Fucking school jumpers

[Merryoldgoat]

I know this is boring but it’s driving me insane.

My son has just gone into year 1. All new uniform including 3 branded jumpers.

Everything is properly labelled with his full name.

All three have gone already and he’s instead come back with three other, older, unlabelled jumpers.

He’s only 5, has some SN so finds getting dressed tricky so I know it’s just as likely him picking up the wrong one.

However, wouldn’t you go find the other parent if your child cane back with their jumper so we could swap back?

I have two AIBUs:

AIBU to ask why you don’t label your child’s jumper? It’s piss easy and means you’ve got a chanc to get it back.

AIBU to label every unlabelled jumper that comes back with my son’s name until they’re basically all his?

When our SN child started we took all his jumpers to a local shop and they embroidered his initials on the side just above the waistband - it only cost a couple of pounds per jumber.

Teacher said it was a godsend and wishes everyone did it.

At dgc's school he was taught in Yr R, last year, to take his PE kit out of his bag, put his shoes in the bag followed by the rest of his uniform then put the bag on his chair and to do the same when changing back after PE except the bag went back onto his peg rather than the chair. There are no pieces of loose clothing in the room and it makes it more difficult for the dc to accidently put on someone else's clothes. He has continued to do the same this year, I am glad to say. His uniform looks like he has slept in it on PE days but at least he didn't lose anything last year. Both his dm and I have tried to teach him to fold clothes, but he wants to be the first to get changed and just scrunches them up and shoves them in the bag so he can get ready asap. He did come out wearing the wrong coat but luckily both his coat and the other child's were labelled and easily swapped the next day.
I was surprised at the large pile of lost clothing, mainly swetshirts/cardigans, on the table in the classroom at the end of each term. All unclaimed uniform Yr R and nursery uniform was put in the spares box at the end of the year, which I thought was a sensible idea. I don't know what they do with found clothing further up the school, I assume there is a lost property box in the office but will find out, as we might not be so lucky this year.

My DS lost his football gloves once. I had written his name inside them but also put a ‘hidden’ mark deep inside one of the fingers. A couple of weeks later I was rummaging in the lost property box when I found them - but with another boy’s name sticker on. I turned them inside out and lo and behold there was the hidden mark! The Mum must have seen my DS’s name when she put her own name sticker on!

In reception my son twice came home in an greyish Aldi polo top instead of his white Marks and Spencer brand new ones, they were clearly labelled but we never got them back even after the teacher asked parents to check. I highly doubt any mother or father woudlnt have noticed when doing the laundry.
some parents really have no shame.
I now buy cheaper clothes and surprise surprise they always come back.

YANBU. The logo’ed stuff is expensive!

When my DC bring home other kids’ clothes, I always wash, dry and iron the item, put it in a freezer bag, label the bag with the child’s name and send it back in their book bag. If there’s no name: no send-out laundry service but they do get sent back.

It’s really annoying when my kids’ named stuff goes missing entirely. I usually find lost items in the lost property box but there have been times when another child has taken something home and I don’t get it back until the end of the year when the child’s grown out of it

3 jumpers in less than 2 weeks?
Bollocks to that
My kid would be wearing plain supermarket ones until the property was returned.

(regardless of the rules)

My kids don't have to wear uniforms but they have still lost plenty of clothes over the years..
DD in particular is very disorganised and has lost many cardigans. Thankfully they don't change clothes for PE .
I had an item of clothing appear in my house once. It was a lovely white Abercrombie and Fitch sleeveless hoodie. I found it hanging up under the stairs, under a load of other coats.
I have no idea how it got there. I asked everyone I could think of who had been in my house during the previous year. There was no name in it and I'm only now thinking that perhaps DD wore it home from school. Although I would have noticed her wearing a coat that was not hers.

Anyway. When no one claimed it DD started to wear it to school and after a couple of wears she left it behind and we never saw it again. If it did come from school hopefully the rightful owner got it back.

OP is there a school parents fb group
Ours is 95% "who's got little Johnny's jumper?" posts
It helps things find their way back

I am a teacher and I always tell parents to Sharpie the name in LARGE BOLD letters on the inside of the jumper band, hem of the T shirt etc.

We have spare uniform labelled with the class name on the OUTSIDE in Sharpie and parents have sent their children to school wearing them a couple of weeks after their child has borrowed them as if we're not going to notice!

