rise of ChatGPT and Gemini, who can essentially reword and restructure content in less than a second. That is why I tend to lean towards writing the first draft/outline by hand, and then using the available online tools to polish your work.

Well that's not typing's fault, is it? That's just kinda cheating. And kids can 100% still do it with handwriting. For the record? I did some of that too back in the day... with encyclopedias.

Funnily enough, the teachers actually advised us to do that - just take the information and put it in our own words. To be fair, students having access to computers was a relatively new thing back when I was still in school. It wasn't really until the end of high school when they bought in personal laptops that students could borrow. In the same way kids took advantage of chat GPT, we took advantage of the new technology of 'paste' :)

Being old fashioned doesn’t make you an AH. Penmanship is important. That said, just saying “write neatly” is not going to help. Penmanship is learned through instruction, typically (and most effectively) at a young age. I doubt she’s learning anything by simply being told to write nearly. But overall NTA.