For many years, I’ve been on board with the Love & Logic notion that “parents need to allow kids to make mistakes so that they learn from the consequences, so that they’re better prepared for adulthood and ‘the real world’ ”. If a child throws one of their toys in anger and breaks it, either it doesn’t get replaced or they earn money by helping Mommy around the house in order to save money to replace it, and hopefully they’ll think twice next time. If a teenager repeatedly “sleeps late” on school days and has to serve a detention because their parent won’t write an “illness note” to cover the absences, chances are the detention will get the message across that they need to be at school (or a job) on time. But I think in the area of forgetfulness, that Love & Logic rule doesn’t always apply, and sometimes we need to just throw our hands up and realize that in the “real world”, life gets busy, and it’s impossible for our kids’ brains, and our own, to remember everything, all the time. In the real world, when people forget things, sometimes people help each other out.
I’m not advocating that parents should be “enablers”, constantly running after their child, bringing them whatever they forget— coats, lunchboxes, etc.— I’m saying that once in awhile, especially if it’s not a huge inconvenience to the parent, why not? If you help them out, is that going to set them back from any progress you’ve made in teaching them to be responsible? I don’t think so, if we’re just talking about the “remembering things” aspect of responsibility, because I think progress there is only short-term, if you’re lucky enough to make any progress at all. Life gets busy.
If days have a theme, last Monday’s was “Forgetfulness” around our house. First my teenager called at 9:15 a.m. to say she’d left two copies of a poem on the printer at home that she needed for English class and could I PLEEEEESE bring them up to school by 12:15? I have said no before many times to similar requests, but on Monday, I said yes, since I was going grocery shopping and would be two blocks from her school. As I drove to the school later that morning, I got a text that she also had left a math folder on the floor of her bedroom, and would I please bring that, too? I didn’t turn around to go back to get it. She got points taken off on her Geometry homework since it had to be turned in the next day instead (and I noticed that on the next two mornings, she stopped to ask herself “Do I have everything?” before leaving the house…)
Monday afternoon, as soon as my 5th-grader got home, she became upset because she’d left her book at school, the one she’s reading for a book report that’s due this week, the one in which she still has over 100 pages to read, the one she was planning to read all evening for the next two nights. (Over the years, she has left many things in a variety of places, never to see them again—even prized possessions she can’t replace, like a favorite pair of shoes and a water bottle autographed by Olympic gymnast Carly Patterson– so you’d think the losses would make her less forgetful, but they haven’t.) Since we would be near the elementary school when we picked up her sister from high school later that day, I agreed to drive her back to get her book.
As soon as my older daughter got in the car, I realized that someone else had forgotten something that day. I was supposed to sew the straps on her new toe shoes so she could wear them at her dance class, which started in 20 minutes. I’d even written myself a note that day: SEW ON TOE SHOE STRAPS. Unfortunately, that note got buried. I ended up skipping my own dance/exercise class scheduled for later that day, and sitting on a bench at the dance studio, frantically stitching away, while she danced “flat-footed”. I finished about the time her class was over.
“It’s okay, Mom,” she said. After all, life gets busy.