F is For...

Quite

The definition of frustration: teaching a four year old to write. Jesus Christ, it's like teaching a squid to read Ulysses. Now, Kraken Junior wants to know how to write. This as sure as shit isn't my idea. Yet I've agreed to sit down with a biro that's being wielded like a nuclear weapon.
But, fuck me, this whole endeavour is the agonising equivalent of sticking darning needles through my nipples. I just do not have the patience. So I sit at the table, endlessly muttering things like "a line with a dot on the top" and "like a u with a curly tail" all while digging my nails so deeply into my palms that I'm developing stigmata.
It's frigging killing me. Kraken Junior needs to master the entire English language within the next, I dunno, three weeks if she wants to survive the next eighty years. 
For example, this evening KJ wanted to write cards to her nursery-based cohorts. I agreed to this foolhardiness which resulted in me growling over missives which I'd have happily set alight.
Have you any idea how many times I said, "T! T!. For God's sake it's the letter T! It's a line up and a line across! T! Tuh-eeee!"? And have you any idea how many times KJ said, "I know! I know!" before writing the letter S? 
Fuckety-fuck and back again. And I know that there are women out there who endlessly have time to sit with their kids to help them leap such developmental hurdles but bollocks to that. I'm not that kind of muvva. Instead I'd happily pack KJ off to learn this stuff, having her returned when, and only when, I no longer have to explain how Ds are backwards Bs. 
And just think. She's four. So I have at least another 12 years of her staring at her homework like a bewildered bus station drunk. Oh, the fun we'll have. Her screaming, me screaming, the police being called...and all over some poxy set of equations that, if you squint at them long enough, read 'gin&tonic, gin&tonic'. Believe me, I couldn't do this stuff thirty years ago. I'm pretty fucking sure that age, a breakdown and medication haven't enhanced my abilities. 
So if there's anyone out there who'd like to take over the domestic teaching duties - except for Gary Glitter - feel free to let me know. I've got an ambitious little four year old and, somehow, I'm expected to survive it.