How Writing Letters In Cursive Can Improve Cognitive Development

Love the Idea, Rarely Do It

Monday evening I found out I'm pregnant with my 5th child. One of my traditions I've instilled with every pregnancy is writing a few letters to each unborn child. The letters contain what emotions I feel as I wait for my baby to be born, how excited I am to meet him or her, and little pieces of myself that one day they'll only know through the letter I wrote them.

With this little one on the way, I'm looking forward to engaging in this dying art form because it's one of the rare times I write a handwritten cursive letter. The only other time I write a cursive letter is when I write a love letter to my husband. I do write all my Christmas cards, birthday cards, any kind of cards by hand. All these instances are my way of holding onto something that I believe is extremely important to society and communication.

When I communicate with my friends, it's mostly through email, texting, Facebook messaging, etc. Even calling seems to be replaced with the above list. We communicate in these ways because it's fast, efficient, and fun (with all the emojis).

Modern communication is time efficient. But did you ever stop to think if it's brain efficient?

Reasons Why You Keep Writing in Cursive

1. Writing letters in cursive activates parts of your brain that keyboarding doesn't. Check out this article at Psychology Today that lists several different studies in which it's proven that writing cursive develops necessary functionality. You've got to think about what you're doing, how you're stringing your letters together, and what you're writing about. Now that's some serious multi-tasking power!

2. Writing letters in cursive keeps you sharp in expanding your vocabulary and knowing your spelling. How many of you write U instead of you. Or luv instead of love. How many of you depend on the Auto spelling? It doesn't matter if you know how to spell because the system thinks for you. Giving in to these crutches makes you lazy. I'm not saying to never text. I do it all the time. What I don't do is use ttyl. I write it out. And I actually spell out my words. I barely give Auto spelling a second glance. I'm engaging my brain in these specific ways to keep me sharp.

3. Writing a cursive letter to someone lets them know that they're worth the time to think about what you're going to write, to take out the stationary, to put a stamp, and to go to the post office and send the letter. I know that when I'm writing in cursive to someone, I feel I'm giving a part of myself that I definitely don't when I'm just typing out a message to someone. It becomes personal.

Any Downsides?

Sure, it takes time. And yes, it takes some money to buy paper or stationary and stamps. However, the pros trump these minuscule arguments.

Do you know how to write cursive? If you do, take some time to write a thoughtful letter to someone you care about. I know they'll crack a smile when they receive it in the mail. If you don't because your school took it out of it curriculum and replaced it with keyboarding (I'm not harping on keyboarding. I believe both skills are good to have.), there's no time like the present to learn.

Engage your brain and bring a special act of love someone's way.