Reluctant young writers need to be enticed to write. Sometimes it’s as simple as sticking a sticker with a writing prompt on it at the top of one of their journal pages. Or playing a dice game in which tutor and tutee take turns writing just as many words as there are dots on the dice roll. Whatever your child’s issue—reluctance to write, difficulty planning a story, a dearth of writing ideas, refusal to revise or edit—I draw him into the resisted activity by getting him to do just the teeniest bit of it, in a playful fashion. Once he realizes it’s not so painful, we do a little more. Pretty soon he’s off to the races.