To expect nursery not to stain ALL the clothes?

[Hollyisalrightactuallysorry]

Posting this as I genuinely am not sure if IABU

DS1 is 4 and DS2 is 20 months. DS1 went to a nursery where we used to live. No issues, fairly run of the mill. All of his old clothes are now being worn by DS2.

New nursery started 4 months ago for both. Again, no major concerns and kids have settled in nicely

Except, DS2 comes home with at least 2 bagged up bundles of clothes each day and is usually wearing his 3rd set. On washing the clothes, almost all of them are covered in paint. And this paint does NOT come out. I've tried everything!

I've just counted and DS2 now has just 4 t shirts and 2 pairs of shorts that aren't stained. And I'm talking quite badly, not just flecks.

I've brought this up with the nursery and they've sort of taken the attitude that I should expect clothes at nursery on a 20 month old to get ruined and therefore should just keep sending him in wearing the stained but clean clothes

The problem is that they are going through so many clothes each day that I end up inevitably sending him wearing something not stained and begging them to put overalls on.

I don't understand how DS1 wore these clothes for a whole season without getting a single stain on them and we are now not able to get through a single day without something being ruined.

I don't know what else to do. I've asked for overalls to be worn and asked why they don't use washable paint. They say they'll water the paint down but the latest bags of clothes are also ruined

AIBU to expect nursery to take a bit of care when using materials that stain?

YABU- pretty usual at nursery at that age
YANBU-I'd raise it with management again

I saw pictures of my daughter doing messy play with aprons on yet her clothes were still covered.

I don't care about stained clothes at all. But getting through three sets a day would annoy me. I just send DD in with one spare set, if she gets that dirty they put her in spare nursery clothes which I wash and return, but it's only happened once or twice. It wouldn't occur to me to pack multiple changes.

It's annoying, used to happen all the time at my dd nursery, so I went to primark and got loads of cheap t-shirts and leggings and would only send her in that stuff.

I used to buy second hand cheaper things to send mine to nursery. Asda also did very cheap clothes that seemed to wash up well.

Clothes always were stained, painted on and snipped sometimes.

Nursery clothes were used separately from home clothes.

We have a few children sent into nursery with gorgeous clothes that are white, eg white t shirt and shorts, white dresses and then say my mum said I’ve not to get dirty!

with both mine I bought clothes specifically for nursery and that’s what they wore each day, they got changed when they got home and it didn’t matter if they got dirty. (This was before I worked in early years)

I'd be concerned at them coming home clean, what were they not allowed to do.
Just have some clothes with 'clean stains' and keep them for nursery. It'll be the same at infant school, white shirts and whiteboard pens are never a good combination but as long as they're washed a mark doesn't really matter.

There's a massive gulf between coming home spotless and going through multiple outfits on a daily basis though. Much the same as there being a difference between my DD coming out of nursery with felt tip pen marks on her face Vs her lunch dried on to her cheek - one is a sign she's had a good day of activities, the other is a sign that the staff haven't even wiped her face since lunchtime.

Some people can't afford to keep buying clothes, no matter how "cheap" they are purely for the purpose of being destroyed when there is a simple alternative of putting the child in appropriate protective clothing for the activity to save their clothes from getting destroyed.

DD went to nursery in Spain where they all wear pinafores/smock jackets over their clothes which they put on when they arrive and take off when they leave so other than the occasional small stain - usually where something had soaked through during a longer play session or if it hadn't been noticed - DD came home spotless on a daily basis meaning her daily clothes and her nursery clothes were one and the same.

Obviously I knew there was always a chance of stains/marks so she always had some clothes "for best" that would never be worn to nursery and she always had a spare set of clothes at school for accidents/emergencies but otherwise her entire wardrobe was OK to be worn anywhere, and I didn't have to spend exorbitant amounts repeatedly rebuying clothes for the purpose of being stained/destroyed not spend every day doing laundry to return extra sets of clothes.

Her pinafores came home absolutely destroyed and were permanently stained but I would rather have destroyed pinafores/smocks that literally exist for that purpose than have had to keep buying her new clothes because the others were absolutely destroyed.

Why are you repeatedly buying clothes? For most people it isn't an option. Keep some clothes for nursery, with 'clean stains' and some for home, just as you will when they're at school.

