Letter Perfect: Helping Kids Learn to Write

Problem: Your 4-year-old writes a lot of the letters backwards

Pointer: Don't freak out thinking that it's dyslexia! Writing letters backwards is a common problem in young children, says Jan Olsen, an occupational therapist who developed Handwriting Without Tears, a curriculum used in thousands of elementary schools. It usually resolves itself, but you can help by using an old-fashioned square blackboard with a wooden border. "Put a smiley face in the top left corner and call it the starting corner," says Olsen. Then have your child use that as the place to begin writing the letters he tends to reverse, like uppercase B and uppercase D. The border will prevent him from moving left with his lines.