Oh Lori H!
I feel your pain! For a while I did scibing for Math, because I felt my son's messy writing was holding him back. Yes there was yelling (we now call it "other-directed perfectionism") tears and threats! I call it the balanced-push. I believe you when you say you can't unschool.
here's what helped.
I scribed until he couldn't stand it, then we took turns.
I let him use a calculator sometimes.
I had him turn the notebook paper sideways, so the lines could keep him lined up.
I insisted that he use one page for each problem. It helps to say, over and over, "Trees love to die to be made into paper for math problems."
If he was getting slowed down by errors, he would do the problem, I would check it with a claculator, and tell him if he got it wrong, so he had a chance to do it over, without the penelty of having to do so many more.
Aleks was wonderful for us because it convinsed him of the value of slowing down, checking his work, and writing down steps. I made the deal that he could use the calculator to check any written down step.
I've never tried this, but how about you ask him to come up with a neumonic device to seperate 2 from 5. Such as color in the bottom of the 5s - Maybe that would help?
((big hugs))
trinity
