To think that an eleven year old should realise that his mum is not Harry Potter!

[ReallyTired]

Monday morning, five minutes before for leaving school

ds: Mummmm! I need a scientific calculator and a long ruler and 5 fruits and 200ml for home economics.

me: What happended to the long ruler I bought you at the start of term and you got a calcualtor.

ds: I lost it and the calculator needs to be a scientifc calculator.

me: Why didn't earlier in the weekend and we could have got what you needed from the shops. (ie. the fruit!)

ds: I'm going to get detention! Wah! Wah!

Are all year 7s like this? How do I get ds to realise that if he needs stuff for school then he needs to give me some notice. I'm not flipping Harry Potter!

I was asked for a box this morning going out of the door.

What kind of box?

The type you can sit in, silly

Of course darling, I have one right here

I remember being that annoying little shit darling

Don't know about all year 7 but unfortunately for my poor DM I was one. She would often be dropping my PE kit, ingredients, homework off. I was a useless sieve brained child!

I'm sure DS will be getting me back in 7 years time.

Ask him Friday night if there is anything he needs for next week

Or let him get detention

We never had measuring scales in our house so when i gave my mum my ingredients list for cooking lessons i used to get sent to school with kilogram bags of flour and sugar and huge slabs of butter! Very embarrassing

My eldest is a complete airhead. Academically she's quite bright but has no common sense whatsoever, and things go in one ear and straight out the other.

She's only been in high school since Wednesday so nothing yet (give it time) but I was forever reminding her about stuff in primary.

Every morning, I'd follow her out of the house picking up lunch boxes, PE kits, homework, water bottles that had been randomly put down and forgotten about.

We have a wall planner which we go through each night to see what's needed the next day - the idea being she'll get the hang of checking it and go through it herself each night without me reminding her

I often have a symbolic strangling on Monday mornings. Because despite nagging for insisting on homework being done on Saturday morning (round various sports clubs) and packing for school being done late on Sunday afternoon, there's always a last minute panic for something.

Sometimes you have to let them take the consequences. Right at the start of year 7 (when still settling into a new school) might not seem like a great time for that, but actually it is - at our school, sanctions were lesser in the first few weeks for new joiners and staff generally understanding that mistakes are made when a lot of stuff and routines are new. And of course, they've seen it all before...

Saturday - Here is money, here is big brother, go together into town and purchase the file you need for monday's lesson. 9pm last night, muuuuuum I neeeeed a file for tomorrow morning. What did you do on Saturday in town with money I gave you for a file? Blank look.

7.59 (bus comes at 8) yr9 boy stands on my toes going 'where is my pe kit, where is my pe kit?' Ummm in the bag I have physically handed to you three times over the weekend and said 'put your name on the outside and your PE kit on the inside and hang on the front door'? No? Course not.

Really hoping I don't forget how crap I was at this when my DD is at school age. Although in my case the telling off for forgetting a used PE kit on the day it was used (so leaving in a locker) was so severe that, as I often would forget just that one day, I'd then get more and more fearful of the telling off I'd get by producing it late that I think at worst it ended up being left in my locker for a month. I was grounded for a month! Must have been cemented by that point but they shouldn't have been so bloody shrill and scary about it, god, grown ups are MEAN

Let him get the detention, perhaps it'll help him remember in future. It worked for my DB, although it did take a few years. I, of course, was a perfect little Y7

You may just have to let him get a detention this time.

My eldest lost several items of PE kit in year 7. Eventually, I decided enough was enough and calmly woke him early on a Saturday morning and made him come with me to the uniform shop for replacements. He never lost another item again!

Lost count of the number of times I have made late night mercy dashes to the local shop for cooking ingredients though!