to be fed up with named cardigans still walking off?

[MrsFruitcake]

3rd cardi DD has managed to lose in as many months, including one with the school logo which cost me £18. All three were clearly labelled with her name, on both the inside neck and tag.

None have turned up at school again and they don't seem overly bothered - teacher just told her to keep looking and told me that they weren't there. Two were taken off her peg and the other was picked up on the school field but never made it's way back to her.

So where are they? I'll wager that the labels have now been removed and someone else is using them. No other explanation is there?

I think it's the realisation that there are people in your lovely happy school community who are actually thieving bastards which sticks in the throat - I mind that more than I mind the annoyance of not having a sweatshirt, IYSWIM.

Marker pen is the way to go. When I made the move to Sharpies from sew-ons, the rate of vanishing clothes dropped dramatically. It does make it harder to pass the clothes on, of course.

"It's not that teachers don't care when property goes missing, it's that every day there are a few children who can't find something or mislay something, and there is a limit to what we can do."

Exactly. Thank god for the parents who do put names on things, makes it a lot easier to sort out jumper confusion, and track down the owners of the stuff that gets lost every. single. day.

Buntingbunny

Do you seriously think we don't tell the children to make sure they have everything before they leave? We do. Several times!! However there are 30 of them and one of me, I can not tick off every item to check the children have everything they came with.

One of the boys in my class is always losing his jumpers and takes no care of his things. His Mum came in telling me that I needed to look for it, otherwise I would have to buy him a new one. Really?!

I seriously think some parents think I have them all in the boot of my car!

Note to parents: if you want us to do you a favour by looking for your child's lost items that they couldn't be bothered to look after and you couldn't be bothered to name, don't ask with an attitude. In all honestly at 3.00 o'clock on a Friday afternoon I really couldn't give a monkey's!!

My older DS loses an item of clothing a week. I sharpie his name onto everything. Every item of clothing has both my boys' names in bold print because they are close in size.

We still lose stuff.

I wonder why schools make Key stage 1 kids change for PE. They run around the yard and get all hot and sweaty and they don't change for that. I think they break less of a sweat in PE and yet they have to change. It must take ages to get them all changed, and it is a clothing swap disaster waiting to happen. My oldest son actually claims that clothes "poof into thin air" at PE changing time. I think he believes this.

What is sharpies? Sorry to side track. I am new to this.

DS lost three school sweat shirts in one month at primary school. I got so IRATE, that I wrote his initials, in permanent marker, on the OUTSIDE of the collar at the back. Funnily enough, he didn't lose his sweat shirt ever again. On one occasion, he couldn't find it, so I went and stood by the school gate at home time. After pointing out to a child's mother, that her son was wearing DSs shirt, and presenting her with the collar initials, I took great satisfaction in seeing someone else throw a wobbly about a lost shirt for a change!

I think what gets to me, is that it is labelled - at least twice (once sewn in and once in marker pen) and somehow, leaving it on her peg overnight, it goes missing.

So where do they go? I say to my six year old - where did you leave it? Answer - on my peg. So I know it hasn't mistakenly gone home with another child. Somebody has lifted it.

We used to use two nurseries. One - any item of clothing left overnight - you'd never see it again. The other - she could take in a scrap of paper and it would be in her drawer at the end of the day. Makes me think it is possible to have some control.

Just think more could be done. There's nothing more frustrating than finding the clothes stolen (effectively) and nobody wants to know or investigate.

Somebody v frequent on the education threads gave me an ear bashing over this the other day.

I feel sorry for my ds's year one teacher!she has a nightmare with lost jumpers but is always so helpful and tries her best to find them. Ds frequently leaves his named jumper at school. I've given up now. He has four school jumpers for this very reason!

I sound like an irate nut case in my last post. Sorry, it's been a long day

Mwah ha ha ha!!

Limejelly - don't we all - don't worry about it. It's just good to sound off.

No doubt you'll wake up in your pile of school jumpers tomorrow feeling ecstatic.

Parental advice 23 tears and 4 kids.. Buy cheap and tell your kids to get replacements from lost property.

Years not tears!! Then again!!!!

But that makes you as bad as the people who cut the labels out. If its in lost property it still belongs to someone else! And what do you do if the replacement has a label in?

Not really suggesting it is the teacher's responsibility but it is someone's - and if only it's a reminder to check clothes are one's own before putting on after PE/Games - that seems to be when a lot of the confusion arises.

Nevertheless a lot of stuff does go AWOL and doesn't show up in lost property so there must be a lot of parents knowingly holding onto 'acquired' items of schoolwear. As DW has commented, you just know your own children's clothes when washing/ironing/putting away.

The school that ds now goes to requires all PE kit to be labelled on the outside of every item. They just have their initials, so no probs with starngers knowing their names.

It then makes it quite tricky to wear the wrong kit!

