My 12yo son (GP), bless his little heart forgets things all the time. Which is funny really, since he actually has a fantastic memory for anything he thinks is important. Names are difficult for him as they are for me. I can't remember the number of times I have met someone and literally 20 seconds after being introduced I can't recall their name! Heck, six months after leaving my last job, where I had worked for 18 years I struggled to remember the names of a number of people who I had worked around for up to 10 years.
But other things tax him too. It seems that his school hat, a simple black bucket hat, is destined to spend almost as much time in the school lost property as it will spend at home. Notes are given out by the teachers and are left in his bag until the day they are due. Nothing new to most parents I'm sure but it's still incredibly annoying to have to go back home to get something he has forgotten that he had under control 10 minutes before you left.
We've been trying to get GP to come up with a method to organize himself. We've told him an unlikely number of times that now he is in high school he needs to be working these things out for himself because he doesn't want to get known as the kid whose parents come in to do every little thing for him. After some discussion he settled on a piece of paper that he could attach to the front of his folder and write notes about important things on as they happened through the day. At first he came out with a piece of paper smaller than A5 and dug his heels in when we suggested that maybe a larger sheet would be more use. I think this particular reminder process has only lasted a little over a week so far and three of those days were at camp so they don't really count. I'll be a little surprised if we aren't having the same conversations with him in another fortnight and trying to convince him that he needs to come up with a method for reminding himself what other people think is important, like homework and changes to class schedules.
Maybe when he grows up he will find a wonderful girl to take care of him and keep him on track 'cause unless he changes something he's going to need someone.
I do hold out some hope for him in this regard as my memory is somewhat the same. Although I find I'm a little less distracted than he is this might just be because I have had a good deal more practice. I'm sure my mother or brothers would be only too happy to regale me with tales of things I forgot when I was a boy.
My office at home and when I worked away from home are not neat and tidy but I can pretty much always tell you exactly when something was put. I don't have a system as such I just remember where "it" is. People would come into my office and ask about a file or paper and I would reach under a stack of other files and pull exactly the one they were looking for out.
I have thought about this a number of times and come to the conclusion that the better a person's memory is the more likely they are to be, shall we say casual, about their personal organisation. If you have a bad memory and know it you will file things away properly so that you can find it again.
Maybe that is just a soothing rationalization I make to stop myself feeling too bad about having a messy work space and maybe it is a profound statement on the workings of the human mind. You be the judge.
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