Grandson's coat stolen/taken by mistake at school

[Onthecarpet2002]

We bought our 7 year old dgs a lovely coat for school, he's only had it a couple of weeks. Not too expensive as it was in the sale.
He's been in tears all evening as he went to his peg & it was gone. I bet the parents don't send it back. You want your children look nice for school & be warm, but it just seems these days you think what is the point. You may as well get stuff from a charity shop for school, even though your dc might be embarrassed about it.
If we buy him another one I'll be soo mad if that goes missing too. I never had these sort of problems 20 odd years ago when my own dc were at school 😡

If it had the child's name in, chances are you will get it back.

Wait until you've spoken to school before catastrophising.

Mistakes happen all the time at primary school. Hopefully you will get it back on Monday

Coats often go missing.
They get left in playgrounds and rounded up by lunch staff and make their way to lost property over a day or two
They also get knocked off pegs, picked up and put on the wrong one. They often sit for a few days until a child notices and again eventually it gets back to its owner.
At our school there are loads of coats on lost property. Have seen many in there that parents complain are stolen on the WhatsApp group.
Check lost property yourself. Don't rely on a child as they lift the lid poke a couple of times then wander off

Do you normally catastrophise this much? There’s no evidence whatsoever from you you say to think this is anything more than a temporary case of kids getting coats mixed up. He’ll probably have it back on Monday, if it’s labelled. I can assure you it happened all the time during my primary school days in the 70s. Half of us were permanently in someone else’s PE kit or jacket.

Jesus what an overreaction! My DD attends creche where we hang her coat on a peg with her picture and name on it, and have still managed to come home with the wrong coat sometimes. It's a mistake, these things happen, not everyone in the world is out to get you!

At our school there’s a regulation coat so they are all identical. I’ve airtagged our coat and it’s labelled multiple times with sew in labels.

Some parents at our school are very slow to return stuff- they know it’s not their coat but say things like ‘well if I hand back James’ coat to James what will Boris wear until his comes back?’ Funnily enough there’s a high correlation between this behaviour and parking on the zig zag lines outside school…

When I was a Deputy Head we had a large number of unclaimed coats. They would be handed into lost property, found in cloakrooms, classrooms, corridors, the Hall, the playground. Parents would hand them in having found them at home. If there was an obvious name we would try to return them but often there wasn't. It might well turn up on Monday. Definitely worth asking if you/DGS can look through lost property coats. It is unusual, especially amongst younger children, for a coat to be stolen.

Your DGS is in tears because you're making a big drama out of someone accidentally taking his coat. For the love of god stop it. It's really not a big deal.

It's been one day! Massive overreaction.

It’s probably on a different peg, left in the playground or under a table or something, it’ll almost certainly reappear. I’d be incredibly surprised if it was deliberately stolen or not returned. You are massively overreacting.

You’re also unreasonable to send something you’re going to be precious about into school in the first place - stuff gets lost or damaged in schools and Granny kicking off makes it worse for the child. He’s seven, he almost certainly doesn’t care about branded coats or looking nice for school and would happily wear something cheap. He can look perfectly nice and stay perfectly warm and dry in a second hand coat or one from a supermarket…

This is very dramatic. I really doubt it's been stolen. If it's got his name on I don't think it'll be missing long.

My sons coat turned up after a year of being missing......ask the teachers to put a message out on the school network x

I can't tell if this is a joke 😂. What a lot of drama! He's probably just lost it or someone has picked it up by mistake.

Another child has probably got the same coat at home and taken it by mistake - or it's fallen off the peg and it will turn up

I remember one half term (and it was this time of year) when my son came home carrying his coat, hung it up before I realised it was the wrong size - it was 9-10 and he was 5. The other boy had taken the smaller one - first day after half term they swapped back

@Onthecarpet2002 I went to grandsons school one monday morning with a freshly ironed shirt (someone else's) and a freshly washed shool jumper (again someone else's) over my arm ready to give to the teacher!! he was wearing the shirt on friday after pe with his own shirt in his bag and he hadnt even worn a jumper to school that day! that is what happens when they are 5 or 6 or 7!

He's been in tears all evening as he went to his peg & it was gone. I bet the parents don't send it back. You want your children look nice for school & be warm, but it just seems these days you think what is the point. You may as well get stuff from a charity shop for school, even though your dc might be embarrassed about it

I can understand you being upset/annoyed about the coat but I think it's awful for you to "bet" the parents won't send it back. Do you always assume the worst in other people? I also don't like your comment about getting stuff from a charity shop for school and the dc being embarrassed about it. I wonder if you are being deliberately goady.

If you're not being deliberately goady and trying to wind people up wait until Monday. Most likely (because most people are good, despite what you seem to think), it will turn up on Monday. You can put a message in the class WhatsApp group if there is one or you can ask the teacher to look out for it. Sometimes they fall on the floor and end up hung up on the wrong peg or taken to lost property.

Very normal! First week of term this year my son managed to lose 4 of his 5 jumpers. By the end of the 2nd week we had 8 😂
I am sure it will turn up and please do not make so much of a drama about it!

My son lost his favourite hoodie at football camp this week. He was sad, but nobody died and it's replaceable.

I was at school over 20 years ago and was always losing my coat!

I also have taught this age group for years and they dgaf about their coats so constantly going missing or taking each others home. It's probably still in the school on the wrong peg.

Chill out it's the weekend!

A few weeks ago I had a mum email me carrying on that her son had had two coats stolen and what was I going to do about it? She was fed up with the other parents and kids taking her son’s things etc.

I informed her that one was most likely the coat on his peg which he had refused to acknowledge was his, even though it had his name it and I had handed to him at home time. The other one had just been returned to my room after he had left it in the middle of the playground.

What makes you so certain it was taken from his peg and it isn’t that he left it outside or somewhere else then forgot it?

A seven year old is more likely to forget their coat than care enough about anyone else’s coat that they want to steal it.

Unless you were in school and saw it be taken, you have no business accusing others of theft. If it was named securely, it will find its way back to you.

He's been in tears all evening as he went to his peg & it was gone

Is there any chance he took it off at playtime and left it outside. This happens all of the time, even on the coldest of days.

Then if they aren't named it's hard to get them back to the right classroom before home time.

If I had a pound for every time a parent claimed a coat had definitely been taken from someone's hook and it turned up in the bottom of the playground, the dinner hall, beside the football goals etc, I would be a very rich person. Oh and I would like a pound for every time a parent claimed a piece of property was labelled and when it was eventually found, it was not.

More than 20 years ago my son came home without his school shirt (after p.e.) - his one had the name stitched in by sewing machine. We never got that shirt back so I'm afraid OP this is not a new thing. Hopefully the coat has been taken in error and it will come back.

It may yet turn up. I still feel terrible when I discovered a coat in our cloakroom at home. It was the same as DDs except DD had hers on and it was a different size.
It had the owners name inside and in the sleeves. God knows how long it had been there as we had 3 adults and 4 kids at home, so we had layers and layers of coats. It was a really good John Lewis coat as well. I handed it into school reception the next day with a note.....

Go in and have a look. My kids primary had 4 separate cloakrooms, each with huge lost property bins in. The number of times their stuff would go missing and turn up in another part of the school at some point.