Stop holding my hand, I'm an adult!

[2017ReasonsToMoan]

Text from school to parents:

"Don't forget school reopens Thursday 5th January at 0845"

Is it any wonder adults are behaving more and more like children when responsibilities are not expected of them?

We get the holiday list. The weekly reminders in the newsletter. Now a text in the middle of my holiday.

If I'm so irresponsible to need this, you can bet your ass I'll have forgotten again by Thursday. Why bother?

Ahhh.

That felt good.

Why are we more likely to forget appointments these days, and so need reminders, than a few years ago?

Perhaps because we have busier lives and more things to schedule, but also perhaps because we can/have to book and arrange things for so far in advance it's easy to forget individual appointments that have been organized so far in advance?

I developed a dental abcess after some treatment mid-November. I went in to see my dentist in an emergency appointment at the end of November and they said that the abcess was stable as it had a natural drain which was preventing it being painful so didn't require immediate treatment but I needed a root canal to deal with it sooner rather than later. I went out to see the receptionist to schedule the appointment with that information and was told that the next available appointment wasn't till the middle of February! This happened end of November so nearly three months away!

The appointment is in my diary and my calender (although at the time of the appt being made I was still using my 2016 diary/calender so I make a note on the back page of all appts for the following year to be transferred when I got round to buying the 2017 one) , and the appointment card is on the kitchen noticeboard ... but by the time February rolls around I will probably have forgotten the exact time/date because I haven't had to really think about the appointment details for months and other life events will have cropped up before then.

also perhaps because we can/have to book and arrange things for so far in advance it's easy to forget individual appointments that have been organized so far in advance?

My dental checkups as a child were always every 6 months. I remember dad taking the appt card and putting it safely in his wallet to write on the calendar/diary when we got home. We never missed an appt.

With modern tech, surely it's easier to manage appts scheduled in advance? I've got bookings to go and speak at meetings/ events well into next summer - I don't expect my clients to remind me to attend never the time, and I certainly won't be calling them up a week before to remind them I'm coming. They booked me, I've got the appt scheduled, job done.

With modern tech, surely it's easier to manage appts scheduled in advance?

Provided you only have to deal with your own schedule, not other family members' or kids activity schedules and there's before getting into blended family schedules and extended family obligations ... and doesn't take into account circumstances changing between appointments being made and actually occuring. It might be theoretically easier but it depends on how comfortable you are with scheduling your life 6 months in advance and keeping track of your long standing appointments and day to day arrangements.

Not sure why everyone is so worked up on this - some people like text reminders, some people don't, and some see them as a personal insult apparently...None of it makes much difference to anyone's lives, surely, and we're entitled to feel differently, and to express this different views?

None of it makes much difference to anyone's lives, surely

But it does make a difference to all of us, whether or not we want, or even receive, the reminders.

It costs money to administer and generate them. So the school invests in the software necessary, and pays a staff member on a payscale for a job which includes sending the reminder to parents in the holidays, or scheduling it in advance to go out at a preset time.
That money could be spent on something all DCs benefit from.

Similarly, with my Acupuncturist, for instance. He sends reminder texts to all his patients. His fees reflect the cost of the text and his time to do that. He sends them because otherwise he'd lose money through people not turning up. But we all pay a bit extra to cover the cost of that.

Oh dear God. Alert the Cave Elders.

With modern tech, surely it's easier to manage appts scheduled in advance?

Aren't the text reminders part of modern technology?

It might be theoretically easier but it depends on how comfortable you are with scheduling your life 6 months in advance and keeping track of your long standing appointments and day to day arrangements.

I can't see how it is any more challenging than receiving texts from dentists, schools, activities etc just a few days or even 24 hours before the event and only then realising that you've double booked.

Surely you don't accept a dentist appointment 3 months in advance until you've checked that there's nothing already scheduled for you/your pet/the car/a child day?

At my kids school the Secretary just does it so nobody has been employed specifically and I can't imagine they ever would be. Looking it up online it would appear they pay around £700pa for it. Not a huge amount actually and no installation/software costs. I've found it really handy when kids have been delayed coming back from school trips or there's been a last minute change of plan for an after school club. Yes I will also admit that it has occasionally nudged my memory about a dressing up day or whatever too.

Aren't the text reminders part of modern technology?

But you're relying on someone else generate them! If it works for you, set your own reminder; why expect someone else to do it for you?

At my kids school the Secretary just does it so nobody has been employed specifically and I can't imagine they ever would be.

it still takes them time - to train the staff member, for them to actually use the system, apply updates etc.

The hidden costs of these sorts of jobs is why the public sector is in the mess it is - very few government employers actually calculate the cost of the staff time to do individual tasks like this, they just add it to the list of jobs an existing member of staff does.

And there is usually a per text/transaction fee as well as an upfront cost.

I wish our school did this

Aside from the fact that I'm dyslexic and struggle with organising and scheduling sometimes, the dates given on the school website don't match the LA website which don't match the newsletter dates.

This year the school play dates were wrong in the text they sent. So I guess I'm not the only one who struggles with organisation. I usually have to email the school to get the bloody dates.

We live near a school and it is traditional to see a few kids walking past the house the day before term starts. Extra points if we spot anyone we know.

