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, and it is the stage where a child has worked out that writing exists and is worth imitating, well before they can form a single letter.
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, and once you know it you can usually place a page within seconds. A study of Israeli and Dutch children aged 28 to 53 months scored their writing along three groups of features, and the scores rose with age.
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 to follow the rules of writing without containing any: small units rather than one big picture, repeated shapes, units arranged in a line, lines running in the direction of the language around them, a whole row of them. This is the stage most parents notice and photograph.
Marks that stand for sounds
Real letters or numbers appear, at first in any order, then chosen because of how the word sounds, and eventually spelled the conventional way.
How children work out that writing is not drawing
Both start as marks made by a hand holding something. Children have to separate them, and they do it gradually.
In the same study, children were asked to sort their own products into drawing and writing. They could recognise their drawings as drawings before they could recognise their writing as writing. Drawing looks like the thing it stands for, so it is the easier idea. Writing stands for language, which is invisible.
This is why a child can produce writing-like rows on a page and still hesitate when you ask which one is the writing. Producing it comes before being sure about it.
The one 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, it asks the child to hold a message in mind and put it into words, and it usually tells you far more than the page does. Marie Clay, who studied early writing behaviour closely, used exactly that question as the title of her book on the subject.
Three more things that help, none of which require teaching:
- 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 reason matters more than a worksheet.
- Leave the page alone. Correcting the shapes turns a page a child was proud of into a page that was wrong. The shapes sort themselves out; the willingness is harder to get back.
Why early writing matters later
Letting children write with their own invented spellings is not only harmless. It has been tested.
In a Norwegian trial, 105 five-year-olds across 12 preschools were randomly assigned by preschool to either an invented writing programme of 40 sessions over ten weeks, run by their own teachers, or to the usual programme. Straight after the programme the writing group was ahead on phoneme awareness, on spelling, and on word reading. Six months later, in their first year of school, they were still ahead on all three.
The gaps were smaller at the follow-up than immediately afterwards, which the authors put down to school teaching narrowing the differences between all the children. The direction held.
Their own name comes first
Almost every child writes their own name before they write anything else. It is the word they see most, it belongs to them, and it gives them a reason to care how it looks.
Research on preschoolers found that how well a child writes their name is related to their other early literacy skills, while how long the name is is not. A child with a short name is not at a disadvantage, and a child with a long one is not ahead.
Questions parents ask me
Is it really writing, or is my child just scribbling?
Look at how the marks are arranged rather than at the marks themselves. Small separate units, repeated shapes, and a row that runs in a line are all signs the child is imitating writing. A single large shape that fills the page is usually drawing.
The clearest test is the one above: ask what it says. A child who answers with a message is writing, whatever the page looks like.
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.
At what age should this start?
There is no age to wait for. Marks on a page begin whenever a child is given something to make them with, and the writing-like stage shows up in the years before school. The children in the study above were between 28 and 53 months, and they were spread across every stage.
Should I be teaching letters?
Letters arrive on their own for most children through names, signs, and books. 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 a child who prefers building or climbing is not behind. Writing needs a reason before it needs practice, so it often helps to bring it into something they already care about.
If you have a broader worry about how your child is understanding or using language, that is worth raising with a speech-language pathologist who can see them.
The full guide
This page answers one question. From Babbling Baby to Talking Toddler is the whole picture in order, from first sounds to sentences, in the routines you already have. It is written for general parent education, and it does not replace an individual evaluation.
See the guideMore on early language
- My toddler isn’t talking yet, what late talking means, and when to ask for an evaluation.
- Two languages at home, how bilingualism affects language, and how to count words across languages.
- Easy activities that build language, with nothing to prepare.
- All the language tips.
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.
- 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 recognise their drawings as drawings before they recognise 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 programme 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.
- 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.