Pay for Her Own Gloves?

She's old enough to take care of those things. If she loses them she goes without. When she really, really wants some new ones she has to pay for them. If she pays she might just take better care of them. She is pretty young, I'd start her off with two of everything and explain the consequences if they come up missing. Don't keep bailing her out, she will never learn to be responsible.

She's only 8. My daughter is 9 and loses things all the time.I'd buy her one set and tell her that she's responsible for them, then if they get lost, make her pay for them. She'll learn.

I know ADULTS who lose everything they touch -- one is a high school history teacher who is a really smart guy. He just loses everything. You would think we'd outgrow or unlearn these bad habits but I'm not sure. Maybe it's genetic.

I'd check the lost-and-found at school at least once a month. There were times when we did this and found things I had forgotten we even owned. I'd also keep buying the cheep-o gloves and keep reminding her. At least it's just gloves and not calculators, cell phones, etc.

She went through almost TWENTY pairs of gloves and you want to buy her more???? Whoa, I want your paycheck!

My advice? Buy her a single set and it's her responsibility to keep track of them. If she loses them, either she freezes, put her hands in her pockets, or figures out a way to pay you for a new set by doing some extra chores. My kids are much younger and have no problems keeping track...they know if they don't, I won't, and they won't have any more.

Obviously this child has no consequences for her behavior. If she has pockets on her coat I say let the glove issue go and let her go without, it's a natural consequence that if you don't wear gloves you get cold hands. Do it on a day you can live with if her hands get cold, like maybe around freezing but not under.

For example, at age 3 K kept taking her shoes off every time we got in the van, she threw them randomly wherever. I had to spend time upside down int he back of the van looking under seats for shoes to go to buy groceries, then do it again half an hour later at the post office, then again at the feed store. I got tired of it and after taking a few "Love and Logic" parenting classes decided to let the natural consequences happen.

If you don't have on shoes and have to get out of the van your feet will get cold.

I took her out of the van on icy cold day and plopped her down on the concrete. She started screaming and jumping on me to make me carry her. I took her by the hand and made her walk to the door, about 10 feet away from the van. She lived, she learned that if she took off her shoes she got cold feet. To this day she has never taken her shoes off in the car again. Not even in summer.

Natural consequences teach, rescuing children from natural consequences doesn't teach them anything.

She's only eight. I don't think seven pairs of gloves at $ .50/pair is going crazy. She will learn.

8 year olds are still kids. Yes she is old enough not to lose them, but she lost them. Make her learn her lesson, have her buy one pair. But no, I would not make her keep buying them. Or have her put her hands in her pockets. Does she get to pick the gloves herself? I would be frustrated if it were my daugher losing them, but at the same time, she is still only 8. Give the kid a break :o). Maybe buy a coat with zipper pockets and tell her when they come off they ONLY go in the pockets. She shouldn't need gloves if she doesnt need a coat, right? That might work!

Have you tried the approach of REMINDING her that she needs to check EVERYTIME she leaves a place, i.e. school, playground, park, home, car, she HAS to double check for her gloves?

I am super absent minded and forgetful and have lost my things all my life and I hate it...but then I asked a close friend with 4 kids how she keeps all her stuff together. And she just does a quick check before she leaves a place. Tells her kids to gather their things up, etc. For me, it was truly an AHA moment. REALLY, it's that simple. I am so onto the next event in my head that I forget to scan my whereabouts before leaving. And if she is a step-daughter, she's has definitely undergone enough stress in her life with a divorce and sharing a parent that it is simply time to teach her this technique. A technique I did not learn until I was an adult.

Good luck!

She is only 8.

Buy a bunch of cheap gloves and have them for her. She needs someone who cares and loves her and it does not sound like her mother is much support.

She'll outgrow all the losing things, be there for her because she needs you.

Buy her one of each and put name tags in them. If she loses them through forgetfulness (they can legitimatly fall out and get lost), she needs to replace them. For barrettes and hairties...these are sooo easy to lose. Have a system for them, and tell her how often you are willing to replace them. If she loses them all before then, she has to go without.

