Organizing the Disorganized Child
Your son/daughter has been in elementary or middle school for a while and things should be flowing along smoothly at this point. Right?
Unfortunately, for many kids, this is not the case! Papers from school might, or might not, make it into your child’s backpack. Homework assignments that are done, seem to vanish into thin air between your kitchen table and the classroom.
Just like learning to read, learning to be organized to succeed in school, needs to be taught in small steps and reinforced regularly. When a child first learns to read, he learns what the letters look like and sound like. Then he learns that when you put letters together, you create new sounds and eventually words. Many letters together in groups (words) can make a sentence, a paragraph, or even a story!
Once we’ve taught our children to read, we don’t send them off to fend for themselves. We don’t even let them choose whether or not they want to read. We encourage them to read, and even require it of them in school. Our world constantly provides opportunities to read (street signs, words on food packaging, t-shirts, etc.). And all of this happens at a stage where the brain is open to and able to learn this new skill. Notice I said ‘stage’, not ‘age’ because this does happen at different times for different children, and that is OK!
The executive functioning of the brain, the part that acts as a personal assistant, or office manager, doesn’t fully develop in humans until they are almost 25 years old. Our executive functions enable us to make a list, remember to look at it, and then cross things off as we complete things on that list.
So, GIVE YOUR CHILD A LITTLE BREAK, and GIVE YOURSELF A LITTLE BREAK!
Your child’s brain is still developing!
Your child is really not mentally capable of keeping track of all of the things that he/she needs to keep track of during the school day. Can some kids do it? Sure. But many can’t remember all of the details without a little bit of help.
So what do you do?
Put strategies in place.
Just like reading, your child will get to practice certain skills on a daily basis (i.e., bringing assignments home and bringing completed homework back to school). Many teachers will provide your child with tried and true strategies. One example is having one duel-pocket folder for all papers. One side is marked “HOME” and the other side is marked “SCHOOL.” All papers coming home are put on one side and then all papers going back to school go on the other. While this might seem obvious to you and me, it really isn’t that obvious to your child.
If you would like to learn more simple strategies to help your child succeed in school, please contact me at DrRenee@HelpingParentsParent.com .
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