If we want our children to love writing, we have to make writing essential to their lives. I have worked with too many eighth graders who have already decided that clear writing is beyond their ability. So how can you make writing essential and fun before your kids tune out? Here are six tools that should help:

1. Start journaling early: As soon as your two year old reaches for a crayon, have them start keeping a daily journal. It will start with drawings, and in a few years time words will begin slipping in. Journals for pre-writers can be unlined drawing tablets. As children learn words, you can provide composition books. You can make writing in their journal part of their bedtime ritual, and have them write or draw one page each day.

2. Have them help you write your grocery lists: You work with them at home to decide what needs to go on the list; if they are too young for words, have them draw the item while you add the words. At the store, they read back the list. If they do well, they get to add one thing to the list.

3. Learn a new word each day: Do this with them, and learn a word that you might not even know. Look up a word in the dictionary together, and write out the definition. Then try to use the new word as many times as you can that day. Make using the new word correctly into a game. Unless children use new words, they never really learn them.

4. Have school age children write down their requests: Whenever a child wants something special, ask them to write out their request. Ask them to explain what they want and why they deserve it. If you make this a part of the process they need to follow in order to receive any special request, they will begin to do it automatically. They will also begin to think literally.

5. Make letter writing important: Have your kids send thank-you notes after they receive any gift. Let them see that you write them as well.

6. Play Story, Story Grow: You write a sentence and ask them to add the next sentence to make the story grow. Once their sentence is complete, you add a third sentence. They write the fourth, you write the fifth, and so on. See how long you can make the story, and how creative you both can be. You can also do this with more than one child, and more than one adult. You keep passing the paper to the next player, and they keep adding their own sentence to the story. You can even play this game with your own text crazy kids on the Internet by sending the story back and forth through e-mail.

Children learn from what do, not from what we say. Ultimately, your children will see the value of writing when they see how much you value writing. If you take the time to write with them, they will value that time and the words that brought you together.

Lynn Sager has toured over two-dozen countries and worked on three continents. Author of A River Worth Riding: Fourteen Rules for Navigating Life, Lynn currently lives in California; where she fills her time with private coaching, public speaking, and teaching writing for the LACCD and Pierce College. To read more about how to Navigating Life, visit her website at http://www.navigatinglife.org/ To read more articles on writing, visit her blog at http://creatingwritersworkshop.blogspot.com/