You're welcome, hope it works for you 😊

Why are you repeatedly buying clothes?

Presumably because of the quantity of clothes being sent home on a daily basis the OP does not have enough clothes/time to ensure home clothes don't become nursery clothes.

I have lived in a flat with no tumble dryer nor outside drying space not that we could use any outdoor space anyway as it rains 24/7 here and clothing takes up to 24 hrs to dry on airers in the house and unless it's the middle of winter I am not putting the heating on just to dry clothes as I can't afford it especially if I'm using all my money on laundry every day.

If DD was still in nursery and I was getting 3 sets of clothes went home on a dail basis then I would need a minimum of 9 outfits for nursery and that's provided that I could wash everything daily (3 outfits at nursery that day, three in the wash from the previous day, three dry(ing) from the day before and waiting to go back to nursery when the current items are all handed back dirty ... All it would take is not doing laundry one evening or something coming back beyond repair/washing to mean that I might need to send in a non-nursery outfit knowing it is going to be ruined.

Even stained items that you keep specifically for nursery can only be washed and worn stained for so long before it is just stain upon stain upon stain and the clothes no longer look just stained but constantly dirty/unwashed (even if they are fresh out of the machine). At that point you have to discard them because otherwise people are going to take one look at your child and assume they're neglected because of the state of the clothes they're in.

Honestly if its as mad as it sounds I think I would just stop sending in spares at all, just tell them you can't keep up with it anymore so one outfit if his clothes get dirty dont worry about it. If they still insist on changing him multiple times with their own clothes I'd wash and return in a batch that was convenient for me.

We have a separate drawer with all the stained clothes in that get worn to nursery - I wouldn't get het up over this.

And when your child refuses to wear an apron or takes their bib off multiple times what do you expect? It's not just your child. The staff can't be on every child ensuring their bib stays on. If they have to leave the painting area to help another child then it only takes seconds for a child to get messy.
I will never understand parents who moan about their child coming home in dirty clothes. You need to find an alternative childcare option. If you don't want your child messy, then nursery is the wrong choice.

As I've said several times, I've taught EYFS. I know exactly what it's like to have 30 little ones under my care. I don't care a jot about the odd stain, but there is one room at my children's nursery where the children's clothes get absolutely ruined, which is a mild irritation given the other rooms manage just fine. Not putting a bib on a 13 month old is laziness (and my children are not bib/apron refusers, the nursery have told me they don't use them).

Mine nursery had cotton overalls you bought as part of the uniform which were used for any messy play and lunch, it wasn’t difficult, it was normal practise. Everyone has just got lazy these days. One of the top nurseries in the area at the time. Lots of messy play but no ruined clothes.

I would find this maddening. I liked my sons to look nice - not wearing clothes covered in stains. I also don't expect to be constantly washing. The non-washable paint and no aprons would give me rage. All this stuff about children getting messy exploring their world is just an excuse for lazy childcare and just part of the reliance on fast cheap disposable synthetics building up in our landfills. Yes, my sons were forever putting the knees out of their jeans from climbing trees or whatever but 3-4 sets of badly stained clothes per day is just madness. The Hungarian run creche my children went to and adored would never have dreamt of this kind of behaviour. One of them went to a more liberal Anglo-Saxon establishment too and they didn't do this either. Obviously, I didn't send them in "good" clothes.

Sorry but this just reminds me of television ads where children and husbands make mess and the woman just gives a crooked grin and cleans it up herself using the new wonder product. My husband and children would be cleaning up their own mess.

Agree that it’s normal for some nursery clothes to get ruined but it’s not normal to get multiple sets of dirty clothes sent home at the end of the day (as in dirty from activities, not from toilet training etc). It’s great they are doing messy play, and even with smocks kids get messy here and there, but it’s lazy to use poster paints etc with toddlers without putting those plastic smocks on them. My ds is on the messier end of the spectrum and still I don’t remember many days of nursery where he got so messy from activities that they had to change his clothes. They did use plastic smocks for paint etc.

You sound fun lol.

Some of my kid’s clothes get stains on them from when he’s taken his apron off and as he’s growing out of them, I donate them back to the nursery. They always need spare clothes for the kids as psrents don’t always return them and I feel better thst they are being used again. Life is too short to worry about some mess.