Early Writing: What Toddler and Preschool Scribbles Mean

A child fills a page with wavy lines in neat rows, hands it over, and tells you what it says. There are no letters anywhere on it.

That page has a name. Researchers call it emergent writing: the gradual process by which children work out what writing is, what it does, and how to produce it, long before they can write conventionally.

What follows is what those marks show, how children separate writing from drawing, and what is worth doing at home. It is general information for parents, and it does not replace an evaluation of your child.

What you are actually looking at

Early writing moves through a rough order. Once you know it, you can usually place a page in a few seconds.

Marks on a page

Scribbles first, then more control over the pencil, then shapes that hold together. At this point writing and drawing look much the same.

Marks that behave like writing

The page starts following some of the visual rules of writing, even without recognizable letters or words on it yet. You may see:

small separate units instead of one big picture
the same shapes appearing again and again
units sitting in a line
lines running the way the writing around them runs

This is the stage most parents notice, and photograph.

A sheet of green paper filled with rows of small invented symbols drawn in pencil. None of them are real letters. — A real page from a child at this stage. The marks sit in rows, a few shapes come back again and again, and each one is its own small unit. There is not a letter on the page.

Conventional symbols, then sounds

Familiar letters, numbers and letter-like forms start to appear, at first without matching the sounds in the word. Later the child begins choosing letters because of the sounds they hear, and eventually spells the conventional way.

A page can sit in more than one place at once. A child often writes their own name almost correctly at the top and fills the rest of the sheet with invented symbols. That is ordinary, and it is not a sign of going backwards.

Where this comes from. Researchers scored the writing of Israeli and Dutch children aged 28 to 53 months along these three groups of features, and the scores rose with age. Full reference at the bottom of the page.

How children work out that writing is not drawing

Both start out as marks made by a hand holding something, and children have to separate them. It happens gradually, and drawing is the easier half.

A drawing looks like the thing it stands for. Writing stands for language, and language is invisible.

So a child can fill a page with writing-like rows and still hesitate when you ask which one is the writing. Making it comes before being sure about it.

How we know. In the same study, children were asked to sort their own work into drawing and writing. They recognized their drawings as drawings before they could recognize their writing as writing.

A question worth asking

Ask what they wrote, and then wait for the answer.

It is a small question and it does a lot of work. It treats the marks as language, and it asks the child to hold a message in mind and put it into words. The answer shows whether they meant the marks to carry a message, though it does not tell you everything about what they understand about writing. Marie Clay, who studied early writing behavior closely, used that question as the title of her book on the subject.

Three more things that help, none of which require a formal lesson:

Let them see you write. A shopping list, a note on the fridge, a birthday card. Writing that has an obvious purpose is what makes a child want to do it.
Give them a reason to write. A label for a drawing, a name on a card, a list of their own. A real reason to write is usually more engaging than a worksheet.
Answer the message before the letter shapes. There is rarely a need to correct every mark. If the child is interested, write the conventional form nearby in your own hand, without erasing theirs or telling them it was wrong. That is close to what the teachers did in the study further down this page.

Why early writing matters later

When a child spells a word the way it sounds to them, they are doing something useful. They are pulling the word apart into sounds and finding letters to represent them, which builds some of the same sound-and-letter knowledge that early reading depends on.

You can let that happen. Writing words the way they sound is a common and useful part of early spelling, and structured approaches built around it have been tested directly.

Children in a Norwegian preschool program were encouraged to write the sounds they heard. Their teachers helped them listen for those sounds and talked about the letters they already knew.

Then each child read their own writing aloud, and the teacher wrote the conventional spelling beside it. Nobody told the child their version was wrong.

Those children came out ahead of the others on hearing sounds inside words, on spelling, and on reading words. Six months into school, some of that was still showing.

One caveat worth knowing. The study was run in Norwegian, where the link between letters and sounds is more consistent than it is in English. The researchers say so themselves, and note that studies in English and French have not found the same carry-over to reading. The broader idea, that supported attempts to write the sounds you hear build literacy skills, holds up across the wider research. The exact size of the effect may not.

The study, for anyone who wants it. 105 five-year-olds across 12 preschools, randomly assigned by preschool to the writing program or the usual one, 40 planned sessions over ten weeks in small groups with their own teachers. The follow-up six months later found smaller indirect effects on all three outcomes, which the authors attributed to school teaching narrowing the differences between all the children.

