5 year old stealing?

[Dundonald]

Dear Mums,

Our five-year old son occasionally goes to after-school. A number of times he brought home some other child's book/small toy. When asked, he would insist that these things just "fell" into his school bag. He persistently denies having stolen these items or wanting to steal them. He is absolutely fine about returning them. We repeatedly told him how bad stealing was, and he seems to understand.

When we pick our son up from school, he nearly always leaves the school building with an open school bag (as do some of his class-mates, esp. boys). We already lost some school notes because of that. This fact might give some credibility to our son's story about things "falling" into his school bag - as far-fetched as it otherwise might sound.

My spouse and I disagree as to how to treat these incidents. We are not sure if this is the beginning of some serious thieving and requires a hard-line approach or if it is normal for five-year-olds to bring home other children's belongings without any intention of stealing.

When our son was 4 years old, he once did steal a lollipop from a shop after we had refused to buy it for him. Back then we had some serious discussions with him about stealing and made him go back to the shop with us in order to apologise and return the item. After that he seemed to have got the message, and there were no more incidents .. until recently when books etc. started "falling" into his bag...

Please advise what you think. Thanks a lot in advance.

If you have not already tried this how about......

checking his bag as he leaves school everyday, telling him, while you do it that you have to be careful nothing has 'fallen' into his bag as it might look like he had stolen it and that would be terrible wouldn't it. Etc etc. You could get him to help you and to agree with you that it would be awful if someone thought he was stealing.
Telling your son how proud you are that DH, DF, DB (whoever fits your circumstances). are honest and trustworthy. Do this really regularly.
Bring up the lollipop incident and how you are glad that he would not do something like that now that he is more sensible.

Basically bore him into submission.

I wouldn't worry about it too much though TBH

It's very usual at that age.

I have a friend who, very embarrassed, took back something her reception age son had lifted from the classroom, to be told by the teacher "Oh, that's normal, some parents have to bring back stuff almost daily."

She told him off, the teacher (to the child) said that she was disappointed to find he'd taken it. He's never done it again.

I used to help in a reception form as voluntrary work when I was 6th form. They were doing money with plastic coins. The stock depleted very rapidly and they found a lot of the children were taking pocket loads home-they thought it was real money. This was a "nice" private school, so they weren't short of money.

The important thing is to take it back. That way he's not getting away with it. But I think checking his bag before you leave the school is a good idea. that way he gets stopped in his tracks immediately.

Thank you, DeWe and ParkbenchSociety, for your useful advice. It's good to know that we are not the only ones....