My son, the union worker

As I've discussed previously, Master J is on a regime of coffee drinking in the morning to help curb the effects of his ADHD. It has worked wonderfully so far. The only problem is that the effects of the caffeine wear off after about 4 or 5 hours. School is six hours long.

We've been experimenting with using caffeinated soda to see if we get the same results. Not so much. The regular soda (non-diet) had a horrific effect on him. So we tried diet soda. The first time we tried it, I only gave him about 2 ounces and while it had some effect, it wasn't much. The second time we tried it, I gave him about 5 ounces and it worked pretty well. Today, I gave him about 7 ounces. And it had the opposite effect. His behavior actually got worse. He was sitting next to me shaking his leg uncontrollably and talking nonstop. This lasted about two hours.

On the way home from swimming, I decided to stop and find something that I could pack in Master J's lunch box that would have the effect of coffee. I looked around for about 15 minutes before I arrived in the coffee aisle. Every drink that I checked out though was full of things besides caffeine and I really think I want to keep his caffeine as pure as possible.

And then I saw it. A small, shiny chrome, thermos. Bingo! I can make a 3/4 cup of coffee in the morning and send it with him in his lunch box. All he has to do is drink it with his lunch and he should be good for the duration of his day. So I bought it. And tonight I washed it out in preparation for sending him to school tomorrow. And I can just picture him tomorrow, taking his shiny thermos out of his lunch box while sitting with all his classmates and pouring himself a cup of coffee. Kind of reminds me of a bunch of union guys on break. But hopefully we've solved our problem.