Teacher 'donated' Dds money!

[WoWoWorrier]

My daughter has a knack for 'finding pennies'. She is 8. She collects the 5ps/10ps she finds for sweeties and the 1ps and 2ps go in a piggy bank until it's full. She find a them outside on the floor.

On the way to school yesterday she was saying that she wanted a mini figit spinner from the machine outside our local newsagents.
She had been super good this week and I was already planning on giving her £2 as a reward but she said 'I might find a pound!' So to humour her 'abilities' I dropped a pound a few minutes later and she spotted it.

She was super excited.

When I picked her up from school she was quiet and when we got near the ship I asked her if she wanted to get her toy she told me she had been telling her friend she had found a pound on the way to school and the teacher said it wasn't hers to spend and told her to put it in the classroom charity collection box!!

Aibu to demand it back and be quite pissed off?

I cannot get over how many people on MN think it's wrong to keep money found in the street! My DC and I regularly find pennies, sometimes 5/10/20p, my DD found a £1 a few weeks ago, the idea that I would turn it in to somewhere is ridiculous.

I also don't think that if you find the odd note in the street or wherever that you hand it in. If it was somewhere like school grounds that would be different but otherwise no. And yes I know that the OP's DD did not find her £1 on school grounds.

The only time I would hand money in that I found in the street would be if it was in a purse or wallet.

If it had genuinely been “her stuff” in the first place it wouldn’t have been taken from her, pax. And since op hasn’t returned to clarify that her dd made it clear that it wasn’t actually found on school premises, we can assume that she in fact didn’t do this.

Technically, if the coin in question had not been dropped by you, by keeping the pound, you/your daughter were committing theft. It might seem utterly ridiculous, but it's true.

Consider a slightly different scenario....a child with very limited income drops £1 of her lunch money in the playground. Your daughter finds it, and keeps it to buy a pretty mundane temporary amusement.

We are quite hard over with our son about his moral compass and have never regretted being so. That said, I see exactly what you were trying to do, but 'down the back of (your own) sofa' might have been a slightly better alternative...?

Would you expect a child that age to stand up to the teacher and explain she found it in the street etc though? Do you think she would have had the info to know it was different?
And why, if the money had been found in the school yard, is it ok furbthe teacher to it in the charity box instead of keeping it in case someone was looking fir it?

I doesn't make sense. Either it's not ok to keep things and you need to wait to see if someone is claiming it. Or you don't. The teacher can't keep the money (because that's what it amonts to) if it's not ok for the dd to keep it.

Annie, I know it's not me you were asking, but I don't pick up coins in the street and I don't let my kids do so either. Not yours = don't touch it.

So if everybody does this, then money accumulates on the ground, until it's swept up by some roadsweeper (who mustn't touch it either, as that would be stealing) and put into landfill. OK then!

If someone came looking for it it could have come back out of the charity box, surely?

I don't understand how the teacher thought the charity had more right to it than your DD. I mean the charity wasn't the one who dropped it !

My DD donates £3 a mounts of her pocket money to WWF so is it ok for her to keep any coppers she finds?

Also my DD has the eye sight of a hawk and has been know to catch sand lizards and crickets. This makes her really good at spotting small Change amongst autumn leaves, I suspect that is what OPs DD is like.

As a child my brothe and I found a £10 note on the street, a lot of money in the 70's, we took it to the police station, the officer made a note of the fact we had taken it in and told us to split it between us as there was no way he would be able to trace the owner.
I do not keep purses or anything else I might find if there is a way to find the owner.

We have a rather eccentric family friend who cycles everywhere.
He also keeps a butter knife in his pocket to 'dig' any pennies stuck in Road Tarmac
He must have made a small fortune over the years.

Something to consider is what another poster has mentioned.

A child from a low income family drops their lunch money. Your DC works on the 'it's on the floor so it's mine' principle and takes it (after all it's 'only a pound').

Lower income child goes to lost property or student reception and asks if lunch money has been handed in. They say no.

The child goes hungry and won't have a nutritious meal at night (not all poorer familes apply for FSM)

But it's fine because it was on the floor.

Not even just lower income families though. School dinners are often only £2-3 and some parents will give out monry each day.

In your situation I wouldn't have done what the teacher did, but I do think it's a bizarre message to instil in your child that whatever has been dropped is theirs to keep.

