I don’t know if there is any research out there on the correlation between forgetfulness and having children, but if there is I think I would I would make an excellent case study.

A friend and I got together for lunch a few weeks ago and were laughing about our degrees of forgetfulness since having children. She has 2 children and I have 1. The more we talked about it and in the days since our lunch I have been acutely aware of how I feel I am just “slipping.” Some things are just funny and others really make me wonder if I need to use some brain games to boost my memorization skills or something.

For example, here are some things I have forgotten in the past several months:

• To turn the dryer on after I have put clothes in it
• To finish putting clothes in the washing machine (seriously, I washed like half a load of whites the other day. I was so mad!)
• Items at the grocery store (granted this isn’t that big of a deal and tends to happen to everyone, but it now occurs to me on a regular basis — even when it is on my list!)
• To take the gondola out of the diaper bag and put it in the refrigerator
• Where I put my teaching materials (I lost them for like 2 days – luckily the teacher whose room I had left them in came to my rescue)
• Important things that Isaac swears he told me (granted this may have more to do with listening skills than forgetfulness. . . .)
• The gift certificate to the hotel we were staying at in Bloomington (luckily, I have a very kind sister-in-law who had nothing better to do than to drive it over to us. I’m just glad we were in Bloomington and not Chicago!)
• Scheduled activities that conflict (at least twice in the last month I have planned more than one thing on the same night)
• The speed limit (okay, okay, this is debatable. . .)

Now these things may not be a big deal to some, but for me it has caused a few raised eyebrows or the occasional “I can’t believe Rachel would forget something like that!”  So can I blame this on having a child or do I really need to own up to my mistakes and try harder in future? The scariest thing about this is that I only have 1 child! What will it be like when I have more?

Perhaps this research should be my doctoral thesis.

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