messy desk...

My son is 11 and in fifth grade. And disorganized. His teacher told me that we needed to work on his organizational skills. So we set up a meeting with the three of us with some goals. They are simple things like putting the right heading on his paper, using ink except on his math papers, and the friday clean out his desk. Every Friday he cleans out his desk. He now writes “empty desk” in his agenda for Friday. And every weekend, he cleans out his back pack.

His teacher gives a check every day he does what he is supposed to do and gives him small rewards from a treasure box. She ups the expectations when she feels he can handle it. Today she made him redo his vocabulary cards because he did not write the word on one side and the definition on the other as she has instructed them since August. She told me he is doing well and so she is going to start more pressure on him to do things correctly.

All that said, perhaps what I would do is talk to the teacher about setting up some procedures with your son to improve his organizational skills along with appropriate tracking and rewards. It is not fair that she be angry about his messiness but I think it is hard for people who are organized to take the mess sometimes. What you want is her on the same team as you and your son.

Beth

As someone with pretty amazing “thing disorganization” (as opposed to writing or other types of disorganization), I can tell you I still struggle a lot with it. Definitely anger or any kind of critism is not going to help him at all. This is really a part of many learnign disabilities, and if you do checklists for LD or ADD they will almost certainly have this on them.

I think Beth gave some very good suggestions. As an adult I still use checklists, and give myself rewards for cleaning my house, etc. :-)

I would help the teacher set something up at school. I think the idea of a “clean start” on Fridays….

Another thing is using color coded boxes for different materials, and just not having so much stuff to begin with. (Of course it is a little late for me now. :-)) But for him it might just work.

—des

My desk is and always has been a disaster area. I’m with Des — I have wonderful mental organization, I have to, because my thing disorganization is intense. For some reason papers are about the worst, followed by renovation projects and tools. I’ve actually gotten the kitchen in fair order, however.
The teacher may have good intentions, but they are counterproductive; I know from experience. A bit too much pressure when he is already overwhelmed, and he will just quit trying.
My suggestion is simplify, simplify, sim plify. One backpack with everything in it and at least you know it’s in the backpack. Everything in pen and that includes math — there really is no eleventh comandment to write numbers in pencil, I have looked. Papers go into the backpack immediately, go home and get done, and go back in the pack immediately, no question.
It helps if mom or someone will go through and help with the weeding-out process regularly, as you were doing with the desk. It is just so overwhelming you don’t know where to start so you put it off and it getw worse (Volunteers for my spare room desperately needed befre tax time …)

We use the simplify method too. My son has one folder with bright pictures of tigers on it. It is his to and from school folder. Every year I buy a pile of required folders in different colors but he never uses them. For him it is an accomplishment to get anything into a folder to go home and homework back into it to go back. Forget about filing anything. He keeps them in the one folder until a test is over and then they get dumped.

Might have to find a new system when he hits middle school next year but it has worked for elementary school.

And Victoria, last year I thought about hiring a tax accountant until I realized that taxes didn’t take very long once I got everything organized. And you can’t get the accountant to do that for you!!

Beth

Beth, I always do my own tax forms. I’m looking for help on the excavation part of the job.

“Not sure why the teacher was so angry,…”

A. Control freak

B. Rude idjit

C. Both of the above

Okay, you probably knew that already, but your post reminded me of the many territorial teachers (“This is MY classroom”) I had 40+ years ago. The good ones and the few great ones I thank every single day (but maybe not on weekends.)

John

My dd is 10 y.o. 4th grade and is also very messy and disorganized. These are great ideas! I’ll probably implement some with her.

One suggestion, ask your son for input too. Helps him buy into it if some of it was his idea.

Ask yourself a question - Have you ever gotten frustrated with your child after asking him/her to do something umpteen times?

If theteacher/student relationship is generally good, I’d drop it. If the relationship is generally awful, request a different class placement immediately. But remember even the best of teachers is human occasionally.

Well John, I don’t thank the teachers who were control freaks every day of life. Anger doesn’t help solve the problem. Classes in teaching exceptional children are required for every classroom teacher, though with 35 or so bodies in the classroom it’s easy to forget such things I suppose. (If John was being ironic, I apologize. I understand that I am not too good at picking that up. :-o)

The above strategies should really help the prob.

BTW, there is a current fad for elementary kids to have 6-8 color coded folders for everything. I don’t quite understand it as I think filing is not a skill, say, 4th graders have. (Or myself for that matter! :-)) I agree with simplifying!

—des

I agree with John, but he left one out:

C: compulsive neat freak

messy and disorganized are two separate issues. Not all who are messy are disorganized and vice versa. I understand that being messy is not optimum and should probably be worked on. It will take a very long time to change someone who is habitually so (I have been working on it for almost 40 years but I am still messy.

Being disorganized on the otherhand is important to overcome. It is very difficult to meet the various deadlines life throws at us if you are disorganized to the point of routinely losing things. Ironically, some neat freaks are that way because at the core they are very disorganized and having everything exactly so has become their way of compensating for their mind’s inability to remember where things were placed.

Working with elementary students we need to be specific in what we are discussing. When they are asked to clean out a desk, some students have no clue what that means. Their parents have done most of the cleaning up after them.

So, it leaves us to requesting specific things. For example any paper that has been graded, turned in and returned, flyer to be sent home, etc., these type of things go home.

Crayons, markers, etc., are they in their proper boxes? Just starting with the simple task and working up.

I prefer the books to be in order the larger ones on bottom to smaller on top. Explain this is the way we can see what each book is without tearing the desk apart.

I would also sit down with your son and discuss what it means to be messy and disorganized - big difference.

My LD son is messy, but knows where everything is. His tolerance level is different than mine or his teachers with mess.

Hope this helps,
Shel