Was I right to tell nursery my three-year-old took toys?

[gollyimholly]

My DD turned 3 in March and has been going to a day nursery (mornings only) since then.
She has a bag that she takes to nursery at the beginning of the week and brings home on a Friday (unless she needs her clothes changed then it will come home with us on the day the mess was made to refresh the change of clothes in there). Last week I found 3 toys from nursery which she had clearly put in there. Probably not an important detail, but they were all very small toys: a small fabric flower, a little wind up plastic boat and then something that looked like it came from a Kinder Surprise egg.

I asked how they got in the bag. She said she put it in there. She said she liked them. I explained it was wrong to take nursery's things and that she would not like it if someone came to her house and put her toy in their bag etc.

This morning I told her nursery teacher what happened and gave back the toys, and said I would keep an eye out if it happened again.

DH thinks I shouldn't have mentioned it and should have just returned it more discreetly. He doesn't want her to get in trouble or be discriminated against. I wanted to teach DD it's important to tell the truth.

What would you have done in my situation?

Many thanks in advance

I think you did the right thing. The nursery won't mind, she's 3 and they do things like this at that age, and it's good for her to know that her mum and the nursery are both keeping an eye on things.

Yeah they all do this at this age.

nursery will be totally used to it.

Very normal nursery will think nothing of it

I'm an early years teacher and this happens all the time. Definitely the right call so that your DD can understand that those toys belong to the nursery. It's not a big deal for the staff at all.

You did the right thing.

My daughter had a love for little plastic dinosaurs in her reception year at school.
I think it's a learning curve - we cannot take things that don't belong to us... No punishment. Having teacher know is punishment enough.

Why on earth would this lead to the nursery discriminating against your daughter?

What you did was fine. This will happen all the time. It’s not something the nursery is going to “discriminate” against DD for, it’s not theft, small children don’t fully understand the concepts of “mine” and “not mine.” You’ve explained to DD that she can’t take other people’s things and the nursery will just similarly explain if they see her trying to take things home in the future.

We regularly have to frisk my three year old on the way out of nursery for toys. They do it all the time, nursery will be used to it.

It’s really normal and nursery’s are used to it, don’t think on it to much.

You did the right thing she won't get in trouble, little children are like magpies attracted to shiny things they also have very little concept of ownership and sometimes temptation is too much. I worked for 25 years in pre school and we often had to check pockets or bags in the way out !

Ah amazing, thanks everyone. That's put my mind at ease.

😂 your husband

I used to have to frisk my son for Lego at the end of a nursery day. Kids being kids.