Year 7 boys - disorganised and irresponsible

i'm not being rude actually. I know the town and school OP is talking about. This is a big town on london outskirts. I have looked for a phone box in this town and totally failed!

and no i certainly wouldn't send my dd, or a ds, walking home an hour away when they have no bloody idea of the way. it is a complicated one way road system, very busy roads, river, multiple routes to navigate. No way. So easy to get well and truly lost.

Although actually the only time Ds2 needed to call me and his phone stopped working (genuinely, for some random reason), he chose a passer by who "looked like a mum" and asked if he could use hers. I expect he was very polite and the fact that he was near his school and in uniform went in his favour. 😄

There are call boxes. Definitely in London there will be.
Open your eyes and stop being rude.

Oh yes ds was like this is year 7, stuff left on the bus , lost his watch etc etc

We just went nuclear at him each time and he just got better at it

FAS is extremely unlikely if you only had a small amount of alcohol in pregnancy. Dyspraxia/ADHD is much more likely. FWIW I have ADHD and I wasn't hyperactive as a child. It's not a necessary component, it can just be the disorganisation. (They sometimes call it a subtype - ADHD-PI).

I once watched TM with someone on who had Foetal Alcohol syndrome & apparently it can happen even if you only have a drop of alcohol in pregnancy. I don't usually drink but had been to a couple of Xmas parties & had a glass or 2 at those before I discovered I was pregnant with DD2.
She would forget her head if it wasn't screwed on & I often think of that TM episode & wonder whether I should get her tested...

Does he not care about the consequences? Or does he care but it doesn't seem to work anyway?

If the former you need to up the consequences. If the latter (and looking at other things you're saying) look at analysis for dyspraxia or ADHD.

you do not send 11 year olds walking for an hour in any direction in London!

what a weird thing to say. Of course 11 year olds can walk an hour in London. Mine have always done so, and more, as do many others I know ( I walk two, sometimes, if I feel like it)

Why can an 11 year old get a bus in London but not walk in London?

reallyanotherone totally agree

Blimey, thank goodness my two boys didn't go through stuff like that. Why are you letting him have so much stuff like iPhones ?!

"It's a boy thing". Is a phrase used to excuse male crappy behaviour.

It is never "a boy thing", or a girl thing. It is always a personality thing.

"A boy thing" removes the responsibility for a child's actions. They have a penis, so they act this way because it's in their genes.

Bollocks.

Unless they are forgetting to tie their belongings safely to their penis, it is not a boy thing.

My small low power phone is a quarter the size of an I brick and has a calendar and notepad function. There is also a thing called a wall calendar and a notepad which never needs charging and survives if dropped.

As does the phone, and it cost a tenner. No internet access but he is at school and doesn't need that out of the house.

Simplified life takes less effort.

what bloody call boxes? THERE AREN'T ANY. are you living in the 80s?

Of course there are. I made sure I found out where they are and made sure my son knows where they are and how to use them. May not be on every street corner anymore like the old days, but still around, especially in town centres and most large villages.

So he loses or smashes his phone, loses his ticket, can't find his way home from school, needs to be tracked wherever he is - best keep him at home all the time to keep him nice and safe then!

If he IS going to school an hour away from home, then he HAS to learn how to cope when things go wrong, when trains stop working, when you lose your ticket, when your phone dies. You are doing your kids no favours by monitoring their every move so you can swoop in and rescue them every time something goes wrong. They never get the opportunity to learn that they can cope because they have never been given the strategies of what to do when things don't go according to plan!

An hour is nothing. My son walks from home to the bus stop and then from the bus station to his school. In two bursts, but total walking time is more than an hour.

As for losing stuff, you need to stop replacing it. He'll soon learn his lesson!

My son got an iphone for his birthday a couple of years ago and is under no illusion that there's no replacement if he loses or breaks it. As a result, he looks after it.

At first, he'd forget to take books and expect me to drive them in. Soon got the message that I wouldn't, and he had to face the consequences.

Only way they'll learn is "hard love"

And an hour is really not far to walk to school. My nieces live 2.9 miles from their secondary school. There's no transport provided (or available should they wish to pay). They walk.

Definitely not a gender specific thing.

Ds is in year 11 - in five years of secondary school, he has not lost so much as a tie, sock, planner, single piece of homework - anything.

I work in a secondary school. I would say that in every year 7 class of 30 children, approx 6 or so of them have terrible organisation skills - roughly three boys and three girls in each class.

call boxes

what bloody call boxes? THERE AREN'T ANY. are you living in the 80s?

he's 11
just started a new big school an hour away from home
give him a break

He CAN walk for an hour if he loses his ticket - he needs to learn the way!

really?
are you in lovely small towns or something? you do not send 11 year olds walking for an hour in any direction in London!

I try to find that balance between letting him Lear his lessons and saving him from utter disaster.
I'm sorry but you really don't have that balance anywhere near right at the moment and that is why you are having the problems you are having.
You are babying him. How will he ever learn these skills while you keep fixing everything for him.
Stop tracking him - you are not protecting him, you are smothering him and you are putting your needs (wanting to know where he is at every moment) above his need for independence.
He CAN walk for an hour if he loses his ticket - he needs to learn the way!

I agree with George and don't think they should be tracked either. I can see how it would be comforting but you need to make the break sometime! Better to insist that he must stick to agreed plans or else. You don't want to be tracking him when he's at uni or married

If he went the wrong way without noticing teach him to ask the train/bus staff and get on a return train. We all need to make these mistakes and it would hopefully make him check for the next time. I tend to think my DC acts less responsibly if I give him more safety nets. If he knows he's fully responsible and I'll be pissed off if he loses/forgets something he tends to do a better job and develops his own coping mechanisms. Not foolproof though!

I don't think anyone should be tracking him. Better to teach him the home phone number and how to use a call box.

is there any other way to track him i wonder? an old ipod in the base of his bag that he doesn't know about?

i wouldn't send him without an oyster walking for an hour plus. seriously people? My dd wouldn't know the way home from school walking and she's in yr8 now.

but the other stuff, lost PE kit etc, send him to lost property to find it or to borrow another.

Mine is hopeless in many ways but good in others, he's lost untold bits of uniform and regularly forgets books, homework, pens etc but has never lost his bus pass or phone. I think keeping things in the blazer helps!

The phone is a crap brick by the way, I don't trust him with a smart phone yet and certainly wouldn't have replaced any!

Other child is much more organised.

Oh my goodness. He can't walk. It's too far. It would take over an hour,

Firstly "over an hour" is absolutely fine, no problem at all, my children do it every day, twice,

secondly what is the "oh my goodness" for exactly? Stop mollycoddling and babyfying him. He is 11, not 3.