To have taken ds' money..

[biscuitsfordinner]

DS (10) has approximately £200 saved up from various things. Tomorrow he has an important match for his sport and I have come to get everything ready for the morning and I can't find his tracksuit top. The tracksuit is 5 weeks old and cost £40. He is likely to have worn it somewhere and just left it. This is by no means the first time this has happened. Since September he has forgotten his lunch on a day when they were on a school trip so the teacher had to give him hers, has lost his trainers, left his sports bag in his friends car so his mum had to drop it off, left his PE kit at home on a match day so I had to take it into school, forgotten homework, forest school kit. The list goes on and on.
We have reward chart at home for all the dc if they do good things. We also have a chart on the wall which lists everything they need for school on each day but even today he left his PE shorts at home.

So tonight out of sheer frustration I asked him to give me £40 from his savings, not to replace the tracksuit just to cover the initial cost which is now just wasted money. I didn't shout or even get angry but I feel like there are no consequences for him. I could have said he can't play in the match but felt that meant punishing his team not just him. He is always upset after he has lost things but it doesn't seem to change his behaviour and I feel that unless there is a real consequence, that he actually cares about, he will never learn the basic skill of taking responsibility for himself or his things.

DH thinks I have been unreasonable and I do feel guilty but I also feel immensely frustrated and really sad that he is now going to be the only boy without a team track suit.

So AIBU??

YANBU it is the only way he will learn the hard way. Some of the boys at secondary school have a folder for each subject which they put their homework and exercise books in so they just grab the ones they need the night before when they check their timetable. Could be good when he goes to secondary school.

Ha whilst I was typing this one of my DDs came in to kiss me goodbye:

"Have a good day, have you got everything? Homework, money, keys, phone?" (I say this to each one when they leave, and vary the items to keep them on their toes)

"Yes, bye"

"DD where are your glasses?"

" they're in the bathroom"

She's taken them off to brush her teeth (wtf?) and left them there. She is short sighted and needs them to see. How can she forget her actual glasses?

This is a teen, by the way! to be fair, this isn't the forgetful one normally, the forgetful one seems to have had it drummed into her enough

Why don;'t you change the "have you got X,Y.Z" routine slightly - to "show me where X, Y, Z"

Maybe get him to organise the gathering of stuff too? If he has to find his shorts, tshirt, boots, etc - then he will know exactly what needs to be there?

Or have multiple bags, all made up at the same time - so he has a bag for each sport. Ready and waiting to go in the hallway (or where ever)

And then you know the kit is sorted, and you need to get him to show you he has his lunch/water bittle/coat or whatever is needed that particular day?

Different strategies work for different kids.
Dcs have a get everything ready the night before rule - but that doesn't aways happen but they deal with the consequences. DS has a list in his room which helps. Now does homework as he gets it rather than the night before it is due. Always check an area when leaving for stuff left behind. We encourage the dcs to come up with strategies that work for them because otherwise they can fight against your suggestions.

He's 10, with no issues, is that right?

I'd have taken the money. If he hasn't started to learn that actions or lack of actions have consequences when is he going to start. At the moment all he knows is that Mum/Dad will sort it out. It reads as you've done lots of 'carrot', now its time for the stick, not literately obviously. . . .

I don' t think what you have done is unreasonable op. For the future, you could try setting aside a sum of money and telling him it is to replace essentials that he loses (eg pe kit). Anything that isn't spent at the end of the school term/year, he can keep!

Will you be using the money to replace the top? Have you asked him to look for it or have you? Tbh I think part of the issue is that you say you were getting the things together. If you want him to feel responsible , he should be doing this.

broken and others asking why she spent so much on a tracksuit - it's a team tracksuit (we have these too and they cost far more than I'd usually spend on a tracksuit because the team orders them specially - they have the team name and the child's first name on the back of the jacket, and initials on the front).

I have a 10 yo who always loses things and just doesn't seem to care - I sometimes think its because she has too much and knows we won't let her freeze without getting her a new coat even when she loses the 4th coat of the winter (ditto for anything else actually necessary she loses, and she just doesn't care much about stuff so if she loses something non essential she just says oh well, I don't need it...) :(

My 8 year old never loses stuff, so I don't think 10 is too young, but children are (bloody obviously) all very different, good at different things yada yada. The 8 yo cares deeply about stuff (really struggles to see old toys he never plays with given away outside the home although he's happy for his little brother to have them, he sort of mourns when things leave for good!) which I guess is why he doesn't lose things!

When you have more than 1 or 2 children of school age it is unlikely you will be the one doing all the taking and fetching to every activity, so the child has to take responsibility - when you kids take school buses and you car pool with different parents for different siblings to football, basket ball, karate, ballet and parties and etc. etc. often taking one set of kids including yours and some others somewhere while another parent takes one of yours along with her to a different activity, the whole "you should still be checking every time that your child has everything they need and brings it all home again" attitude doesn't hold water.

