>This reminds me of one my sons when in middle school. He had his first opinion paper to write for English. He had waited till the last minute and as the night went on he became more and more frustrated. I was puzzled as I knew it only needed to be a couple of pages. It turned out that he was trying to write the paper perfectly the very first time. I explained to him about writing it and then revising it. He exclaimed that he had never thought of that.

Nice to hear that explaining can work. My older son has always wanted the first draft to be perfect. I don't want to think about how many all-nighters he's pulled over the years because he can't get started until the pressure is intense.

Writing used to be a struggle for me, until word processors were invented. Once I knew I could go back and edit to my heart's content, writing became much easier.

Tamar