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I know this may seem very petty compared to a lot of the topics here but it absolutely drives me crazy. My kids are constantly leaving their jackets at school or on the play ground. My 9 year old also leaves his lunch bags/ boxes at school all the time. He currently has 3 lunch bags in the bin at school he needs to bring home. I understand they are 7 and 9 but I do believe they are old enough to try to remember to bring home their jackets and other belongings. It is cold here in the winter so I buy them nice jackets to keep them warm. It is so frustrating to have them come home from school when it is 35 degrees outside not wearing their jackets.
Do any of you parents have some strategies to help me on this one? We have a chore/ behavior chart we use for different things. Should I add, "remembering your jacket and lunch box" in order to get their allowance at the end of the week? I'm honestly not sure that would work.
How do they go about getting their stuff back - do you go get them or do they eventually remember? I don't remember the coat being an issue when little but things like hats or gloves occasionally got left. I just look at him and say, "bummer - make sure to check lost and found". Couple times of that and problem solved.
I would imagine on really cold days and teacher might ask where their coat is when they are lined up to go home if everyone else is wearing one and they aren't. But at the end of the day, it's not the teacher's responsibility either.
As far a lunch boxes - easy. Send the lunch in brown paper bags. If they don't like that then they will remember to bring the boxes home in the future.
If you keep going and retrieving stuff then they will never remember to be responsible on their own.
I know this may seem very petty compared to a lot of the topics here but it absolutely drives me crazy. My kids are constantly leaving their jackets at school or on the play ground. My 9 year old also leaves his lunch bags/ boxes at school all the time. He currently has 3 lunch bags in the bin at school he needs to bring home. I understand they are 7 and 9 but I do believe they are old enough to try to remember to bring home their jackets and other belongings. It is cold here in the winter so I buy them nice jackets to keep them warm. It is so frustrating to have them come home from school when it is 35 degrees outside not wearing their jackets.
Do any of you parents have some strategies to help me on this one? We have a chore/ behavior chart we use for different things. Should I add, "remembering your jacket and lunch box" in order to get their allowance at the end of the week? I'm honestly not sure that would work.
This is normal behavior. It is very hard for many children who are focused on what they are doing to stop, think about what they may have forgotten, and then go get it. This is where habits might be useful. When ever you leave the house model this behavior for them. Stop at the door and say out loud, "Do I have everything I need?" Then let them ask you for items.
Especially do this before school, except they ask themselves. Include lunch boxes, and make THEM get their stuff.
If they tend to remember their back packs, maybe put a keychain shaped like a food item so that when they see it, it will remind them to go get their lunch box.
Yes this is typical for those ages I was 9 and my brother was 7 and my mother was always telling me go get your brothers stuff he left at school today , boy did I sure get tired of that . too bad you dont have an older child that you could send after the stuff but they should remember and yes agree with the brown paper bag made by another poster .
When I would pick them up, if they came out without the jacket, I would send them back inside to get it. We rode our bikes to and from school, and there were lots of mornings cold enough for a jacket (especially on a bike) but by the afternoon it was too warm for a jacket.
My kids never forgot the lunch boxes, they're very food-oriented.
Yes, it's typical - at any age. When my youngest son was a college freshman, his dad bought him a used car to get back and forth to the campus and his part-time job. When he left the house in the morning, it was dark but daylight at the end of the ten-mile ride. Three times, he came out to his car after class to find his battery dead because he left the lights on.
I taped a big note on his steering wheel LIGHTS ON?? He never did it again.
Maybe attach a luggage tag to his backpack with a list of items to check before he leaves the classroom?
When I was a teacher we had a gigantic lost and found box - more of a bin, actually. This thing was almost the size of a dumpster, filled mostly with coats. We always wondered not only how a kid could forget a coat in 30 degree weather, but how they could continually forget to go and get it.
Putting their names in the coats along with their teacher's name and classroom in a large, obvious way will help a bit - a nice teacher might decide to remind them to take it or bring it to the room.
I know this may seem very petty compared to a lot of the topics here but it absolutely drives me crazy. My kids are constantly leaving their jackets at school or on the play ground. My 9 year old also leaves his lunch bags/ boxes at school all the time. He currently has 3 lunch bags in the bin at school he needs to bring home. I understand they are 7 and 9 but I do believe they are old enough to try to remember to bring home their jackets and other belongings. It is cold here in the winter so I buy them nice jackets to keep them warm. It is so frustrating to have them come home from school when it is 35 degrees outside not wearing their jackets.
Do any of you parents have some strategies to help me on this one? We have a chore/ behavior chart we use for different things. Should I add, "remembering your jacket and lunch box" in order to get their allowance at the end of the week? I'm honestly not sure that would work.
- Problem solving: Lay it out as an organizational problem to solve. Help them discover mechanism to solve the problem recognizing that one one "remembers" to do this stuff. Maybe a going home check list at their desk or whatever. Help THEM solve this problem.
- Let them suffer the direct consequences of leaving the items. They go to the next day of school with no lunch or no jacket. (I would not allow my child to not eat for a whole day, so they would have the school lunch option.) NO ONE EVER DIED of being cold on the bus ride to school.
Yes this is typical for those ages I was 9 and my brother was 7 and my mother was always telling me go get your brothers stuff he left at school today , boy did I sure get tired of that . too bad you dont have an older child that you could send after the stuff but they should remember and yes agree with the brown paper bag made by another poster .
I'm sorry, phonelady61, but disagree that it is typical behavior.
Yes, some children do forget things such as their coats but it is not typical. At my elementary school all the coats are hung in the hallway so it is very easy to see if someone forgot their coats just by standing at one end of the hallway and looking down the hallway. It sometimes happens in fall or spring (with changeable weather) but during cold weather there wouldn't be even one coat left hanging for all Jr. kindergarten, Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade for days, and generally many weeks at a time. And my school has three classes of each grade.
Now, sometimes children would forget their hat or mittens but never their winter coat.
Having an older sibling "pick up the forgotten item" is one way of enabling the forgetfulness and bad habits of the younger child.
Perhaps the OP can take a photograph of the coat & lunch box and put it on a key ring on the child's backpack zipper pull. I did this with a kindergarten student who had special needs and it worked very well. He would remember the items on his own with needing any verbal cues.
I would also suggest using a paper bag and sending the child in a sweatshirt if he forgets his items (coat & lunch box) at school.
PS Sometimes 4th and 5th graders would "forget" their coats because it wasn't "cool" to wear them. But that was more deliberately forgetting them.
I know this may seem very petty compared to a lot of the topics here but it absolutely drives me crazy. My kids are constantly leaving their jackets at school or on the play ground. My 9 year old also leaves his lunch bags/ boxes at school all the time. He currently has 3 lunch bags in the bin at school he needs to bring home. I understand they are 7 and 9 but I do believe they are old enough to try to remember to bring home their jackets and other belongings. It is cold here in the winter so I buy them nice jackets to keep them warm. It is so frustrating to have them come home from school when it is 35 degrees outside not wearing their jackets.
Do any of you parents have some strategies to help me on this one? We have a chore/ behavior chart we use for different things. Should I add, "remembering your jacket and lunch box" in order to get their allowance at the end of the week? I'm honestly not sure that would work.
I can't help with the jackets but this is what I did with the lunch boxes.
My kids did not like the school lunch. If they forgot their lunch box they had to buy lunch the next day. The started to remember their lunch boxes. It took a while for them to catch on but it did work for them. Of course, if your kids like the school lunch better this won't work.
Good luck.
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