Reading this thread with interest for when mine eventually gets to school age!
For shoes, could you perhaps use a soldering iron to burn initials into the sole (somewhere in the middle of the shoe which is unlikely to get worn down?)

I'm not sure it happens everywhere, but at the DCs infants and then separate junior schools, the kids were given a 60 second countdown clock to get dressed or undressed in for PE. I didnt believe DS the first time he told me, but one afternoon it was my turn in the parent rota to listen to the kids read and I saw it myself.
I can safely say the Year 2 classes were chaos. Kids were either seeing it as a challenge and throwing clothes everywhere trying to beat the clock (mostly the boys) or crying about it. Anyone not dressed or undressed in that time had their name written on the board, and lost their "golden time" at the end of the week. If getting undressed was bad, getting dressed when there were clothes everywhere was even worse. I had wondered why every week after PE Ds had his shirt inside out yet partly buttoned and no socks on and shoes round the wrong way. It all made sense. There were more tears again as of course stuff went missing. They did the same after swimming too so they all were damp all day.
Even the classroom assistant thought it was stupid.

School have partly addressed it now by requiring all PE kit to be embroidered on the outside with owners name (uniform shop do it) .Problem is it means kit cannot be passed on
You can shave the back of the name then unpick from the front. I've bought kit second hand then had it embroidered with my child's name. Saved £20 on PE kit.

Interesting that PE kit at secondary was never lost. That had to have initials and surname embroidered by the school uniform shop when it was purchased. In gold on the front of each item.
Ours still went missing and never turned up.

My primary school has the excellent rule that children wear their PE kit into school on PE days ... saves time changing and has reduced our lost property box by about 3/4.

Wind

I posted on the Facebook page and the silence is deafening.

I actually went to the lost property and took two unlabelled jumpers. If I get my son’s back then I’ll return them.

I like your idea though about the unbranded one - I think I might do that actually.

You can buy big round stick on shoe labels that are hard to peel off. In fact you have to wait 24 hours after applying before wearing them so that they are adhesive enough. If you get them in a bright colour with one of those little symbols(flower train etc) they are more distinctive.Never thought of writing with a sharpie under the label-brilliant! Dcs can recognise their label and then if it does get nabbed you're covered twice! Sharpies are good but dcs don't notice names if all the same. Could use a different coloured sharpie instead of the standard black...

It really is infuriating. Mine lost 4 jumpers over a couple of weeks but only recovered 2, a newe fleece, (this was returned the following day with dinner all down the front and a broken zip) and a brand new pair of shoes. The thing is, the shoes mine came home in were very worn and two sizes too big. So the other child was wearing shoes that were too small; how can a child not realise that? and how can a mother not spot the sudden newness? Buying two pairs of Clarks' shoes in a week was ridiculous. I started labelling on the outside of clothes after that.

Sharpie all the way round the inside collar.

I write on the outside of trainers. And sew name tags on the outside of PE stuff.

I agree with name on outside where you can as well as back of neck.
Generally speaking clothes used to make their way back.
I have three DC ; DD was pretty good about not mislaying things, DS1 had a tendency to bring extra stuff home so I was always washing extra shorts/ jumpers etc and sending them back. DS2 was the one who would come home with one item in his pe bag! Usually another parent would have washed and sent back but every few weeks I would have to go in and trawl through lost property , on the whole everything would turn up.
Senior school has proved trying for kit, there are so many places for things to go missing.!

My daughter always used to lose hers.
The shop we have them from now embroiders names underneath the school Badge for an extra charge.
Well worth it!

It doesn't change in secondary school.My DD has lost 2 or shirts,someone must be taking 2 home but they never reappear in lost property,they are labelled.

Sharpie on the ribbing around the neck. Really large letters around the whole back bit.

In the early years our classes had a washing basket that had jumpers etc in and every friday we'd root about and find some.

Do you have a FB page for the class that you can post a message on? Ours was always ''Fred has come home with Bob's left plimsoll (usually 2 sizes too small) and one of his own''. How do kids even do that? My son came home with 1 sock one day and they hadn't even had PE.

My DSs go to a fairly expensive independent school. People still nick the uniform and it isn't through lack of money.

One year we had a brand new expensive coat go missing in the first week of term. Clearly labelled. It came back to us on the final day of term - the following year!!!

This used to piss me off too. I ended buying second hand! It is parents fault for not returning brand new labelled clothes.

@cloudtree - that is terrible!!!