Child constantly losing possessions

[HorseInTheHouse]

If you had a forgetful child who was prone to losing their possessions at school, when did they grow out of this? Or did they ever? Did you find a good way to support them to develop responsible habits?

I have a 7 year old who is in her second year of primary school (not in the UK) and the amount of gloves she gets through is unreal. She's also lost bike helmets, jumpers, P.E. kits, hats, socks... You name it, if she can take it off or put it down, she loses it. Everything is well labelled and we do often find things in the lost-and-found but sometimes months later and often not at all, especially in the case of gloves.

I know she's not doing it on purpose and she does understand that her clothes cost money, so what can I do apart from labelling everything and continuing to remind her to put her things away safely in her bag as soon as she takes them off? The leap from nursery to primary school was a big one as in nursery the staff keep track of the children's things and if they are labelled properly you are unlikely to lose anything, whereas in primary school here the children are expected to look after their own things. In her first year she was losing things almost every day and I'd do a silent cheer if we got home with everything she had that morning. So I'd say she has improved a little bit, but it's also early days for this year and we're already down 3 gloves and many other things have been lost and then thankfully found again.

I'm dreading the weather getting colder when she has to start wearing the more expensive thick mittens instead of the thinner relatively cheap ones.

Does she get pocket money? If so, I would start charging her out of that for replacement gloves. You'll only have to do it once or twice and I guarantee she will remember them.

Can you put her gloves on a string?

Elastic on the gloves and through the sleeves and hanging tag on the coat.

If you don't collect her from school, go back to collecting her and sending her back in if she doesn't have something.

She seems to have surplus clothing. Does she need a hat or gloves yet? Does she need a jumper? She's obviously getting too hot and taking them off. Can you change her outerwear? Jumper or coat with a hood - don't need a hat. Coat with those thumb holes - don't need gloves for longer.

Is there anything else that she does that could suggest ADHD? My other half has it and he’s constantly losing things.

Think it’s harder to spot in girls, and tends to show itself less as hyperactive-ness and more in things like daydreaming and being easily distracted.

With my other half it’s not really fixable as such, but us both being aware of it helps and I follow him around everywhere picking up the stuff he’s put down in random places

She doesn't really get pocket money, no. She gets a few sweets on Saturdays but we buy them. Toys or other wants go on birthday/Christmas list or she can use any money she has received as a present or from the tooth fairy.

I honestly don't think any kind of punitive measure would help, because it seems to upset her that she loses so many things. I try not to make a huge deal out of it but she must know I find it frustrating because I remind her so much, 'Make sure you put your hat and gloves straight into your bag when you take them off', 'Remember, everything you're not wearing needs to be in your bag', etc. etc. That's why I don't think it's an issue of not caring.

Gloves on strings like a toddler would be a good idea. Doesn't help with the hats and everything else, but it is true that gloves are the main victims! I'm not very handy and neither is my husband but I might ask my mum if she can give me some instructions on the best way to do that.

The school isn’t quite up to par, here. They should have a well respected by the children lost property box available to rifle through easily,. It’s normal for children to not be focused on their bits and pieces etc. Also staff are usually helpful, ime in reminding little people. Having said that, I did for my children what my mother did for me, which is attach gloves to a piece of elastic so that they are threaded through the coat sleeves. Scarf can stitched to coat collar also. In both instances if they are being used, they can safely dangle!
the oddest and most frustrating loss was when my twelve year old left his first pair of glasses, on his first day of wearing them, on a desk and came home without them. They were never found! If items such as this, and in your case, bike helmets etc are never found, then something is amiss in the environment, surely, that peoples belongings are not being given to Lost Property.
I was always surprised looking through the school,lost property box to see such a huge number of PE kit items in there, unclaimed. And un labelled! Get an indelible pen and name everything with your child’s full name! You probably do this already.
I do sympathise. One of my children had a not inexpensive winter coat ‘disappear’ on their first day of wearing it, never to be seen again. Someone enjoyed it, I guess.

It could be a LD such as dyspraxia, but more likely it's being 7.

A place for everything, everything in its place. e.g.
Where do gloves go? Coat pocket.
Where does bike helmet go? On peg.

Send her back to look for things each day.
Model checking what she has 'gloves, hat, pencil-case' for her to run through herself.

It will probably come in time.

I'm still like this as an adult... I think it's mainly a personality thing. Don't bother punishing her or having consequences for it because she's not doing it on purpose.

Instead just try and teach her techniques to avoid losing stuff. Eg, everytime she leaves school, she should check her bag to make sure everything's accounted for, or everytime she heads out, get her to pat her pocket to feel that the gloves are in there.

She absolutely does need a lot of outside clothing, unfortunately. We live somewhere that is quite a lot colder than the UK. I love the summer when the kids can get away with a thin coat or jumper and no hats/gloves/jumpers, but it was around 4° when she set off this morning and she needs thin gloves. She doesn't always wear them for play time at the moment as it warms up over the day.

My ds one lost a complete set of brand new sports kit - about £150.

I refused to replace it like-for-like, but with cheap trainers etc.And I insisted I was going into school to root through the lost property bins and the changing rooms. He was horrified and found the first set pretty sharpish. Apparently I am embarrassing. 😀He was 11 so older than yours though.

Yes, get a stash of cheap hats and replace as they disappear. Vexing will create anxiety which may or may not solve the problem, but anxiety creates more problems than it solves. Coat with hood might be more practical than lose -able hats, actually?

