The PE kit

It's Thursday, twenty to nine, and Sam is at the school gate without his PE kit. It's the third Thursday running. You've reminded him. You reminded him last night and this morning, and the kit is on the end of his bed where he put it after you reminded him, and he walked past it on his way out. He's nine. You'll have to go back for it, and you'll be late, and the sentence forming in your mouth is the one that's formed on the last two Thursdays, which is some version of "what is wrong with you".

At home the coat is on the hall floor, not the hook, where it's been every day since September. The reading book didn't come home. At half past seven you said it was time to come off the tablet and get ready for bed, and he said "OK", and ten minutes later he was on the tablet, and when you said it again with an edge he looked up as though he'd never heard the first one. He hadn't, in a way that matters, and I'll come to that. You were ready for bed at nine when you were nine. Weren't you?

These are invented, but I'd guess they're near. Notice the shape. You expect a thing. It's a reasonable thing. An adult would do it without thinking. Sam doesn't, and the failure lands as a letdown, and the letdown lands as a word about Sam. Lazy. Doesn't listen. Doesn't care. The word feels like a description, because you've said it so often, and it's the thing this book is going to take apart.

Some words. I'll call the adult-height expectation the standard. The daily disappointment when it isn't met is the letdown. The word that follows, lazy or careless or defiant, is the label. The distance between what you expected and what a child that age can do without help I'll call the gap. The kit stands for any ordinary forgotten thing. A reminder or signal from outside the child, a list or a timer or your voice, is a cue, and a thing done with no cue is done alone. The list by the door, the bag packed the night before, the clock they can see, together, I'll call the arrangement. Moving a task from doing it with you, to doing it when cued, to doing it alone, I'll call the handover. And the age is what's typical for a child of that age, which is the thing the standard has been set without reference to.

Before you go on, do one thing. For a week, keep a list. Every time your child lets you down, write down what you expected, how old they are, and one more thing, which is whether an adult you know well would reliably manage it. Most parents who do this find that the list is long, that the expectations are the kind an adult would meet without effort, and that the child is nine. That's the gap, on paper.