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I claim no special intelligence for my kids, I guess it is just the luck of the draw. I disagree about it not being a big deal. If you lose your passport while in a foreign country - major hassle. If you lose your wallet with your license and credit cards - major hassle to replace all that stuff, especially if it requires an in-person visit to replace your license, and you are opening yourself to identity theft etc.</p>
<p>I’ve read that the experts now think that our brains don’t fully mature until we are 25 or so. Maybe at the 18-21 age, our brains just aren’t wired yet to deal with managing the small physical objects that we have to carry around.</p>
<p>When I was younger I was terrible about losing things. I would get stressed and distracted and have no thought for where something like my keys or wallet were.</p>
<p>I’ve gotten better with age; my keys always go in a pocket (or my pocketbook at work); my cellphone in a pocket during the day, on a specific table at home. Glasses, if they’re not on my face then they’re on top of my head, they live with the cellphone at night. I have to be good about remembering to put the debit card in a specific slot in my bag, or I’ll have to dig endlessly.</p>
<p>My S, the rising college freshman has had issues, but not nearly as bad as I was at his age. He has left his cell phone a place or two but remembered and retrieved it. His memory issues seem to involve things he doesn’t want to do (homework? chores?). My older daughter is going to be worse than I ever was. She is truly in her own world much of the time.</p>
<p>“Do these people walk out of the house without shoes on?”
No, but D did leave the house with two completely different shoes on.</p>
<p>" Do they remember to go to class?"
D forgot what day it was and “forgot” to go to class. Still graduated Summa.</p>
<p>“Do they remember where they parked the car?”
D and I forget this ALL the time. The perils of parking in So Cal.</p>
<p>" If they drove the car?"
After a 12 opera hour rehearsal at school, she bummed a ride from someone else even though
she had driven herself to school.</p>
<p>But she is not “thoughtless”, just full of thoughts getting in the way of organizing her busy busy busy day.</p>
<p>If a kid is so careless why do they even have a cell phone, ipad or whatever? Even if they pay for it there is no reason to have something to lose. Let the kid learn responsibility first. He can always use someone else’s phone to make a call, or go to the library to use the computer… It is not impossible to live without all the technology so why give him the responsibility? When he learns the basics of keeping track of his clothes and wallet then he can start adding in these things one at a time. Once something becomes habitual then he’ll be able to keep track. It may sound harsh but simplicity is the key.</p>
<p>My “kid” is already in grad school and it’s her stuff and her responsibility to replace that stuff. It has ALWAYS been her responsibility since she was a kid. It does not matter. She still looses things. .</p>
<p>My daughter had a one-hour commute to her high school and she drove, so I determined that in fact she needed a phone. She has been rather lucky with the things she has lost over the years. With the phones, we generally had an old one lying around–or a friend did–so we just activated an old one. This worked particularly well when the phone went from large to small and she got a big one to reactivate.</p>
<p>I get somewhat annoyed when something is lost. However, it doesn’t pay to fly off with this kid. If I could make her less brilliant, but more organized, I don’t think I would do it.</p>
<p>An old thread on here suggested trying to live with fewer things and that seems to help DD.</p>
<p>I guess I should have said that even if a kid has resposibility for their own things it is still better to simplify. Studies have shown that people who are so technologically engaged think they are multitasking but in reality they are less efficient. Convincing anyone to give up something in order to simplify their life is probably almost impossible but I still think they need to start over as if a young child and build routines into their life in order to handle the stress overload in their brains. People can be highly functional but eventually something has to give. We all have our moments that we forget stuff and usually it can be attributed to an overload in our lives. Just because a kid in their 20’s does that doesn’t mean any different unless of course there is an underlying medical condition. Of course people can be OCD about this stuff too so either extreme needs adjustment.</p>
<p>I’ll take forgetful over OCD. I think my hubby trends that way and he makes me NUTS.</p>
<p>“An old thread on here suggested trying to live with fewer things and that seems to help DD.”</p>
