Life with two kids: Wednesday shoes

[andrewducker]

This morning Sophia announced, as we were about to leave the house, that she couldn't find her school shoes.

Her black school shoes.

The ones that are and integral part of her Wednesday costume. For the school Halloween disco. This evening.

Jane and I frantically tore the house apart for fifteen minutes and checked *everywhere*. Eventually we forced her, crying, to put on her trainers, promising her that if her shoes turned up we would bring them in to her.

Because we left fifteen minutes late we missed the bus. And so it was that we were halfway through the walk to school when Sophia quietly said "Oh."

And then told me that she'd just remembered that yesterday she'd come home from school in her welly boots, leaving her shoes at her peg.

You'll be delighted to hear that I didn't murder her.

Comments

[ljgeoff]

At her age I would have been too afraid of saying anything

[andrewducker]

We are clearly doing something right then!

[channelpenguin]

Well of course you didn't.

Everyone forgets stuff and sometimes it makes extra work or small problems. You all did as much as possible given your current knowledge, and had a backup solution ready. In the end, it was ok because someone (not too much) later remembered something.

That's life, and a great lesson in life. For us all!

In my opinion, nobody should ever get angry or upset about such incidents.

*says the person who last week bought a duplicate set of music studio electrical tools because she failed to see them in the 2nd place she looked. It's ok. One can live in the studio and one down in the main house.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. It was just frustrating in the moment because there was no time budgeted for it.

Thankfully I was working from home, so it didn't make me late for work.

[darkoshi]

That seems a perfectly reasonable thing to slip one's mind. Those kind of things happen to everyone, I imagine.

[darkoshi]

Oh, and at first I read that as the students normally having to wear black shoes to school on Wednesdays.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. It was just frustrating in the moment because there was no time budgeted for it.

Thankfully I was working from home, so it didn't make me late for work.

[darkoshi]

In times like that I try to remember that life is just playing a really good joke on me.

[mountainkiss]

Maybe we all wanted you to murder her.

[andrewducker]

Someone should have said!

Maybe I should run a poll, just to check.

[mountainkiss]

What will you do if we do?

[andrewducker]

I can't tell you that in advance, it might affect the voting!

[mountainkiss]

High stakes

[andrewducker]

I hear the audience likes the drama.

[mountainkiss]

Why else would you have posted about the loss of the shoes?

[andrewducker]

To help keep my blood pressure down.

(Which I need to do for another 11 days until I see the GP about it)

[mountainkiss]

Murder it is, then.

[simont]

In a work context this would inspire the idea of a blameless retrospective / root-cause analysis. Not "whose fault was it? They're fired", but "what habits could we have adopted that would have prevented this kind of mistake or made it less likely? Let's give those a try and see if it helps in future."

But I'm sure this works very badly with small children. Indeed it's not reliable even with adults.

[andrewducker]

Oh no, we absolutely do that.

After the third instance of her saying, as we were about to leave the house, "My shoe laces are knotted and I can't put them on", Sophia now takes off her shoes* when she comes in, and checks that the shoelaces are untied.

*It is my job, as scrum lead, to remind her to do so when she forgets.

[bens_dad]

Ah. Last night's checks confirmed they were not on her feet, but no-one did anything about the absence of a tick on the "laced untied" box.

Maybe add "Were you wearing them yesterday ?" and "Where did you take them off ?" to the "What to do when we cannot find them" checklist ?

[andrewducker]

I wasn't actually home when she came in, and completely forgot to do my part when I did stagger in from work :-)

[marymac]

Aaaaaa I feel you.

Very soon there will be a next door neighbour who is not 84, deaf as a post and besotted by my children.

And one morning they will hear the shriek as I ask H where various bits of his schoolbag contents are and he answers blithely "I think I left it in creche".

And I will have to go round and explain that I am very very sorry but sometimes the only appropriate response to parenting these particular children is to have a wee scream.

[andrewducker]

Goodness yes.

It's not as if mine are particularly bad, as kids go. I'm just trying to get them to school on time, me to wor on time, etc. And so even when little things go wrong it gets frustrating!