Friendly Letters

There is nothing “friendly” about teaching a fourth grader to write a friendly letter. Nothing. Friendly. About. It. He was to write a personal narrative then put it into the form of a friendly letter. He’s been re-writing his letter, after revisions and proofreading, since about 9:30 this morning (it’s now almost 1:00). I could strangle him. We’re out of one of his ADHD meds, so he’s only taking the one med right now. (Normally he takes an extremely low-dose cocktail of two meds.) I’m beginning to really question the lack of the one med. Especially since he has his karate test tonight. Sabotaged by his own mother’s inadequacy as a drug pusher. He just asked if he could type the letter on the computer instead. “Yes!” I almost screeched. Yes! Yes! Yes! Just get it done! I no longer care about your penmanship!!! Not true. He’s got great penmanship which is evidenced with his first draft – and that will suffice JUST FINE. I kid you not, he just came in here and asked me what our address is. We’ve covered this about 10 trillion times in the past two years, including a refresher last week. Is it wrong that I told him to go outside and look at the mailbox and a street sign? Yes, I suppose it is. In his current state, he may get lost and not be able to find his way home because he doesn’t know his address!!!! Maybe we should take a lunch break so that the carb surge will cause his pencil to move across the page at a normal rate of speed, rather than one stroke every 14 minutes. Lunch was the dangling carrot that was to motivate speedy letter writing. Who am I kidding? Have I forgotten who my child is? “He loves a Happy Meal: Just hold the meal and he’ll be happy.” Oh, right. He doesn’t care about food. Gggrrrrr!