To think school should be more responsible for my childs' stuff?

[Mama234567]

My son (nearly 6) keeps losing his coat outside at lunchtimes. Today it was raining all day so coat got carried home wet while he got rained on. Lunchbox keeps getting left in the hall. He's in year one and we did not have this problem in reception. He's also come home in another child's trousers instead of his own, I sorted this with other mum and we laughed about it.

I do think this is partly down to his personality and I tell him everyday remember your lunchbox etc.. but he's not the only one. Another parent has had an expensive logo jumper lost already.

YABU- son should be more responsible for his things.

YANBU- school should help more.

He's leaving his coat in the playground nearly every day?

Back to school for you.

The child is five years old and in year one.

YABU

Your son should be responsible for his things. They also need to be clearly labelled.

Do they have coat hooks with their name on it.

Label everything, don't send in expensive stuff.

Yes they need to focus less on education and focus more on helping your son not to lose things

You could ask the teacher about whether they use ‘reminder cards’ for anyone. I have used them for children who struggle to get everything together at the end of the day - they have a laminated picture of each thing they have to remember (some also had a tick box for each item) stick onto / inside their desk. It might be possible to have an ‘after break / after lunch’ one instead, perhaps by his peg, so he can check he has everything when the class gets in. It puts him in charge but is a structured reminder.

My oldest son used to do this. The amount of times we had to go and look around the school/playground. For years!!

It is not the schools responsibility.

You are being unreasonable. And you do need to teach your son how to be independent, even at this age.

That said, Dd2 had so many issues losing clothes when changing for PE, her teacher ended up giving her a specific space and a box to put her things in to try and contain the loss - she would flit around the room while changing. However, DD2 has send and do so this was a reasonable strategy out in place by the teacher. We just laughed off every incident of lost clothes and checked lost property very regularly.

Year one is is still very young. They’ve just moved from reception. With my DC, it seemed that the classes with the ‘better’ teachers had fewer losses. Lessons were structured, reminders were given and they were more switched on about who had which coat and so on. The poorer, less engaged teachers - less so 🤔 When I worked as a teacher, we’d have a weekly hand out of lost property in class last thing on a Friday. Most children were reunited with their lost sweater/cardi. It wasn’t hard
to do and took about 5 minutes on the carpet.

Have you ever tried keeping track of 30 kids, 30 coats, 30 lunch boxes, 30 jumpers, 30 pairs of shoes, 30 PE kits etc. saying, day out?

Teachers are not there to do that. They are there to teach, but if they had to keep track of every child's random crap all the time then precious little teaching would happen.

Your DS needs to learn to take some responsibility for his own stuff. If you notice he has come out of school without things then immediately send him back in to retrieve them himself. Really drum into him that this is now what must happen and what is expected of him.

Meant to say "day in, day out" if autocorrect hadn't jumped in there.

It isn't so polar as BU or not, it's a bit of both.

I speak as someone who has taught littlies and also in special school, but I also parent dc with ADHD and real issues with organisational skills.
Yes the dc need to be taught to be responsible for their things but the adults ought to do the "cast your eye around the room / playground / hall" thing as the dc leave (I'm including mid day supervisors in this).
I wouldn't 'blame' the school, or the child. I've always made my dc responsible for their own things, and sent them back in to look for things and put in place loads of frameworks to help them organise, but, at the end of the day is it an actual issue for some dc.
As a teacher though (incl long before I had my own dc) it is just automatic to scan the room before you leave, and to have systems in place where you can see if a child returns without their lunchbox or coat or whatever it is. None infallible it is true, but part of your role in education small people is helping them learn to take responsibility for their own independence and their own organisation, so I don't think you can say "not my job" or definitely not "they should be able to.....". You wouldn't say that about a child who struggles with other areas of their development, would you ?

I used to teach. The better schools have systems in place that help with this kind of thing. Like playground monitors (older children) whose job it is to do a quick scout of the playground/dinner hall at the end of breaks and reunite lost items with their owners or deposit them in a lost property box. It doesn't take long out of the day and stops 5 year olds being sent home with dripping wet coats.

Teachers shouldn’t leave kids jackets out to get rained on but it’s defo not done in purpose

when they get changed for PE tell ur son to look out for his name on the label u can order personalised label stickers from Amazon

My daughter is now 11 and I have lost count of the number of lunchboxes, coats, cardigans, pencil cases, trainers etc etc she has lost over the years. The water bottles alone is enough to supply the whole class I'm sure. Every time I make her look for the item, ask the teacher, search the school or replace it with her own money and yet it still keeps happening. Its just her personality. She's fed up of me nagging her but while it affects me and I have to deal with the fall out I will continue to be pissed off. In year 7 so far (4 weeks) she's lost a brand new padlock for her locker, her house keys (twice), her phone and her brand new calculator. These days they usually eventually turn up somewhere because she has to trawl the school looking for them. I refuse to buy new uniform (except shirts and shoes) because I'm buggered if I'm replacing brand new blazers and ties every term.