If she doesn't take care of her toys, take them away, she is old enough for that. She can earn them back by taking care of the rest of her toys.

absolutely i think she should start being responsible for her stuff. losing them sounds like a condition, she might take better care of her stuff if she has to purchase it with allowance. It will teach her responsibility. 8 is old enough to keep track of belongings.

My kids have the same problem. However, I probably wouldn't make them pay for them for a couple of reasons.

Our school sends out letters to parents begging them to send their kids to school with appropriate winter attire. Mostly, because there are those parents who don't provide, or can't. In our school, the kids who don't have the stuff stay inside. If it keeps happening, the school gets involved.

Second, I have lost my own gloves. It happens. You stick them in your pocket and they work themselves out. 8 pairs per winter? No. But, your daughter may embrace the idea of taking care of the ones she has and then....accidents happen.

If it were me, I would buy her a couple pairs of the cheapies. If she goes through two pairs, then she needs to work off the third pair. Give her extra chores around the house. The chores get done and she gets the gloves. If the chores don't get done, she's not allowed to go outside to play, or go over to a friend's house to play , because she won't be warm without gloves. Kind of like a grounding
.
Believe me, I get super frusterated with the lack of respect for things the kids have. The wii and games strewn about the room, the new clothes in a ball in the bottom of the closet, etc. Maybe the American Girl doll stuff goes away into a bin into the attic or storage. If she even cares, she'll have to work to get those back, too!
I wish you luck!

As a PTA volunteer, I will tell you where all of the gloves, scarves, lunch boxes, hats, jackets, tshirts, sports shoes, folders are.. they are in the Schools Lost and Found..

Every semester I was astounded at the amount that would collect and we could not get the kids or their families to come and look.. If there was a name FIRST and LAST.. It was so much easier to figure out who to return it to.. But 95 % of it did not have names..

We had so much that about every 6 weeks (report card week).. we would spread it all out of the front of the school stage and each class would have to walk past and look at the stuff during a few lunch periods that week.. We also placed a sign out on the drop off area reminding parents to come and look through the lost and found.. (before email). Many kids would find their lost items..

One year at the end of the school year, I filled up my car with 6 Huge Industrial Trash Bags of stuff and carted it to a very low income school across time.. I was horrified and amazed, that people could be missing so much stuff..

Do a mixture. She could have 5 pairs of gloves (one for each school day) with 3 hats and 2 scarves at the start of fall. After that, she can use her allowance, or do particularly difficult chores to "earn" more pairs. Same with her hair accessories.

She sounds like my daughter:) I asked her to put away her new shoes, so she stuffed them onto her shoe shelf, and I took them all save 2 pairs. She has slowly been earning them back. If she cannot take care of what she has, she cannot be trusted with more. If she doesn't want her little brother using her things, she can put them where he cannot get them or learn what happens when she forgets to take care of her things.

Life is hard, and sometimes Mommy has to be too, unfortunately:(

I think buying some and making her pay for the losses are appropriate. I agree that Love and Logic is pretty awesome and natural consequences make sense to me. Personally, I would buy her at least 2 pairs...I mean really...we all lose stuff or maybe they're wet or whatever. I know that even for myself I keep around a couple pairs of gloves, one for each coat and a few hats in case I leave one in the car, etc. I think your previous winter was a bit excessive and I understand not wanting to repeat that, but 2 pairs from you is a good start!

I agree with the other posters about you helping her buy a set or two or three (according to the budget you set) and then using the "natural consequences" of going without or having to buy replacements from her own money.

But I also think that at age 8, it can really help if you also offer a reward. That could be something as simple as saying, after a week of NOT losing any mittens, "Hey, I know it's hard to keep track of them, but you've done a good job so far," (and then keeping up the praise for her putting them back in the storage spot, etc.) or more complicated like doing a little reward at the end of every week that she has not lost them.....

Barrettes and hair ties have minds of their own, feel enslaved, and escape at first opportunity to a small beach resort on a small island off the coast of New Zealand. So those are a wash.

