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Kids Getting Organized..A Mom’s Impossible Dream

Kids grow up and get irresponsible.

My kids have been in school for two weeks.  Feels like six months. Three kids, three sets of homework, three brains that couldn?t find their teeth without me.

If you read, Mom Can’t Put Her Foot Down, you know that I vowed to turn over a new leaf.  I couldn?t continue the parenting pattern I was on. Reading books for my kids or typing for them.  My role as their parent is to make them independent, confident functioning human beings.  They need to learn responsibility. Or at the very least, understand what toast means.

So I made some rules at the beginning of the school year.

  1. If you forget your lunch at home, too bad.  To help them, I placed a post-it at the front door to make sure they have a last reminder before they walk out.
  2. If you forget an assignment at home, you have to suffer the consequences.  A zero, an F, whatever it is, it is on you. Every day I say to them, have you done everything you are supposed to? Have you checked your backpack? I am usually met with a big ?FU? look or ?You?re so annoying, MOM.?
  3. If you can?t find your shoes, you will go barefoot or have an unexcused absence. I know it can’t be just my house.  My kids think we live in the Bermuda triangle.  They are truly baffled every day when they can’t find their shoes. “Have you seen my shoes? Where could they be? I think someone took them.”  
  4. You are on your own with Science Fair.  I could give two shits how plants grow, or what kind of soda mixed with mentos makes the biggest eruption.  If you think about it, one of the only good things about being my age is that I don?t have to do science experiments.  Sure I reminisce about my glory days of going to county with my science experiment.  But I am about to tell you something because I don’t think they can take my ribbon?  my dad did mine.

Here?s the reality.  When they forget their lunch, I try to stay strong, but all I picture is my kid in the cafeteria. But he looks like Oliver Twist, and he?s begging the lunch lady for some more.  When they call me panicked about an assignment they left at home, and yes, it has happened this school year already, I picture the Harvard admissions office reading over their application, about to check off ?Admitted?, then noticing the incomplete in Spanish.  When they can?t find their shoes, I think about them going barefoot and everyone making fun of them and calling them Britney for the rest of the year.

And Science Fair.  Well, what can I say? I have always been interested in learning about the regeneration of worms.

We?re going to States!!!

Tags: raising responsible school kids, teaching kids organizational skills,