Her brother in year 3, by contrast, has never lost anything to my knowledge.

My DD was like this for the first couple of years, I don't think there was a single day in reception or Y1 when we didn't have to send her back inside to look for an item she'd left behind. By the end of Y2 not only was she still regularly leaving items behind but she'd managed to lose 4 of her 5 (named) school jumpers (we got 1 back several months later), & at least one shoe was never found. The teachers did try to help but she's just got no concentration (waiting for ADHD/ASD diagnosis). Eventually we told her that if we had to keep replacing items, she'd not get many/any Christmas presents. We simply couldn't afford it. She is much better now but she's in Y6 & occasionally still leaves things, loses them, etc. We had to get strict with her about it as we discovered part of the problem was that she wasn't putting her clothes down neatly when she got changed for PE, just dropped them on the floor. She was doing the same at home so we had to introduce some discipline if she did this, e.g. no TV that evening, to encourage better habits, it did help to some degree.

School will be helping as much as they can by telling the children to remember themselves. Beyond constantly reminding them, there’s nothing else the teachers and TAs can do unless you expect them to leave the classroom to go around trying to reunite coats with their owners.

It is especially ridiculous when parents complain about jumpers. Teachers have literally no chance of keeping up with that many identical jumpers. I’ve known parents to complain about new expensive logo jumpers when they haven’t even named them.

Teachers have literally no chance of keeping up with that many identical jumpers. I’ve known parents to complain about new expensive logo jumpers when they haven’t even named them.

This is the most annoying thing ever! It's almost worse than OFSTED. No name at all or faded permanent marker on a label and then expecting a small child to keep track of a jumper in a room of twenty something other jumpers.

My dd lost something once a month. So many school jumpers! I always made a huge effort to find them. I believe for sure that other parents must have found the extra jumpers at home and kept them. They finally stopped going missing when I sewed a card-sized pink scrap of fabric with her name embroidered inside the back.

Some children find organising themselves easy, some find it very difficult.

School do their best to provide a structured space and routine that helps children.

Still stuff is going to get lost, mixed up, left behind.

I used to send my child back in to find whatever item he had lost. I would happily look through lost property or in Secondary school strongly encourage my child to go and look (they would put it out in the main corridor one day of the week).

As my disorganised one got older I incentivised them through making them pay half to replace lost uniform. They got better.

A big part of year 1 is for them to learn to be responsible for themselves and their things. You want him to learn this lesson well!!! Trust me. I didn't hammer it in with my firstborn and she's double digits now but can't keep a pair of gloves for more than a day.😜

I have a DC like this!
Label, label, and label again. A big obvious sticker/label at the top, a stamp on the wash label, and a hidden tag in the pockets of coats. Then have doubles/spares for coats, water bottles, lunch boxes etc. The spare coat just needs to be a cheapy or second hand coat, although this year DD1 has last year's just-a-bit-too-small coat as her spare.
I would expect lunchtime staff to give the playground a quick glance over, bring in any left items, and return them to pegs if the owner is easily identifiable (or chucked in lost property if not!). If lost items are clearly labelled, they will find their way home within a day or two IME. Their responsibility ends there though, barring negligence.

It is still worth speaking to the school from the perspective of your DS struggling with his organisational skills if his peers are otherwise managing OK. My DD was identified a couple of years ago by school as having very poor working memory (and now 2 yrs on is in the process of being assessed for ADHD and ASD, of which executive function issues play a big part of her struggles), meaning she forgot at least one item every day. School can introduce really simple things like a 'going home checklist' to help him remember what needs to be done. It means they are still being independently responsible for their things, but just prods their memory into action a bit. My DD still forgets things fairly often, but it has been much better since the laminated transition sheets were introduced.

We had a whole school email of 11 unnamed coats they had retrieved from the school field the other day...

My eldest was like that. Complete nightmare he got on the school bus as well so I couldn’t check at the end of the day. Coats fleeces jumpers kept on wearing indoor shoes home so I would send them back in his bag wearing other shoes/ wellies. Till he had no shoes left at home apart from plimsoles. Water bottles too.If it helps he is fairly organised at 12.

But he’s age FIVE. Five year olds shouldn’t be responsible for the amount of stuff that the schools demand they look after. They’re simply too little.

An eight year old? Sure. A FIVE year old? No no. Someone should be looking after him. It’s not his fault that schools have stupid uniform policies so everyone’s stuff looks the same, and that decades of funding cuts have meant he’s probably a class of thirty instead of 12-20.