For gloves, hat, scarf: I think that the 1 pair and one of each, and then after that they come out of her allowance is a GRAND thing to institute this year. 100%. Do it. Be sure to warn her. Yep. She'll lose 'em. And yep. She'll complain about the cost of new ones (don't give her an option), and 1 will get you 20, after a few times, she'll start keeping track of them (unless she's adhd).

My uncle was an... adventurer... for lack of a better word. After his Phd, he scrapped hard sciences / astrophysics, and started making sports gear and traveled all over the world (mountian climbing, kyaking, skiing, etc) testing them. You see his products on photos of people in National Geographic. Our family (and his company, and many others who have copied him over the decades) has something known as "idiot cords". For kids this means that gloves have a long cord -about the width of a pinkie- sewn on each glove that goes all the way up one sleeve, across your shoulder, down the other sleeve, and is sewn on the opposite glove. Making them impossible for kids to lose. My grandmother started doing it. For adult gloves (and all the ones he made), it's a cord and toggle at the wrist of every glove that you put your hands through, tighten enough so they don't fall off when you take the glove off and let it dangle from your wrist, and then put your hand through the glove.

I'm a big fan of idiot cords.

I'm also adhd. Without them, I'd lose every glove I ever wear.

Decide how much you are willing and able to spend on gloves for her for the season. Then take her shopping. If it is 20.00, tell her. She can pick out one nice pair for 20.00, 2 for 10.00, or a bunch of cheap ones for less, her choice. Remind her about what happened last year and how often they were lost throughout the winter, and tell her this year will be a fresh start, and she is now old enough and will have to be responsible for taking care or replacing them. Designate one place in your house to store gloves, and encourage her to do the same at her Mom's house. If she loses all the gloves, she has to spend her own time to go back to the store with you and spend her own allowance money to replace them. My older daughter is the same way with socks. She'll be tracking them down in all the hiding places in her room this winter, buying her own, or going without! I already have to keep her sister's socks is a secret hiding spot. She's always trying to mooch them because hers are all "lost"

i wouldn't necessarily make her buy her own-although not a bad idea, she's going to lose them, that's what teenager's/kids do, maybe (something i do with my sd's). you forget them, lose them, what ever, i'll let you BORROW a pair of mine with PERMISSION, IF i have no extra's you don't go outside when everyone else does. when she can't go play with everyone else, she'll start "remembering where they are lost at" when she HAS to leave for going home, or a family activity, just tell her to put her hands in her pockets, etc

My 8 year old girls are the same way. We've never gone through 7 pairs in one year, but they are constantly losing their belongings. I was very upset when 2 years ago one of them lost their nice wool jacket. They are constantly leaving their stuff at school or the daycare. I even called the school about the jacket and they had me come up and look in the lost and found- it was just gone.

In order to get them to learn a little bit more about expenses and respect I have them use their own money sometimes. My girls do some acting, and when they got their paychecks last week I told them they could each keep $30 from their check (the rest goes straight into the bank), and that was the money they were to use on their Halloween costumes. I told them they could keep the left over to spend as they wish. All of a sudden they no longer wanted the expensive costumes. I was very proud because one girl offered to give her sister the extra money if she wanted the $29.99 costume. Ultimately, they each bought costumes that left them about $3 to spend as they wanted.

I definetly think giving them some ownership (i.e. financial responsibility) really helps them to learn respect.

My oldest has struggled to get organized at school but he has never lost or left behind his one pair of gloves, one scarf, and one hat because he knew if he did then he would not be able to play outside at home or if he lost them that meant no recess at school. Our school will not let kids outside unless they have a hat and gloves on during the winter months and they aren't aloud in the snow without snowpants and boots.
I think that you should really start enforcing now that she needs to take care of her things. Buy her one of each winter item and it gets lost she will have to purchase new ones with her money. I would also take away some of her american girl stuff until she learns to treat it better. I had three american girl dolls when I was younger and they were very well taken care of infact I have all three still and they are in like new condition now if only I had daughter to give them to...oh well. I would have never thrown my dolls around like that my mom would have killed me after spending that kind of money on a toy.