When my children were in the elementary grades, they would occasionally forget to grab their lunch off the kitchen table and bring it to school.  First and second grades:  I was right on top of it with lunch money or a grandmother who would drive out to school with a Happy Meal.  Upper elementary grades:  I let them go without.

 

Yes.  I am a mother who required my children to reap the consequences of their actions.  Grabbing the lunchbox before going out the door in the morning was their responsibility, and either they did it or they didn’t, and if they did, they ate the lunch of their choice; if they didn’t, they ate peanut butter or whatever the cafeteria was doling out to forgetful students that day. 

 

At first, they would come crying to me.  I sent them back with a “you did it, you deal with it.”  Because I am just that kind of stern and unmoving mother.  Then I would have to fight tears and worry all afternoon that my child was sitting in a pitiless classroom, hungry and shaky and wishing she/her had a mother who loved him/her.

 

Funny, though. . . . I only had to do that a few times for each child, and somehow after that, they both remembered their lunches.

 

I had the same policy with forgotten books and homework and band instruments.  After a few humiliations, they remembered.

 

From kindergarten through 8th grade, I was in their building.  It would have been easy for me to come to the rescue over and over.  However, I only did it when it was truly an emergency.  If it was a matter of simple forgetfulness, they were on their own. 

 

I have had 8th graders whose mothers came to school almost daily with forgotten items.  I found this appalling. 

 

Let the consequences fall on their heads a few times, and they’ll remember. 

 

School is about more than spelling and math and science and history and standardized tests that have stomped all the joy out of learning.  School is also about organization and remembering obligations and becoming independent and learning about natural consequences. 

 

Stand in the way of that, and you’re standing in the way of your child becoming responsible for his/her own actions.  We all know how repulsive that kind of adult is.  Why do we enable such qualities in our children?

 

Let’s just not, okay?