to confiscate everything off 7yo dd?

[MrDobalina]

Ive just spent an hour looking for her school shoes...they were in her book bag. Her books and homework which are supposed to be in book bag are not...spent another 40 minutes looking for them; i cant find them

i tidied her room on Friday; its a bomb site-clothes everywhere-lots of 'stuff' put into bags (seems to be a favourite game!) it drives me bat-shit

Im a SP, I work, I have dd1 and dd2. I really feel like I cant spend so much time running round, tidying and getting things orderly....

shes had her new glasses 2 weeks, shes lost them already. I hand her her school bag and coat maybe 10 times before she goes out of the door in the morning and she still leaves them behind

shes so chaotic! is it normal for a 7 year old?
It doesnt seem so, 2 yo dd2 is much better at tidying up after herself already. And remembering stuff...

[armani]

Sounds like my 6 yo dd.
She also plays the bag game and it drives me insane!

[MrDobalina]

oh really armani?

i was hoping someone was gonna come on and say, oh yes that 'putting things in bags' is caused by a rare medical condition; that is easily resolved by blah blah, and dd will stop being so fecking SKATTY and MESSY!!!

do you just take adeep breath and put everything away AGAIN??

[MamaMumrOrangeTheGolden]

I would say very normal

[MmeLindor]

Sounds like my 10 yo DD.

At school last week, her teacher said, 'She is lovely, but very forgetful', while DS's teacher said, 'He is lovely, and so organised'.

She forgets her school dinner money at least once a week, never remembers to put her glasses on, and always has to search for her school shoes.

I feel your pain.

[MrDobalina]

how can they NOT remember to put their glasses on???????!

they have to do it every day!!

Really? its normal? [deflated]

[wine mama

10 ?????? Mmelindor oh gawd, i was hoping she'd at least grow out of it...

any tips for minimising it?

[MmeLindor]

Sorry, MrD. If anything she has gotten worse in the past year.



I was actually going to start a thread this week about how to help her remember things but I forgot

[MrDobalina]

i was thinking of stapling every thing to my dd ?

[Startailoforangeandgold]

DD now remembers her glasses, because she is short sighted enough she needs them to see CBBC with breakfast.

Was forever losing and forgetting them when she first had them. I'm blind as a bat without mine and this used to drive me nuts.

I think school shoes walk by themselves, they are never ever where DDs swear they left them.

[ripsishere]

We, or rather I actually did take every single thing out of DDs bedroom barring the furniture in an effort to make her more tidy and organized.
It backfired spectacularly when I had to keep going the cellar to find things she really did need for school.
She is 11 now and still a messy disorganised forgetful thing.

[catwoo]

my 11 yr old has just started secondary and has morphed virtually overnight from the most disorganiswd child in the world to little miss organised so there is hope

[monsterchild]

I was like this as a child. I am still kind of scatterbrained, but I have become a successful person with a job, Dh, house and expecting pfb.

So there is a lot of hope!

[MrDobalina]

i am sure she will be fine monster!!

its me i am worried about!!

i will be left behind, rocking and twitching, and muttering obscenities about 'bags' and 'stuff'......

[Pocketsocks]

Now I don't have this problem with losing shoes. I'm forever tripping over Ds1's despite there being a perfectly good box that they live in. Even 2 year old Ds2 manages to put his away although for how long remains to be seen.
Must be a similar strain of that rare medical condition. There's just got to be a cure somewhere!

[tootssweet]

The confiscation thing is tempting but aside from lots of tears & shouting I don't think would achieve much. I feel partly responsible as dd has so much crap & we are the ones who give her it. (this does all tie in to a much bigger sweet household problem of too much clutter with mr sweet being the worst culprit! I just want to get a skip)
Sorry was going to be all light- hearted but it does wear you down

[SaraBellumHertz]

Sounds like my 7 year old -you have my sympathy.

I tried the confiscation route. After weeks of threatening and taking a few things away I snapped and I shifted the entire contents of her room, aside from the bed and the wardrobes that are fitted, into the spare room. The book shelf, sofa, writing desk, 3 million Barbies, books all went.

I told her to go up to look at her room and she came down asking what was different

After several years of angst we have decided she is just wired differently. She is not interested in objects and "stuff". We spent a couple if weeks in Thailand where she had no toys, no schedule and she thrived she became this adorable, helpful, tidy (!) little girl whereas her younger brother who is usually well behaved but is obsessed with screens (tv,computer, iPad) became a monster.

I just pray that whilst frustrating now it bodes well for the future

[MrDobalina]

she was looking for her waterproof trousers this morning (suprise suprise-we cant find them anywhere);

she found all her shoes which I had collected up last night into a box, in my despair/temper/frustration. She seemed to accept my explanation of why I had done that. Then she pulled out the bag of hats/gloves and scarves next to it....tried them ALL on in every possible combination, tried them all on her sister, chose co-ordinated combination for both of them and left the rest spread across the living room floor!!