What this does not mean. Those teachers were running a structured program, with small groups, prompting, and a correct version offered afterwards. Take from it that a child does not need to spell correctly for writing to be worth doing. Do not take from it that you should run lessons at the kitchen table, or that the right move is to say nothing at all.

Why their own name matters

A child’s own name is often among the first words they learn to write. It is familiar, it belongs to them, they meet it constantly, and it gives them a reason to care how it looks.

How well a child writes their name tends to go along with their other early literacy skills. How long the name is does not seem to predict them. A short name gives no early-literacy advantage, and a long one does not put a child behind.

Where this comes from. A study of preschoolers that compared name-writing quality and name length against emergent literacy skills. Only the quality was related to them.

Questions parents ask me

Is it really writing, or is my child just scribbling?

Writing-like marks tend to appear as smaller repeated units arranged in a line. Those clues are useful for getting a sense of a page.

They will not settle a single page on their own. A child may draw one mark and call it a name. A decorative drawing can be built from rows of small units.

So ask what it says. The child’s intention and their explanation matter as much as how the page looks.

Should I correct the letters that come out backwards?

Reversed letters are ordinary in the early years, and they are not a sign of a reading difficulty on their own. You can write the word correctly yourself nearby, in your own writing, without asking the child to change theirs.

If reversals persist alongside broader difficulties with reading, spelling, language or learning, mention them as part of that wider picture. On their own they diagnose nothing.

At what age should this start?

Scribbling usually begins in the toddler years, and clearly writing-like forms come in gradually across the preschool years. The children in the study above were between 28 and 53 months and were spread across every stage, which is how wide the ordinary range is. One page is never a developmental test.

It is worth asking someone for advice if you see any of these:

your child avoids most kinds of drawing and mark-making
using their hands in everyday activities is hard for them
you have wider concerns about their language, play, learning or development

Should I be teaching letters?

Many children start picking up letters through their own name, books, signs and the print around them. Others do better with more direct help noticing letter names and the sounds they stand for. Letter knowledge is one of the strongest early predictors of later reading, so it is worth some attention either way.

Follow your child’s interest. Name letters as they come up, and tie them to words that mean something to them.

The thing worth protecting at this age is the belief that marks carry meaning, because that is what makes a child want to write at all.

My child has very little interest in pencils. Is that a problem?

Interest varies a great deal, and preferring to build or climb is not a concern by itself. Writing needs a reason before it needs practice, so it often helps to bring it into something they already care about.

What is worth a conversation is a child who consistently avoids mark-making and also finds other everyday things hard: tools, dressing, construction toys, language, play.

Bring the whole picture to someone who can see them. Their teacher, their doctor, a speech-language pathologist or an occupational therapist are all reasonable places to start.

About the author and sources

I am Michal Reshef, a speech-language pathologist licensed in Israel, working with young children and their families since 2010, and a mother of three. I write about early language development for parents, and I am the author of the picture book Moving Soon and the parents’ guide From Babbling Baby to Talking Toddler. I am not licensed in the United States.

This page is general information from a speech-language pathologist. It is not an assessment of your child, it cannot diagnose anything, and it does not replace an evaluation by a professional who can see them.

Levin, I., & Bus, A. G. (2003). How is emergent writing based on drawing? Analyses of children’s products and their sorting by children and mothers. Developmental Psychology, 39(5), 891–905. Israeli and Dutch children aged 28 to 53 months. The source of the three groups of features described above, and of the finding that children recognize their drawings as drawings before they recognize their writing as writing.
Hofslundsengen, H., Hagtvet, B. E., & Gustafsson, J.-E. (2016). Immediate and delayed effects of invented writing intervention in preschool. Reading and Writing, 29(7), 1473–1495. 105 children, mean age 5.7, in 12 Norwegian preschools randomly assigned to a ten-week invented writing program or the usual one. Effects on phoneme awareness, spelling and word reading at post-test and again six months later.
Puranik, C. S., & Lonigan, C. J. (2012). Name-writing proficiency, not length of name, is associated with preschool children’s emergent literacy skills. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 27(2), 284–294.
Piasta, S. B., & Wagner, R. K. (2010). Developing early literacy skills: A meta-analysis of alphabet learning and instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 45(1), 8–38. Behind the point about letter knowledge, and about some children benefiting from more direct help with it.
Clay, M. M. What Did I Write? Beginning Writing Behaviour. Heinemann. The classic observational work on early writing, and the origin of the question in the section above.

From Scribbles to Early Writing

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