Parents of forgetful and irresponsible middle schoolers - take note of the following…
Our oldest son Ron is a junior in college, but (counting one summer session) this marks his ninth college semester. We have a policy in our house that we pay half of college tuition, room and board. The boys come up with the other half - but they have to pay for all of their books. When we instituted this policy, we reasoned that it would encourage the boys to look for bargains and sell their used books.
Well, we were half right. The boys are genetically predisposed to find (or wrangle) the very best price for just about anything. Their ADHD, however, predisposes them to never get around to selling books, and to waiting until the last minute to buy their new ones.
This is 6th week of winter semester for Ron, and after ordering it last week, his last book arrived on Wednesday. The book was supposed to cost $200, and frugal Ron - even if he had the money - was not going to fork out that much. So - after checking with the professor - he ordered a previous edition. When it arrived, however, he had ordered the wrong thing. You had to feel sorry for him. He immediately emailed the vendor who was very helpful. He explained the urgency of the situation. Although it wouldn't have been so urgent had he purchased in December when he registered for class…
Anyhow, the funny moment came when I was telling the above story to my husband. "Maybe," he said, "maybe he'll do better next time."
My husband has more faith than I do! I mean, this is the ninth go round at this. But for those of you with middle schoolers - note the following. Ron knew what book to buy. That means he had to go to his list of classes and find the ISBN number of the book. He had to copy the number down correctly. And find it online. Then he had to think about how to avoid paying so much, talk to the professor about it, go back online and buy again. And he had to contact the vendor to explain the problem. This was the child that couldn't remember to bring the directions for a project home from school just eight short years ago, much less do the project alone.
So take heart. Keep plugging away, and they will grow up...But I offer no guarantee that they'll ever grow out of procrastinating!
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