I would go and get some fabric paint; cannot remember what its called, but you can get it in craft shops. Comes in a little bottle, and you can then 'write' the name on the fabric, leave it to dry overnight, and its a BU**ER to remove. You can wash and dry the clothes, and it stays put.

Even works on socks!

I think someone should be setting up a business whereby all school uniform items can have the child's name stitched/embroidered permanently onto the front of every garment, somewhere obvious and noticable! No room for error or theft then!

I go tso fed up with this that I took a big fat permanent marker and wrote my sons' full names across the backs of their PE and games tops.

Teachers do you think it would be unreasonable for me to ask the teacher to help my dd to make sure she has everything at the end of term and to help her check the lost property (her stuff is named) as I can't as she goes in the taxi. And after a day at school
Is so tired she can't be trusted to remember her head ( though it's only tshirts and jumpers so far)

limejelly thank-you, I know some teachers do remind the children to pick things up and they still forget.
It's the ones who refuse to saying Y4 need to be responsible for their own stuff that get my goat.
This is the same teacher who point blank refused to believe DD had not lost her lunch boxes and pretty much reduced her to tears telling her to stop fussing.

It was her lovely job share who got to the bottom of couple of the boys hiding them.

In my experience there are teachers who come to school to teach (and may be perfectly competent) and teachers who realise that being a good teacher is about far more.

Also there should be a whole school ethos of looking after things and not taking home others stuff.

As I've said we simply wouldn't have because the HT would have gone ballistic.

I use iron on labels and melt them onto the clothes where they can be seen-outside collar. I admit I won't be able to do that once dd get old enough to be embarrassed .

Buntingbunny - for your information, I constantly ask my children to check that they have their stuff!! But thank you to ALL the other teachers who replied to you for me.

You seem to be one of those parents who believe that teachers are responsible for teaching their DD's/DS's absolutely everything. Good manners START AT HOME. Of course I talk to my children about responsibility, having respect etc...but it should all START AT HOME!!!!! I cannot be expected for checking 30+ children's bags to double check that when they say they have their cardigan/jumper/pumps whatever, they actually do and they're not just saying so. *NEWSFLASH** CHILDREN LIE!!!!!!

Great example from yesterday (not uniform related, but shows my point) - VERY naughty child in my class (known offender!), been a little shit all week, numerous warnings, red cards, x2 Head's visits...I could go on.....at 2pm he put the cherry on the cake and I lost my temper with him, and he was sent down for an hour in reception to learn some manners from the 5 year olds. (He's 9).

At 3.30pm, there is his mother, with him, at school reception, wanting to see me. How dare I send her child down to reception, there is no way that her little angel is badly behaved, you owe him an apology (!!!) blah blah blah. THIS is what is wrong with our society today. Parents used to back teachers 100%. You would trust that we are educating your children. You would trust that we do care about losing uniform and we do try our very best to ensure it doesn't happen. You would trust that if your child has been disciplined, there is/was a reason for this. NOW.....oh no....it MUST be the teacher's fault.

Well....at 3.30pm on a Friday, after a VERY stressful week with my challenging class, this mother was certainly not going to get what she had come in for. Child got a second bollocking in front of said mother for lying to his mother about what had happened/not happened and the pair of them were sent packing.

Seriously, unless you have ever been a primary school teacher, you have no idea at all how hard it is to ensure that 30+ children, learn, behave AND don't lose uniform all week. Parents - do your bit. Teach your child to have responsibility for their belongings - keep their jumper with them on their chair, take it outside with them when they go for lunch, put it on their chair (not the floor) when they change for PE. Someone said something about, we know who the scatty children are. Yes, you're right. I do. About 24 of them. Seriously, I only have 6 kids in my class who have been brought up with, what I would call, old-fashioned values (and they have NEVER lost anything).

Oh. I did note someone saying something about stealing - unfortunately, I do also think that happens. Again, down to some parent's lack of teaching right/wrong to their darlings..all part of a much bigger sad picture of society.

at 11.40am on a Saturday morning after an extremely crap week at work, I take no responsibility for any spelling/typos/grammar mistakes in this post, which undoubtedly some saddo will want to point out!!!!

DS keeps losing named jumpers as well as everything else.

Funnily enough one has turned back up. The one where they have tried to rip the tag with his name on out of the jumper and damaged the jumper leaving a hole and the tag still half attached.

Clearly they don't want it now that they have damaged it.

My dd is 8 - I've given her lots of stern talkings to about leaving her stuff at school (she was very come-day, go-day) if she's got a club after school or something, losing her hockey socks, coming home without swimming kit, leaving her cardigan on the chair etc. Luckily she goes to a school where people don't seem to steal things and the stuff always turns up - drives me mad though!

She has got better at looking after her stuff - you need to have a talk to your dd and tell her she is responsible for her belongings. In reception you can't really expect this but at 8 I do think they should start caring about their own possessions.