Maisy
The money WAS NOT DROPPED IN THE SCHOOL
the money had no connection to the school
other than the fact that the teacher purloined it

The money was not found on school property. People want change turned in. To where? Where do you want me to take the tuppence I found on the street to?

The OP child is 8. Are we really concerned that in 16 years time she's going to leave college and say "oh, I don't need to get a job, I find enough "pennies" on the ground to fund my life". FFS. I think some people are just being deliberately provocative.

it's a bizarre message to instil in your child that whatever has been dropped is theirs to keep

I think there's a big difference between public space and private space. You find something in a school or a shop or a museum or someone's home, you hand it in. (If it's in someone's home you don't touch it at all.) If it's in the street and there's no chance of finding whose it is, then you can keep it.

I have run after someone in the street calling out and flapping a fiver, that fell out of their back pocket. But normally if there's 20p on the street nobody will ever be able to trace it.

The teacher is bang out of order and I would be in there telling her so.

Maisypops, let's just say that's what happened.
Child that has lost lunch money goes to the office and asks if anyone has handed in a pond coin. The answer is still and always will be no.
The teacher did not hand it in, never made the office aware, just put it in a tin.

People want change turned in. To where? Where do you want me to take the tuppence I found on the street to?

Perhaps that fabled place often talked about on MN that "logs" minor incidents. There is a person with a phone and a big logbook. They surely hold a big piggy bank. If you drop your bus money, you call and log it and later go to pick it up.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding

bebanjo
Didn't I JUST say that I would not have done what the teacher did.

I would have it passed to student reception for the reasons I outlined. If it wasn't claimed then it would probably eventually go in a charity box.

Fact is it's utterly weird to encourage your child to pick up any money theybsee because it's theirs.

ArcheryAnnie
I agree there's a difference between public and private.

It's an odd thing to do with your child though 'collect any coin you find to save for something... oh but I better point iut that sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's not, some sums of money are best handed in yo the shop you've seen it outside etc'

Just don't teach your kid to keep everytging thry see.

Even if the teacher had known the money was stolen she was wrong to donate it.

Anne steals from Ben and teacher gives the loot to Charlie. Still think she is right?

It's relative to the value of the money and the context of where it is found. In school £1 could be a significant sum towards lunch/ tuck shop/ charity donation, and is from a closed pool of people, so is worth handing in as there's a fair chance it could be reunited with its owner. On a pavement/ cycle path, the chance of it being of significant value and reunited with its original owner is very low. Except this £1 belonged to OP/ DD anyway.

I habitually check vending machines after use. I once found 50p/£1 after taking my chocolate which basically covered the cost of the bar. The chance of someone returning to the machine to look for the coin after an unknown quantity of time was low. More recently, the previous customer left a £5 note in a self service till but had gone before I realised their error. I handed it to a cashier as there was a more reasonable chance of the person identifying their lack of change and returning to find it. In the street, it's more likely to be blown away and far less likely to be found. As PPs have said, the police are unlikely to be interested in dealing with the most legal process of handing small sums in.

Picking up coins is not a slippery slope to serious crime

I'd politely explain the misunderstanding to the teacher. It wasn't her place to force a donation. (DS's teacher recently resolved a misunderstanding over one of our own books in DS's bag that was mistaken for school property. It was sorted pleasantly with little fuss in about one minute)

That’s really rude Belle

The money shouldn't have been in school. It is policy in my school to confiscate any money and keep it in the office until a parent comes in to the office to claim it, anything not collected by the end of that half term is donated, because there have been so many issues with children losing and finding money and arguing over who it belongs to and it wastes a lot of time.

Teaching children it's ok to keep things they find is iffy as well, ok the odd penny/2p is fine but half the issues with found money above were justified with 'but mum/dad lets me keep money i find', and a small child isn't going to understand £1 on a bike path where you have no chance of finding the real owner is different to £1 in the school cloakroom.

But no, teacher shouldn't have made DD donate it, she would have been perfectly reasonable to confiscate it til the end of the day though.

Well that's constructive belle. You are so insightful

I am mad because I think it's odd to have children seeking whatever they can off the floor? Fine.

I think there is difference between 'ooh look a 20p' as you walk home from the park and 'pick up as many 1p and 2ps as you can as you go through daily life and any coin you see is fair game'. One is a normal part of childhood, the other is a bit odd to me.

And I do think that children should hand in money they find in school if it's £1 or more as that's a reasonable chunk of someone's lunch money.