Set the standard at the age

The next three chapters are the method. This one moves the standard. The next builds the arrangement. The third hands it over.

Three columns. Take the list from chapter 1 and sort each letdown into one of three. Alone, meaning your child can reliably do this with no cue. With a cue, meaning they can do it when reminded, or when a list or timer prompts them. With you, meaning it gets done when you do it together. Be honest, and use the evidence of the last month rather than the evidence of the best day.

Most of it goes in the middle. For a nine-year-old, in my experience, the alone column is short and the middle column is long. That's not a failure. That's the age. Munakata's transitions put most nine-year-olds squarely in the cued stage for most self-directed tasks, and sorting the list this way is the first time many parents see the gap as a stage rather than a fault.

The standard is the column, not the task. You still expect the kit in the bag every Thursday. What changes is which column you expect it from. Kit in the bag, with the list by the door, is a standard a nine-year-old can meet, and meeting it is what moves the task toward the alone column over time.

Move nothing to alone that hasn't been cued for a month. This is the rule that stops the standard drifting back up. A task earns its place in the alone column by being done reliably with a cue for four weeks, and then having the cue removed and being done anyway. Until then it stays where it is, and forgetting it there isn't a letdown. It's information that it wasn't ready to move.

Adjust for the day. Diamond's list of what impairs the functions was stress, lack of sleep, loneliness and lack of exercise, and the NHS adds tired, hungry, overexcited, frustrated and bored. A child at the end of a bad day is a column lower than the same child on a Saturday morning. The standard moves with the state, and a parent who knows that asks less at half past seven than at half past four.

Write the columns down. On the fridge, if you like, or in your phone. The point is to make the standard a thing you've decided, at the age, rather than a thing the morning decides at twenty to nine.