Late today, because I got distracted with other… disciplinary actions this morning. The boy has atrocious handwriting and needs to practice so he now has an assignment in the morning after he eats his cereal – to write out the alphabet on a sheet of paper. This shouldn’t take more than a minute or two, but it turned into an all day thing.
It started off with him trying to pass off yesterday’s alphabet as today’s but I immediately called him out on it. Then it turned into pushing back and not wanting to do it, then when he learned that not doing the assignment would mean no TV time he rushed through a half-assed attempt. We had printed out a guide for him to follow but he refused to even try to get the letters right and wouldn’t use the lines as a guide for proper letter formation. His excuses ranged from they get to use a computer at school to that’s just how he writes his “Cs” (more like a bracket “<“). So I shifted to a different exercise: writing out a zig-zag pattern.
This was an exercise I had done as a child to help improve hand-eye coordination and writing discipline. After several false starts and two meltdowns, he finally finished the page about a half hour ago.
While coming out of one of the meltdowns, I gave him a bit of a talk on how he needs to step up and start actually learning practical skills, because he won’t be able to just watch TV, play games, or scroll YouTube his whole life, and if he can’t write by hand, that will limit his options in life. I think the one that really stuck was that he wouldn’t be able to leave a love note for a girl he likes, because nobody wants a printed love note. He’s just starting to show interest in girls so that one hit close to home.
Anyhow, I only have a little bit before I need to start on dinner so it is time to decompress for a while…
Song of the day: The Writing On The Wall by Iron Maiden
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