As school returns, parents and teachers might each be faced with the familiar chorus of “I can’t find my school jumper” and “I left my hat at home”. For parents of older kids, the stakes may be even higher: lost mobile phones or laptops left on the bus.

As parents, it can be tempting to take charge by packing schoolbags yourself, or texting older children a list of things to remember at the end of each day.

However, doing everything for your child robs them of an opportunity to learn.

Our kids, in their busy lives, are constantly using and developing their memory skills – remembering where they put things, new conceptual knowledge, and routines required for the day-to-day.

Prospective memory – which involves remembering to do things in the future – is particularly challenging.

It’s prospective memory children draw on when they set a drink bottle down at play time and must remember to pick it up later, or get a note from their teacher and must remember to show their parent after school.

Success in prospective memory involves multiple cognitive processes going right.

Children must pay attention to what is needed in a given situation (“I can’t play outside if I don’t have a hat”), and then form and store a particular intention to act in the future (“I need to take my hat with me to school”).

Then, they must bring the intention back to mind at the crucial moment (taking the hat on the way out the door).

This “remembering to remember” requires memory to

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