1. Working on penmanship with my son.  Today I checked his homework after he had completed it with his dad.  It was sloppy and all the nice work we had done together, all the great e and c efforts were not being implemented.  I got very strict with him and made him do his entire homework assignment over.  As he did the letters incorrectly I erased them.  For a moment I thought "I'm traumatizing this child."  But little praises helped and with each letter success he got happier and my praises got bigger.  But the end he had an acceptably neat home work sheet and he was immensely proud of himself.  He then went off by himself to write.  Soon he presented me with a note.  It said "Mom, I love you."  He said to me - "Mom - I wrote it big because I love you so much. "  There is no greater feeling then succeeding after you work at something that is really hard. This feeling will stay with him and I hope I can build on it as we go forward on this penmanship journey.  For this, today, I am grateful.