GainesvilleMoms.com

My son is never organized -- between being a boy and being 9, organization is a difficult, difficult task for him. Lately, he has been really frustrated at school. He has three different teachers who do things three different ways. My husband spoke with one of the teachers today who said that kids are really having a tough time staying organized with this system.

When I was in elem. school, I had one teacher. That's all I think kids at this age should have, unless there are special needs involved. I think middle school is probably the best time to introduce a variety of teachers.

So I am trying to figure out a way to keep him organized. Between my two elem. age kids, there are 7 teachers. Communicating with them is going to take organization on my part-- who does what, when and how?

Is it like this in all of the elem. public schools now?

my nine yr old in third grade only has one teacher but when my daughter was in the second grade the changed teachers for reading and math. it was great from my perspective because as an advanced student she was able to move ahead at a faster pace and stay challenged. if my son were in the same situation, it would be a meltdown of global preportions. to help keep my daughter organized, we bought seperate 1" three ring binders as the teachers suggested. each binder had three tabs, the first one was the weekly schedule given by the teacher, there was one for classwork and one for homework. my busy bee little girl kept it all in line. maybe that would help your son. mine would take his math binder to reading...he's just that way. he has really struggled this year and i have had to completely rethink our evening time. i have to be much more hands on with him than i ever was with my daughter. she wanted to do it all by herself, he would crawl back into the womb if possible.

don't stress too much, it will make it worse for him. involve him in coming up with an organization plan. let him pick out the binders or folders. i've found with my son, if he is in charge or at least thinks he is in charge, he takes much more ownership in the issue at hand.

other than that, they are afterall, just little men...dad isn't much more organized than son. that's what they have us for!!!

Oh, that was good for a laugh..."He would crawl back in the womb..." Sounds like you are right, we have little men on our hands. My husband is not at all organized either. I don't know what he'd do without me:-) But I am going to take your tips about the binders...thanks for that!

My son would not work well with binders. I am lucky enough he can keep track of his one homework folder. But yeah, he does have several teachers, about 4 I think. His main homeroom teacher, he reading teacher, an art teacher and music teacher.
The only ones I have to really keep track of is reading and homeroom.
I use incentives for him to do well. We set goals towards something he wants..could be to buy something, do something, etc. And when he keeps his end of the bargain, I keep mine.

It seems like we have quite a few homework folders. And so I am trying really hard to keep him organized. He is just not naturally an organized kid, but are most 9-year-old boys? We seem to be doing okay, it just gets really frustrating. Is this a public school thing. I wonder if the private schools differ in this aspect...