Should I just put my money directly in the bin?

[ThedaBara]

My daughter has mild SEN, goes to a mainstream school and is doing well.
Over the years she has managed to lose nearly every item of clothing i have provided her with for school - she came home wearing someone else's socks once and couldn't explain where hers had gone!

She's in year 6 now and her school are doing leavers hoodies. She's had hers a week and it's gone. I do have to buy her another one, everyone else in class wears theirs daily and she's very distressed at being the only one without one. She's offered for it to come out of her savings, which i won't do, but it shows that she understands that all these things cost money.

What can i do to improve this situation? She'll be going to secondary next year and I can't buy her a new blazer for every day of the year!

Grateful for any tips from parents with SEN, or butter fingered children!

Key safe instead of them taking to school.

I’m afraid I can’t offer advice - DS loses things most weeks. All of his clothes are marked - I sew woven name tapes at the neck / waistband of everything so it’s very obvious without having to rummage for a label AND I stamp on the label with a Stamptastic name stamp (which I renew as and when it fades).

He’s in year 9 now and we’re still regularly losing items of PE kit, coats etc.

I was just about to suggest the same.

I would let her think she was paying for it as I think its a valuable lesson (but I'd secretly top her savings back up or look for a way to giver her a bit extra at the tombola or something)

I’m sorry but I wouldn’t replace the hoodie. I have a sen child so get it but you need to draw a boundary. She needs to experience the natural consequences of losing stuff. If she wants to, let her pay for it from her savings. Why are you against it?

At DD’s senior school, their PE sweatshirts had to be embroidered on the front with their initials, to prevent ‘borrowing’, as the head diplomatically called it,

Absolutely everything else had to be clearly named.

These comments are good, but all address the same thing.

she clearly has executive function difficulties so needs to learn and practice strategies.

you need to support her little by little to become more organised and independent.

start with a photos/ lists of what she has. Tell her to check off each item as she’s leaving school. If her teacher is suppprtive they could help to begin with. Check again at home with her.

Also teach her the phrase ‘don’t put it down, put it away’ so she doesn’t put her jumper down, she takes it to her bag. Her water bottle isn’t put on a shelf, it goes in her bag. It won’t work all the time but she needs to develop a mentality for keeping her things safe. It will take time and patience!

you could also name her things with a mobile number - I see this a lot with kids at my school. It has ‘Jack R 07781931234’ on the sticky label, which in theory means it comes back even when left out of school.

Have you tried lost property? I agree with labelling everything…

I think it is fine she buys a new hoody, if you can't find it from the hall where she had her thing,.it probably is there the cleaner/caretaker probably put in somewhere safe,

Do you get DLA? As an SEN mum this is one of the additional costs and a legitimate spend of DLA money.

Label everything, and try not to have too much 'stuff'

My DS used to lose 3 coats a year (and assorted other bits of course). Now he's 15, and I'd say we lose perhaps 1 or 2 things a year total - so it does get better.

But we've also got the routines, so his blazer basically never comes home, he walks into school in shirt and trousers, and puts his blazer/tie on at school, then takes it off at the end of the day (they have PE every day last thing, so this routine works very well for him). PE kits I have 6 cotton bags, and enough kit that I can make up the week's worth at the beginning of the week and put them in the little bags. When he changes, the stuff he takes off goes in the cotton bag instead, so he only has to think about the bag, not about all the things in it.

My oldest has SENds, i feel your pain. What helped for us

• big sew in labels - the1 inch ones for PE kit. in the neck of blazers, and shirts, PE tops. we don’t use jumpers but ski underwear. jumpers just get lost.
• Trousers and pe bottoms are labelled with the same big labels in the back.
• airtag in bag and PE bag. glued in
• my phone number on a sticker on anything worth more than £10, so blazer, pe kit, bags, calculator, phone,
• shoes are labelled with a sticker and permanent marker on the inside

Sew AirTags in.

