We aren’t meant to get mad with our kids now, are we? However, look at me and tell me honestly that you never get mad with your children. Yep – thought so. The thing that drives me NUTS is the amount of stuff that kids manage to lose. There doesn’t seem to be anything that children can’t managed to misplace at some point in their life. So we are calling on all providers of kids labels to start labelling weird things so that kids stop losing things.
What have YOUR kids lost that have driven you NUTS?
1. Plastic bottles: Going green
We are, according to the most wonderful David Attenborough and experts everywhere, using far too much plastic. Single use plastics, like water bottles are contributing massively to our over-use of plastics. According to the London Mayor, the average person in London buys three plastic water bottles a week. So, we, as parents, do the responsible thing, and buy reusable water bottles for our kids. We put kids labels on them from places like StickerYou so they don’t get lost. Thankfully, we have lots of these stickers because despite our best efforts, the kids still manage to lose them, swap them for something less effective randomly, or break them.
There is a Bermuda triangle somewhere where these school plastic water bottles all go to….
2. Let’s go swimming: Googles and hats
Anyone with a child that swims regularly will know the routine.
Parent: “Do you have everything in your swim bag?”
Child: “Yes”
Parent: “Are you sure? Did you check?”
Child: “Yes – can we just go, Mum/Dad/Whomever is picking them up…”
You get home, and guess what, you are missing goggles, hat, towel and possibly even the swimming trucks. You don’t learn from one week to the next because you have enough to do, and don’t want to come across as not trusting the child concerned but…
So waterproof kids labels for goggles that you can see through – not too much to ask for, right?
Oh, and goggles that jump into swim bags after they have been used too as well.
3. School shoes: Yes really
We all thought before we had kids that it was IMPOSSIBLE to lose a pair of shoes that you have actually gone to school in.
Wrong.
It has happened to us a few times, and only thanks to kids labels that we have got the shoes back. If PE is the last lesson, kids sometimes prefer to go home in their trainers. So, clearly that means they will leave their shoes in the changing room, or the pavilion, or even the swimming pool, if they were lucky enough to have a swim lesson.
Shoes need to be labelled. And just like the goggles, they also need to be able to whistle out to the kids to remind them to put them back into their bags at the end of a PE lesson. Preferably an ironic whistle because that would be cooler.
4. Expensive iPhones that we wish we didn’t get
Hands up tween mums and dads? Who has bought, or given their kids a hand me down phone, and it is been lost fairly soon after it was handed down. Or perhaps broken? It is tough to work out what are the best phones for kids. We went the second hand / refurbished route. We bought a second hand phone, and within a week, the screen was cracked. The boy paid for the repair, and 6 weeks later – broken again. This time, the screen stayed broken and a new one was requested for a birthday. Phones are an important part of teen culture, and having one is almost as important as having clothes. It is the way kids communicate in secondary school, but it is also very easy for them to get distracted and put them down, or break them.
So labels on phones, that can track them are a bonus, for example Tagosi, but this isn’t everything we’d like to see. Perhaps it is too much to ask for these kids labels to remind children NOT to do something that would be likely break their phone screens. Maybe like propping it up with a stone while they take a video for Instagram, so it can fall forward and smash…
5. Your temper, or your s**t
Yep lose this all the time. Not sure that’s worth a label. Most kids know when we’re doing it, and sometimes even push us so we do lose it. Ah well, never mind, next time, we’ll do better, right?
There you have it – what really winds me up. That was cathartic. Do you agree? What ate the annoying things YOUR kids have lost that you didn’t think was even possible and could do with a label?
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Helen
This is a collaborative post.
Helen Neale
Helen is a mum to two, social media consultant, website editor and a qualified counsellor with experience of working with both children and adults.She is a registered member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapists, with her own private practise. She also freelances with her local Mind organisation.Since giving up being a business analyst when juggling travel, work and kids proved too complicated, she founded KiddyCharts so she could be with her kids, use those grey cells at the same time, and supplement her counselling income.KiddyCharts has reach of over 680k across socials and the site. The site works with big family brands to help promote their services, as well as offering free resources to parents of kids under 10. She is a specialist counsellor for neurodivergent individuals and brings this expertise to her resources and the site. She is also an ADHDer herself.KiddyCharts gives 51%+ profits to charities, focused on supporting mental health and a community in TanzaniaHelen has also worked as a digital marketing consultant (IDM qualified) with various organisations, including Channel Mum, Truprint, Talk to Mums, and Micro Scooters. She loves to be creative in the brand campaigns she works on.Get in touch TODAY!