“Does this say ‘ball’?  Or ‘cat’?  Or….” I asked, squinting to make out the loops and swirls.

“Mom, it says ‘dance’” my son corrected me as I continued to go over his spelling homework.  Nothing was legible.  And if I didn’t force him to do it over his teacher would never accept this.

Handwriting has been a struggle with him.  The kid is smart, his mind sometimes racing ahead of what the teacher is teaching.  He can finish a math page with 100 problems in about 5 minutes.  He can read pages of books fluently without stumbling over words.  He understands it all.  And he is in a hurry to get everything done so that he can play.  As a result, his paperwork usually resembles chicken scratch with a couple pictures of planes shooting down dinosaurs in the margins.  Unfortunately for him, he was gifted with a teacher who has an art background, who believes that handwriting is more important than the actual content.  His “Friday folder” always came back with spelling tests with every word spelled right, yet marked up with frowny faces and words checked wrong because the “e’s” looked more like “f’s”.  Even if it was obvious that he was writing an “e”, the word was marked wrong.  His last report card even went down mostly due to neatness.  So handwriting has become our struggle.

One trick I have learned is the power of sparkly pens.  I found these great gel pens that come in various colors and are easier to write with.  I was nervous the first time he asked if he could use them.  I stressed to him that there was no eraser, that he really needed to write carefully to ensure that he made no mistakes.  The end result was the most beautiful handwriting I ever saw him produce.  I had no idea he was even capable of making it look so beautiful!  He painstakingly created each letter.  It took him three times as long to do his homework, but he was so proud of it.  It came back that Friday with a huge smiley face on it, and approval from the teacher for him to continue using the pens to do his homework.

The refrigerator is my other tool.  When kids are young, we are apt to display every single piece of artwork they produce, covering our fridge so heavily that opening the door becomes a safety hazard of flying papers.  But as they get older, and the teacher sends home every single thing they do in class (and we wonder why there is a tree shortage…..), it becomes easier to use the recycling bin.  Maybe that’s just me, since I feel guilty even mentioning that.  The first time I started throwing away art work and tests with high marks from school, I felt like the worst mom ever.  But who has room for it all?  Of course I’d put aside special art work and exceptional essays.  But the day to day stuff?  Recycled.  And my refrigerator thanks me for it.  The usual scene on the fridge is a couple old cartoons, a shopping list, and some pictures.  Occasionally funny sayings are created thanks to Poetic Magnets.  Sometimes a newspaper clipping, or a reminder, or a bill that needs to be paid….. 

Ok, maybe my fridge door is still a jumbled mess.

When that glittery spelling homework made its way back home with a smiley face that matched my son’s goofy grin, how could I not display it?  What I wasn’t expecting was just how much this meant to him.  And that became apparent when he sat down to do his homework, got out the glittery pens, and let me know he was creating another paper that would be on our fridge.

My son may have just ruined his chances of becoming a doctor, but at least his handwriting is neat.

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