CHILDREN ARE CHOOSY READERS!
Children’s writing is a specialised craft. It is a rewarding, inspirational and often demanding branch of writing. There is a growing market for children’s books. Because we have all been children, and because children’s books often appear so simple, many would-be writers believe that writing for children is easier than writing for adults. This is not the case.
Children are very choosy readers. They will put a book down if it does not hold their interest immediately.
Adults are more willing to wade through a couple of unexciting or uninteresting chapters before they decide a story is not worth reading. Children are not so patient.
Another point is that while many of us recall our childhoods and enjoy reminiscing about them, not many of us can write in ways that are relevant or appealing to children. As an adult, it can be hard to think what a child today will enjoy.
The world has changed and what an adult today enjoyed as a child may not always be the same as a child today. There is no golden rule for children’s writing.
Some successful authors do so because they are good at writing AND understand what children want in their stories. Others may not understand children’s needs that well, but still write well.
You do not need to have children or even have much to do with children to write good books or stories that children want to read.
But you do have to write well, and that can take a lot of hard work.
UNDERSTANDING CHILDREN
You may wonder then if it is necessary to understand children’s needs at all to write for children. Whilst it may not always be essential, in many cases it is essential to understand more about children and their development.
Some examples –
• Writing a story book for pre-school children.
• Writing an information column in an online newspaper or magazine aimed at 11 – 13-year-olds.
• Writing a textbook explaining how bees fly for 8 – 10-year-olds.
To write these examples, you would need to have a greater understanding of child development.
• What is a preschool child interested in?
• What level of language do they understand?
• What level of language is appropriate for 11 – 13-year-olds?
• What scientific principles would you expect an 8 – 10-year-old to understand?
By understanding more about child development and psychology, we can ensure that we are writing for our target audience. In the same way that we would write for an adult audience.
If we were writing an article on how bees fly for specialists in bee flight, we would need to write in a far more complex way than if we were writing about how bees fly for a general audience.
As well as understanding how children develop, we also need to understand their –
• Needs
• Abilities
• Concerns
To help us to choose appropriate topics to write about.
An understanding of child psychology can also help you to create –
• More believable, interesting, unique characters
• A more credible, realistic context for their motivations: in other words, create characters whose motives and behaviours are credible and not stereotypic or shallow.
CHILD DEVELOPMENT
Children’s abilities and skills develop over time. They are influenced by two main factors:
• their genetic makeup (what they are biologically programmed to develop, and when)
• their environment (the influence of parents, primary care givers, society, peers, culture, school etc.).
Genetic or biological development occurs under normal circumstances regardless of the child’s environment. For example, to learn to read a child will need their full biological “equipment,” a fully developed brain and eye muscle control.
They will also need an environment where they are encouraged or taught to read.
In these situations, most children are physiologically capable of reading by the age of around four. But if they are not stimulated in the right way, then their reading skills may not develop.
Children with visual impairments may learn to read differently through the use of touch to read braille. Whilst rarely some children are able to teach themselves to read. This is often a sign of giftedness or neurodiversity.
Environmental influences will affect what the child learns. This is called learned behaviour. This varies greatly between children. For example, a child in a home with lots of books and stimulating toys may develop differently to a child in a home with little stimulation.
Environmental influences can also affect biological development. Understanding these influences may help you appreciate why different age groups have different needs and why they may be interested in different kinds of stories.
The main areas of development are:
- Physiological development –
- Physiology relates to the normal functioning of the child’s body. This includes – their body, their nervous system, including their brains and nerves.
- Cognitive development
- This relates to the child’s ability to think and understand.
- It is also affected by their neurological development – the development of their brain.
- Social development – the child’s social development is related to –
- How they relate to others
- Develop relationships
- Make friends
- Their tendency to conform to social rules and norms, obeying the norms of social behaviour, such as waiting in a queue or saying please and thank you.
- Moral development –
- Moral development relates to the child’s understanding of what is right and wrong.
- Their ability to make moral judgements.
- Their ability to empathise with others.
We can talk about these areas of development as distinct areas, but they are not really. Each area of development affects the other. For example, look at social and moral development. A child might obey social rules, such as saying please and thank you because they are told to by their parents or caregivers.
But if they do not have sufficient moral development, they may not understand WHY they need to do this, so when their parents/caregivers are not around, they do not say please and thank you.
Another example, social interaction becomes more important as children age.
For example, around the age of one, children will parallel play. This means that they play alone but next to another child. As children develop, they will start to engage and play with others.
These changes occur as the child develops. They will start to understand in different ways.
• They will use their brains to develop strategies – how to play the game to win, how to draw something, how to read.
• They will understand more how to make friends, how to understand when someone is happy or upset, how to empathise with others.
• They will start to understand more about the rules of society, what is polite, what isn’t etc. But not just that, they should also understand why things are not polite or why they should behave in certain ways.