<p>We, unintentionally, tried this. D lost virtually everything in Hurricane Katrina. Showed up at her new school a week later with nothing but a pair of shorts, a t shirt, her purse and phone. She was living a minimalist lifestyle. The following week was the second time she lost her phone. Maybe she had other things on her mind.</p>
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<p>I do think, in the case of my husband, he just gets distracted or is lost in his own thoughts and is running on auto-pilot. It can just be a personality trait with some people.</p>
<p>S1 paid for replacing all of his lost items. This was our conversation the last time he lost his wallet…about 9 months ago. S1 is 23, a honors grad. and an officer in the Navy!</p>
<p>S1…lost my wallet again. It was on the car seat and when I got out of the car, it must have fallen out in the parking lot but I didn’t notice at the time because we can’t carry wallets in our pockets when in uniform. </p>
<p>Me…again, you’ve got to be kidding.</p>
<p>S1…there is good news. I didn’t lose my military ID because it was clipped to my shirt and I didn’t lose my Driver’s License since I never had gotten it replaced since losing it 6 weeks ago!</p>
<p>Gotta look on the bright side:)</p>
<p>He got a new cell ph. last Christmas. If he keeps it a year, it might be a record.</p>
<p>Ha! Packmom—and an officer in the Navy! You just blew that “your kids are just not disciplined enough” theory right out of the water!</p>
<p>So, I mentioned on this thread that D is alone in Paris. Lost her ATM debit card and had to cancel it (has happened before but not when alone overseas). Fun times. Has our credit card as back up. She uses our card at an ATM at a bank today in Paris and the machine would not give back the card. More fun times. Nobody at bank speaks English. D took French for 12 years growing up but hasn’t used in the past five years. Calls us at 6:30 AM our time (we are on vacation away from home). Fun times. Many calls. Gets solved as bank eventually gave her the card back after we made some calls. Hope she can hold onto this one means of money before she goes back to US. Fingers crossed on phone and passport. One never knows! Hopefully tomorrow isn’t another thing.</p>
<p>xoxoxox to all on this thread. I can’t even express how much it lifts my spirits to discover I’m not alone in having a distracted, brilliant, absent minded young adult child. </p>
<p>Sometimes I think it’s because he’s really not very materialistic. Lost his ipod some months ago - has money from jobs to replace and says no biggie, doing fine without it.</p>
<p>I’ve weaned all my boys including the 50+ one off my assistance when they loose things. I’ve told them all last year that if they don’t stop telling me and requiring my assistance I’m buying them all man purses. H left debit card at out of town bank…called the bank, got a replacement never told me. I only knew from the account charge for too many replacement cards in one year…sigh.</p>
<p>packmom, momof3boys and sooviet. WOW! This is me with my mouth hanging open :O</p>
<p>As of last year “where’s my” and “I lost my” are no longer allowed in my presence by members of my household that are male (BTW that’s everyone but me.)</p>
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<p>LOL - I’ve made the same threat.</p>
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<p>I may have to resort to this. Last night, husband was looking all over the place for a specific pair of shoes. So I walk into his closet and point to a pair of shoes sitting neatly on the shoe rack and say, 'Are those the shoes you’re looking for?". Turns out they were and he had already looked in his closet several times. Seriously! The man can’t even locate his stuff when it’s sitting right in front of him. He’s been known to look for eyeglasses that were perched on his head!</p>
<p>I disciplined myself because I got tired of being frustrated and searching all over. And wasting time! (especially as a student…)</p>
<p>My brother’s a different story. He’s always losing something. He just lost one of his two fake IDs. He’s lost his cellphone and pricey sunglasses a few times. Fortunately, just as he lost his last pair of sunglasses, he found a new pair of Ray Bans that someone ELSE just lost… and it was an excellent find for that when he went to pick up a new pair of sunglasses for my mom, the salesguys told him that that particular pair was a hot seller and they were all sold out!</p>
<p>It’s still the same child who lost 4 LL Bean pullover fleeces. He never got to own another one. And when my mother finally had enough of buying him new winter jackets and fleeces to replace the ones he lost in elementary school, she stopped buying those for him. It was either he could go out without warm jackets or get new ones for himself. He said, fine. And he began wearing hoodies for several years through middle school and part of high school before cracking and splitting 50-50 with my parents on a new snowboard jacket and a field jacket. I don’t believe he’s lost any jackets since as he realized it can get a little cold… :)</p>