When there are several siblings the ones old enough to go to activities without a parent have to be able to take responsibility for their kit/ possessions or else they just can't do activities, or only maybe one thing a week so you can personally take each child to something (and as football for us is 3 times a week just for one of the children that would mean very upset children having to drop massive parts of their lives because mummy couldn't check they hadn't left their shin pads/ boots/ hat/ tracksuit top somewhere).

A key factor is the Op's son has 200 pounds and she took 40, which was the cost of the tracksuit - she didn't take all or most of his savings. I think it was fair to take it to bring home the value of the lost item, however I do think the money should be used to replace the lost tracksuit top.

DD doesn't really value money unless saving up for something specific though, so often offers to pay for things she's lost if we'll then "just forget about it" so it won't necessarily work :(

The only thing that makes an impact on DD is to replace the lost item with one she doesn't like much like. In tandem with that she has to get absolutely everything ready for the next day the evening before, before being allowed to do what she wants. I do check before school (but soon DH will be getting the kids out the door some days and he probably won't) and I do ferry things into school sometimes :( but the problem we have most is forgetting to bring things home when I am not the one picking her up.

Good luck OP

Op, sorry if I have missed it, but is he year 6?

Loads of people are saying you need to help him get ready, do it for him, double check him etc.

If you go over to the getting ready for secondary threads, you will find lots of people saying that the year 6 teachers say to them

Are you packing his/her bag? Filling their water bottle? sorting their pe kit?
STOP, they need to start now getting used to sorting their own stuff, as it gets so much harder in secondary.

One thing that really stands out to me is
Have you got your lunchbox? Yes. But he hadn't

That would be the point I would work on. When asked, he must CHECK he has it, not just assume. No check, then there is a consequence, in this case, he is hungry.

As parents we must scaffold and support as much as they need, and then slowly start to remove that scaffold one step at a time.

So, from asking - Show me x, y , z,
you move to - have you got x, y, z (and he must check he has it)
to, here is a list, have you got all the things on the list
to, the list is on the fridge door, have you checked it?

For every child that transition happens at different ages, but you have to work towards it. I am a great believer in natural consequences (within reason), so forget your pe kit, can't do pe. Forget your homework? stay in at break. and so on. This is perfectly fair if the system for him to remember is pitched at his level.

and I would ask him - go without a tracksuit or replace it form your own money?

Some children are capable of working out a strategy (and then turning it into a habit) for themselves, if incentivised. Others are not. "Issues" with memory and problem solving are not always obvious and labelled. There is a wide range of competence in this area, even within what might be called the normal range, and this is affected by brain maturation as well - something that also differs between children of the same calendar age.

He may very well need help to devise strategies, and reminders to use them continually until they become habits. Some people take much longer for such habits to become firmly secure than others. He needs to develop a habit of physically checking his items before he goes out. It may help him focus if the list is numbered, so he doesn't get lost in the sequence.

Some children are capable of working out a strategy (and then turning it into a habit) for themselves, if incentivised. Others are not. "Issues" with memory and problem solving are not always obvious and labelled. There is a wide range of competence in this area, even within what might be called the normal range, and this is affected by brain maturation as well - something that also differs between children of the same calendar age.

I agree wholeheartedly.

There's also a basic principle of teaching children which says they have to be developmentally ready to learn the step you're trying to teach them. If they aren't, you're wasting your time and theirs.

All those saying just let him learn the hard way, are missing this point entirely.

We decided to let our 11YO (no additional needs) start learning the hard way and became more and more frustrated as it made no difference at all apart from causing lots of upset and rows. A year later, she was diagnosed with AS and we understood why she hadn't learned.

Now she is 18, she has learned, at a time when she was developmentally ready, and is organising herself successfully at university. She has developed the strategies that worked for her with support, not sanctions, from me.

Most children will drive their own learning and independence. They are programed to do it from day one. They don't all constantly need to be pushed and taught the hard way.

Before you start imposing sanctions, you need to be sure that the issue is definitely one of behaviour, rather than ability.

We found ds1's ability to remember things, and his willingness to go and look for lost things improved markedly when he started having to replace them out of his pocket money (uniform,/coats) or do without. He's still a scatty 9 year old (and I'm a scatty adult) but imo most children can and do improve their care for their possessions when replacements don't just magically appear. Laziness/unthinkingness is as least as common as delays in this area I would think.

Having said which, I would use the £40 to replace the tracksuit.

Using his money to replace the item would be perfectly reasonable, though I only charge 50% for the first loss. My daughter used to offer a helpless 'it's out of my hands' shrug but now it costs her money she takes it far more seriously and tries harder to keep track of things.

You do have to replace it if you take his money, though...

I think if you take the money you replace the item, but otherwise YANBU

DD is going thru a spate of losing stuff. She is currently paying me in instalments for replacing her school shoes (she lost ONE). We could have taken it from her savings (except she never touches the account so it wouldn't have an impact). Instead we're docking her pocket money for a few months so it seems more real for her. Whether it works or not, only time will tell.

Can you afford to replace it yourself? If you can, I would probably only take 50% of it (£20).