I'd look further if things aren't coming quickly back to the lost property box. I thought my ds was awful losing things at school, and stuff like PE kit would just disappear never to be seen again. I was so cross with him. And school were rapidly just 'oh, thats just him, terrible losing stuff'.
Until one day a teacher saw him put down a ticket for the school disco on the table, go to his locker to get his bag, and the ticket was gone. Turned out, some children thought it was hilarious to take his stuff and throw it behind a cupboard (sometimes they'd just hide it for a bit they confessed). Literally everything he had lost for a couple of years was there, along with belongings of other 'forgetful' kids.

Yes my ADHD DD was like that at 7 and dont get me started on my SN DS. To be very honest DD is still like it, DS is worse but he has a lot of other issues.

Dropping pocket money never helped as it really wasn't intentional. Got much worse during periods of stress.

Things that helped: no hats and gloves at school. Mitten clips or gloves on string at home, (I'm not handy but gloves on string are literally a couple of stitches onto a bit of elastic, DS destroyed mittens clips but yours might not). Two bags in pe/swimming kits, clothes go off into one bag, so no clothes are ever loose, they are either on or in one bag or the other. Wrist wallets for money. Key lock box attached to the side of the house. School reading/library books never left school bag, just read home books.

I have one of those.

I definitely think things are over armchair diagnosed, but might it make sense to have her assessed for ADD? It's easy to miss in girls as they're less likely to have the H part. Between me being an organising force of nature at home and the fact mine did very well at school, we didn't pick up on it until they were at university when it all fell apart for a time. Looking back, I wish we'd been more on the ball.

Oh my god, that's awful. Your poor son :(

I'm pretty confident this isn't happening here as the bigger things we usually do find and we haven't had any issues with bullying so far. We did always find the bike helmet on the occasions that was lost, but we had to retrace her steps very carefully. I thank my lucky stars she is not one to take her glasses off otherwise they'd be costing us a fortune, I am sure.

Her little brother (5) is actually in the process of being assessed for ADHD. He's still in nursery but I'm sure he's going to be no better with keeping track of his things. I have wondered a bit about her based on other things, but she's doing very well in school and socially so it didn't seem like we needed to intervene with anything. The forgetfulness and losing things would be a problem without adult support, but at the same time she's only 7 so I was hoping she would get better on that front.

I will try to do a few more "practice drills" with her for leaving places, trying to make a routine of always checking so that it becomes second nature. We could be more systematic with this.

I wish she didn't need hats and gloves and especially the expensive hardcore gloves she needs in the winter, but when the weather is cold you can't send your child out without appropriate clothing just so they don't lose it, can you?

DS1 was like this.
He left Y5 (aged 9/10) loosing everything left, right and centre, had an almost none existent Y6 due to covid, and we've had a pretty loss-free secondary schooling so far - now Y9.
We used to talk him through each morning g "what are you taking to school today?" "OK, what does that mean needs to come home tonight?"
And when something was lost, we made him talk through when he last had said item, so to prompt him where to start tracing it from.

There was also a carrot - we could opt in and out of school dinners, and so if everything came home for the previous week, he could choose a day to have a school dinner - based on the best dish that week (or icecream day!).

"she's doing very well in school and socially so it didn't seem like we needed to intervene with anything" - And that's why ADHD gets missed in girls. Because they aren't the boy throwing a chair about or disrupting class. DO look into considering ADHD? Its so different in girls to boys. I have severe ADHD and the most stressful thing in my childhood was constantly losing things. I really didn't mean to and it was so unbelievably stressful. I did really well in school, was well behaved, did well academically - (prefect, went to uni etc) and have never struggled socially either. That's the case for so many girls. I wanted to please and not to let anyone down and I wanted to do well. Have always set high standards. Am quite all or nothing about things by nature. But throughout my life, not losing stuff, keeping track of diary/calendar etc and staying focussed on ONE thing is the biggest challenge. Hyperactivity also doesn't meant being some over energetic pain in the neck, it can look like anxiety or fidgeting - jiggly leg, hair playing, twiddling...

Thank you, this is definitely food for thought. I don't want to let her down and I will look into it. Her brother is totally unable to stay on task in certain cases and is constantly climbing and running in inappropriate situations, which are the main things that pushed us to ask about ADHD with him. Even so, I don't think it's clear that he will be diagnosed with anything. It's so hard to know the difference between behaviour that just matches a child's maturity and behaviour that indicates they need extra support. Especially as I am far from an expert about any of this.

She's usually very diligent with the things that he seems unable to do without a huge amount of support, can stay focused on tasks that she doesn't enjoy and actually is very good at remembering her timetable, where she's meant to be and what activities she has on which day. She does seem to be abnormally prone to losing things (she says her friends don't lose things the way she does), copes badly when anything happens to disrupt what is supposed to be happening and I wouldn't be surprised if she had some sensory issues, but that's a whole other thing.

I agree with a PP. That it would be worth looking at the signs of ADHD specifically in girls in case that’s the cause.

As long as the body is warm, in the UK at any rate the extremities seemed to be fine.

Yy to inattentive ADD. That was DD diagnosis in the end. If you've got a DC with more pronounced/obvious SN it's easy to lose track of how much help needs because you do so much naturally. Watch out f

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For the sensor issues getting worse during periods of stress.

Buy identical gloves all the time (or be happy with mix and match) so if you lose one you can still use the other side.

I suspect I'm one such girl now adult. Teachers always saying I daydreamed too much. And I was picking something up from lost and found every other week.

Have I got better? Yes. Am I cured? No. I still lose something every year. I can't help it.

Ha yes! She does mix and match when we're running low. But I would also love it if I didn't have to buy another batch of new mittens every few months. First she loses the ones bought for her, then she loses a few of her brother's pairs, then I make her wear odd ones. But it's so many mittens!