Home Parenting Tips and Techniques Turning Struggles into Stories! Proven Ways to Help Your Teen Achieve

Parenting Tips and Techniques

Turning Struggles into Stories! Proven Ways to Help Your Teen Achieve

Written by Yvette Ngooi, Specialist Psychologist

Watching your teen struggle to put their thoughts into words can be frustrating for both parent and child. Whether they find it difficult to organise their ideas, get started on a writing task, or express themselves clearly on paper, writing challenges can often affect their confidence and motivation. The good news is that with the right support, encouragement, and opportunities to practise, teens can develop stronger writing skills over time. In this article, we share some practical strategies that parents can use to help their teens build confidence, discover their voice, and turn writing from a source of stress into an opportunity for success.

Here are four practical ways you can help your teen build confidence and achieve writing success!

Spotlight Success

  • Point out what was done well in the piece of writing before working on areas for improvement. Getting a peer to review the work first can help your teen to discover more common and obvious errors, allowing the adults working with them to focus more on the creative and narrative side

When Teens Decide, Writing Thrives

  • Make the process more meaningful for your teen by letting them write about topics that are important to them. Research has shown that when an individual has a connection to the subject matter, they are better able to draw important links between their written ideas which contributes to the learning process (Brown & Stephens, 1995). Set a general theme for the writing session and perhaps set aside time to get them to watch videos or read articles to research the topic before embarking on the writing process. Let the teens themselves have a say in what topics they wish to write about for the day.

True Tales, Stronger Skills

  • Let your teen write about what they know. If your teen is having difficulties writing about something made up, get them to begin with drawing from their own experiences or those of their friends and family. By allowing them to build confidence in writing about these first, it would give them the confidence later on to write from the imagination.

It’s All About Practice!

  • Use drafts for longer stories or creative writing projects. Allowing our teens to work through drafts takes away some of the pressure and anxiety in writing a whole piece at the start. Emphasise that they should try to write their ideas down first, without worrying too much about making it perfect. Then they can improve it and fix mistakes in the final piece of work. Work on revising existing work in stages, working on structure, flow and coherence of ideas, before tackling finer details like grammar and punctuation (Uchkunovich, 2025).  As they become more experienced writers, fewer drafts can be used before the final piece of work is complete.

Becoming a good writer takes effort and patience. No writer is perfect and the process is going to come with mistakes along the way. Be sure to create an environment that fosters curiosity and an openness to learn from mistakes!

Does your teen still struggle with writing even with the support provided? Does your teen face mounting frustrations when required to write? Our team of psychologists at the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS) can work together with parents and teens to shed light on the cause of these difficulties. Every child learns differently and finding out just how different that is allows you to tailor the support given to them and help them thrive in school. 

You can find out more about the psychological services we offer through the DAS SpLD Assessment Services.

References 

Brown, J. E., & Stephens, E. C. (1995). Writing as Transformation: A New Paradigm for Content Writing. The Clearing House, 69(1), 14–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/00098655.1995.10114259

Chandler, G. E. (1999). A Creative Writing Program to Enhance Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy in Adolescents. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, 12(2), 70–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6171.1999.tb00047.x

Harnett, S. (2017, September 26). 5 top tips to get teens writing creatively. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2017/09/26/get-teens-writing-creatively-1-top-tips/ 

Uchkunovich, A. K. (2025). Boosting Writing Skills at Secondary Schools. Spanish journal of innovation and integrity, 40, 377-380.

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