We had to get out of the house...so I left it. I dont have time to manage and oversee her in teh morning to prevent that. Despite getting everything ready last night for the day...I still have to get dressed/ do my teeth etc....I could kill her

[freddiefrog]

My 7 year old DD2 is also exactly the same, including the putting things in bags.

She is obsessed with handbags, saves up all her pocket money to buy bags (she has quite an impressive collection) and then squirrels away all sorts in them - I once spent weeks looking for the TV remote control only to find it stashed in a handbag along with the key for the back gate that I had long since given up finding and changed the lock

Her room is a pit, I've now told her that I will change beds/hoover/etc on a Monday morning and anything not put away properly will be binned - I've got quite a stash of full bin bags up in the loft and she hasn't even noticed her stuff missing - at this rate her room will be empty by Christmas.

I've started to get organised with her, she's so forgetful and a complete dolly day dreamer so I've given up chasing her around and given her storage/places to put stuff before she's allowed to do anything else.

We've got a box in the downstairs loo which I make her put her shoes in before she's allowed in the house and I make her hang her school uniform up the minute we get home from school or we'd spend the majority of every morning looking for shoes/school jumpers. Homework goes straight back in her book bag before she's allowed to watch TV.

She's completely absent minded and so am I to a certain extent, but this just drives me utterly crazy.

She has no concept of time - telling her she's got 5 minutes is like asking her to fly to the moon so I have to badger her constantly. She's completely forgetful and lives in a dream world. She drives me to distraction, but yelling just ends with tears and nagging makes her more obstinate

DD1 was the same at 7, now 11 in year 6 and is showing signs of being more organised

[FutTheShuckUp]

Do we have the same 7 year old DD?
In a way im glad im not alone in the world!

[MrDobalina]

ooo freddie

I finally found my mobile phone on a bag, in a box, in another bag at the bottom of the toy box!

[MrDobalina]

fut it is kinda reassuring to not be alone, but also wish it wasnt normal and something I cant/shouldnt beat out of her

[TheOneAndOnlyMaryZed]

You need a list on the back of her door, with things to be done the night before and in the morning.

Make her responsible for doing it and ticking them off, and then reward each day with stickers and a big reward at the end of the week. It doesn't have to be expensive - it can be a "movie night" where she watches a dvd and you have popcorn, for example.

ds2's list at one stage for the morning read: get up, open curtains, get dressed, eat breakfast, clean teeth, put on shoes, pick up bag, go out door - it was very detailed and he loved ticking it off on a big whiteboard each day. The evening one included packing schoolbag and laying out clothes.

The novelty wore off reasonably quickly, but we were in a routine by then.

Alternatively kill her - that sounds very reasonable too [bitter]

[Angelico]

Have you read any of the Fly Lady stuff? I am still messy and disorganised as an adult and always was as a kid. The thing is I got the Fly Lady book recently and she said that quite often if you are 'born organised' you will just expect a child to know how to do it. There's a really poignant passage where she says most messy people were just told as kids 'Go and tidy your room!' and then they stood there completely overwhelmed not knowing how to break it down or even start. I read it and thought, "That was me!!!" Didn't help that my parents were quite messy / hoarders at the time too but somehow expected me to be magically different.

So basically you need to go back to basics - use some of Freddie's strategies maybe? Model behaviour for her - help her get rid of clutter, have a box for books, a place for glasses, a place for x, y and z and giver her a couple of weeks to get the hang of coming in from school and putting things where they should go.

After a couple of weeks if you have really taught her and she is just being lazy then I think you do need to sanction her.

[WineOhWhy]

I have an 8yo DD who is just like this. It drives me mad, and always gets mentioned on her school reports. I have just decided that the time has come to stop bailing her out and let her take the consequences of her own actions. So, if she cant find her homework, it does not get handed in. If she is not ready in the morning, other DC and I will go without her (with DH then bringing her in when she is ready). I am also going to start waking her up 15 mins before the others.

[OHforDUCKScake]

Oh gawd I dont even trust ny 5 year old with his. I take it off him from the second he gets out of school and give it to him with everything in it sorted out just as he is walking into school.

[MrDobalina]

angelico see Im not naturally organised AT ALL...I have an aversion to routine and repetitiveness; it is really an on-going struggle for me...which is why SHE DRIVES ME MAD!!!

But i shouldnt be so surprised at how she is should I?

shes not lazy at all...I cant really describe...ill try....

last time i got her to help me tidy her room and put clothes away...it was going quite well..i got distracted by dd2 and left the room for a while. When I got back she was dead excited becasue she was 'implementing a new system' in her wardrobe...she had EVERYTHING out and she rolled it all into little individual balls and put them all back in teh drawers. She did put it all back!; but instead of having drawers with a pile of t-shirts, a pile of jumpers etc, we had drawers full of little balls of clothes! so i had to go back later and restore order, so that i could put future laundary away!

i will look at fly lady (i started with her once before)

and maryz good idea about the list and sticker chart...ill give it a go!