Teaching vs enabling

amother

Today at 2:31 pm

I’m curious how everyone balances enabling vs teaching responsibility. For grades 5th and up let’s say. They leave their notes/ books/ review sheet in school. It’s a lot of pages so it needs to be sent by text/ email etc.. something only you have access to. Do you help them get it by getting it sent to you and then printing it or reading it to them. Or do you say oh well you left it in school.

I help get the info and I’m starting to feel like there is zero motivation to make sure to bring home the materials needed for the test. And it’s taking up too much of time and energy. But at the same time it feels wrong to say go fail because you were irresponsible. So I’m curious how others handle this.

flowerpower

Today at 2:41 pm

The first time it happens I do it willingly. I remind them to remember to bring home all work needed. The second time it happens you make them to more of the work- call the classmate and print out the forms. The third time- hopefully there is no third time. If the kid si absentminded remind her in the am to remember to bring home all notes needed

AlwaysGrateful

Today at 2:46 pm

I grew up before texting/email was rampant (email did exist, and I had an email address, but many people didn't and no one would have thought of sending pictures over email--too big), so I don't even view that as an option.

Do they live near any of their friends? If so, they need to go to their house, pick up the papers at a time that is convenient for their friend, and drop them back off again before their friend wants to start studying. They can walk, bike, whatever, and they have to work it out with their friend themselves.

I would warn them beforehand if you've never had them do this before. Blame it on the fact that you can't give up your computer for so long on a regular basis, and that you don't want to print that many pages, or whatever. So from now on, here is the way things will go...

Might they fail a test? Sure. Would that be the end of the world? Nope. It's teaching that you didn't have to do directly.

ETA: I agree, though, that if it's a one-time thing, I would try to help them, as a chessed. It's only if it's becoming an ongoing problem (even only two or three times) that I would start setting limits.