I agree @ThedaBara you will probably not be replacing things so often once the threat of even a partial contribution is there. It is also reasonable to say ‘if you lose this one I won’t replace it’ (but mean it).

Does she get DLA? I've found it a sanity saver when it comes to SEN problems, breakages etc.

Depending on how her mild SEN affects this, putting a strategy in place for her to implement is going to be paramount going forwards. It might feel like a harsh lesson now to say "if you don't follow X strategy I won't replace anything else" but it's better she learns it now from you than from an employer later down the line.

Start practicing at home over the Christmas holidays and then let her put it into practice at school. Help her help herself and draw the line now.

It sounds like she has inattentive adhd which I have too. I describe it to people like it’s a bit like driving a car - when you first get in your are hyper focusing on getting the car going / reversing safely etc. but once on the road especially motorways you go into auto pilot - if I was to ask you to give me a detailed breakdown of what your hands were doing when you were on the motorway you would not be able to - your hands automatically turned the wheel, turned the indicator on etc but you would not remeber them doing it.

with inattentive adhd our brains are busy thinking of a zillion things at once. So we are not paying attention to what our hands are doing. If we have a thought in our mind we are hot and need to take our coat off - we take it off… and boom our mind goes to the next thing and our hands drop the coat on the closest surface to us at the time. we don’t have a memory of where this was because our brain was no longer thinking about our hands or the coat.

Your only option is to set up systems of what she does with important things. So if her brain is not paying attention to her hands it doesn’t matter as her hands are going on autopilot and would do the right thing anyway.

these systems have to be super easy to use - like I have a box for keys next to the front door. Actually it’s one of those key safe boxes with protective insulation for car keys. The box has to be next to the door as if it was further away, I will drop my keys on a surface enroute to the kitchen.

with her coat ask the teacher if she can be allocated a hook right next to door. Even if the school does not normally allocate hooks I would ask for an exception.

with her club agree with her where she is going to put her coat etc each week.

go through her bag with her and agree which pockets will house what important things. Like I put my phone in x pocket, my keys in y pocket … that way if I am not paying attention there is a chance my hands will go on autopilot and put things where they should go

Give her a visual or written list of what she needs to do before leaving anywhere?

Don't say "don't forget your coat" say "what do you need to do before you leave school?" And get her to answer.

Still won't work probably

Another vote for air tags.

Also, if she's going to an activity that involves getting changed, speak to the teacher and get them to check she's got things with her when she's leaving.

Personally I’d avoid anything which would feel like a punishment. If it’s ADHD which is the issue then anxiety is a very common co-morbid condition and trying to prevent that developing should be a priority.

Lots of good organisation techniques from pp. I’m just partly resigned to an “ADHD tax” for replacing lost items. It’s a disability with executive function challenges and you can’t punish a child out of that.

Mt DD's school had a bad problem with theft. I named every article of clothing in 3 places, one in an obvious place like under the collar and two in a much less accessible place. PE kit was a nightmare, but she did manage to retrieve hers a few times due to the extra name tapes.
Air tags sound a fantastic idea.

We’ve sorted the key issue this end by tying it onto the school bag on a long string. Key can’t be untied and door has to be opened whilst key is still tied to the bag.

Its worked so well we also now have a hairbrush tied to the bathroom radiator.

Waterbottles and clothes are still very much not solved so watching with interest…..

I think she’s old enough for it to come out of her savings, especially given that she’s offered

obviously there are different degrees of SEND but a lot of people with ADHD manage to make an effort to remember stuff which is really important and her suffering the law of natural consequences in a form of paying for second hoodie might be just that.
if she loses second no more hoodies

Oh great idea on the hairbrush, I’m going to use that. I have THREE hairbrushes downstairs but all 3 occasionally disappear. So that would be better, thank you!

We are using a heavy duty (!!) retractable lanyard holder for train pass and keys.