My own experience with (now grown up) DC is much like PhilODox ie letter from school suggests a non-existent return date/day.

YANBU but there are some parents who are. A friend's mum of DD "forgot" when she was due back, because it was a Thursday and she assumed (wrongly) that "they'd not go back on a Thursday but wait until the following Monday". DD is back this Wednesday, she can't wait (gawd bless her, neither can I, she's bored shit*less).

But it's already in place, whatever it cost has been spent (not convinced there are massive costs or training). Reminders reduce the cost of missed appts, or calling parents who's kids haven't shown up (time and calls); I don't know why any of these organisations would have bothered adding these reminders if it was expensive and didn't save money in the long run (or businesses which do reminders would tend to fail)?
Either way, it's already happened, and it's unlikely businesses are going to get rid of it because some people on mumsnet dislike it.

Surely you don't accept a dentist appointment 3 months in advance until you've checked that there's nothing already scheduled for you/your pet/the car/a child day?

No, I don't ... but that doesn't mean my DH will, or that in 6 weeks time the school won't send a letter home about some sort of event we're required to attend on that day, or that grandma won't get sick and not be able to pick the kids up from school like she usually does or DD gets cast in the school play and has rehearsals 3 times a week and needs picking up later than usual that week and a costume sourcing, or DS decides he wants to try football and joins a football club who has a football game scheduled at the time your appointment is and he lost his shin pads at training so needs new ones, or that you forget that it's Uncle Bob's milestone birthday so your mother has arranged a big family party and you have X/Y/Z to do for that beforehand or ...

Some people have very ordered life where nothing crops up last minute and good on them ... others of us have schedules which are more flexible, but by the same token are also more unpredictable and so it's harder to make appointments and know for certain that nothing will crop up, or even that you''ll just be having an unusually crazy busy week and the fact you have an appointment at 4pm on Thursday afternoon totally slips your mind until they text a reminder on Wednesday morning and you check your calender and actually see it is written there, you just hadn't noticed it.

I don't know why any of these organisations would have bothered adding these reminders if it was expensive and didn't save money in the long run (or businesses which do reminders would tend to fail)?

It saves businesses money "in the long run", because for lots of reasons described upthread, people are unwilling or unable to show service providers the respect of turning up for appointments they have made.

That's why it makes me so frustrated - in order to be cost effective, it means that a significant proportion of appointments would otherwise be missed, which means that a lot of people don't consider it important enough.

And in my old fashioned and simplified life, that is RUDE.

If it makes anyone feel better I don't have anyone other than myself to organise and I can't remember what days I booked off over Christmas. I'm 99% sure I should go to work tomorrow but DP is off which seems odd.

Anyway, I find it's because I'm too busy thinking about important questions of philosophy and the human condition to worry about trivial things like whether I should go to work tomorrow. I like to think of myself as a free thinking visionary rather than a slave to other people'stimetable demands

Maybe that's the complexity of Cave Life, thecolonel, pondering the human condition, inventing language and religion and symbolism, yearning to understand death and ancestry, and let's not forget fighting off aliens.

I find it's because I'm too busy thinking about important questions of philosophy and the human condition to worry about trivial things like whether I should go to work tomorrow.

At least you're honest about it, rather than making all sorts of excuses as to why it's unreasonable to be expected to remember
Presumably, your employer doesn't enable your free-thinking lifestyle by actually reminding you that have to go to work?

We have a school app which is brilliant for double checking dates. And yet the same parent posts on the parents' Facebook page asking when they go back - each holiday without fail!! So yes, YABU... you may not need a reminder, but some people do.

Castiron
We are on our 4th country in 10 years. I have kids at 3 different schools. Every single school they've been to (ex int school) have assumed that all their bizarre rules and times are exactly the same for everywhere in the world and so you must automatically know everything. To see one do something helpful like that is quite refreshing.

This. Have you done Germany? 3 different sets of public holidays (national, local, religious) that they don't include on the list of school holidays and don't tell you they haven't included, a wide variety of equipment/clothing that they refer to by colloquial names that you can't find in the dictionary, and instructions for every festival or day out that only make sense if you've done it before. And every parent letter is written in parish newsletter German, peppered with expressions that my native German speaking, non-local husband classifies into "haven't heard that one since my grandma died" and "no idea, sorry." Every time they send a letter home it's like sitting down with the fucking Rosetta stone!

My optician texts reminders, as does my GP and dentist. My vacuum cleaner emailed me saying time to wash its filters. I'm waiting for my toothbrush to start communicating.

It shouldn't be necessary the term dates are on the website, on the paper newsletters and in the electronic newsletter at our school. It shouldn't beyond parents to just either mark it on a calendar of stick it as an alert on their phone. However if they didn't do it I guarantee there will be parents who get the date wrong. There shouldn't be a need for text alerts for gp surgeries etc. either. They've been put in place to tackle the horrific DNA rate but it's an extra IT and admin cost the NHS should have been able to do without too!

Every person posting seems to 'have anxiety' like that is an excuse for anything.

. For some people anxiety effects their daily life. I've had anxiety for years and it took me ten years to pluck up the courage to see a doctor and get medication for it.