My kid keeps forgetting their jobs, what do I do?

Reminding works, which is exactly the trouble. It solves this Saturday and guarantees next Saturday, and after a few months you are running the schedule for a business that is supposed to be theirs.

Most kids have never had to hold a commitment that nobody else is tracking. School has bells and teachers, sport has a coach and a group chat, and home has you. A customer expecting somebody at ten on Saturday is the first appointment in their life that exists only in their own head.

So give them a place to put it, and let them pick. A paper calendar on the wall, an app, a whiteboard by the door, a note on the fridge. The system they chose gets used and the one you imposed gets ignored, and which one is objectively better does not come into it. The only requirement is that it is visible without being opened.

Then, and this is the hard part, let one get missed.

A missed job with an apology owed to a real person teaches more in one afternoon than six months of reminders. They will feel it. That feeling is the entire mechanism, and covering for them removes it while looking like kindness.

When it happens, the call is theirs. Not a text, if they are old enough for a call. What to say is short: I missed it, I am sorry, here is when I will come. Then they do the job, and a lot of the time the customer thinks better of them afterward rather than worse.

If it keeps happening after all of that, look at volume before you look at character. A kid with eleven customers and no system is not forgetful, they are overloaded, and the answer is either fewer customers at higher prices or a real week by week schedule rather than a mental list.