New coat gone missing

[potaufeu]

Ds went to school today wearing his brand new wintercoat we bought last weekend. I appreciate they are out a lot so we bought a really good and IMO quite expensive coat (approx. £80).

At pick up there was no sign of the coat. His teacher said that it would probably turn up as another child might have borrowed it

Stupidly, I didn't put ds' name in the coat as I was pretty sure that he is the only one in his class in this specific coat.

What to do? Buy another coat this weekend or do you think it will turn up (quite soon)? Teacher wasn't too worried and said he could borrow a coat tomorrow if I didn't have a spare (which I don't have).

You don't just label things so to ensure they don't get muddled with a similar one belonging to someone else in the class, you label everything so that when it gets left in random place (playground, loos, dinner hall) it can be returned. You can't expect staff to memorize what kind of coat every pupil owns just to save the parents the 20 seconds it would take to label it!

In your situation I would go out and buy a cheap/second hand coat for him to wear for the time being and just hope that the £80 will somehow make its way back to your DS.

I would never ever send my child to school in a "good" coat - cheapy black Tescos coat for school, then if it goes missing it is no big loss coz sure as eggs is eggs that coat won't get nicked

Hope it turns up

I would agree that 'someone else may have borrowed it' means in teacher speak 'it is quite possible that someone else might have left school with it today (or it might have been picked up and hung on the wrong peg or left on the playground outside at lunchtime), and any mix-up is almost certainly an accident so it is better to say 'borrowed' rather than 'stole' as even if it left with someone else there is almost certainly no intent'. I would not expect it to be used in the sense of 'I actively lent it to someone else' as there is almost always a known pool oif tatty coats kept in school which are the loan pool.

Buy a cheap coat, and then name it. As well as naming it, do something that makes it recognisable to your child e.g. a special toy on the zip or mittens on a string or a sewn-on reflective patch.

Also, after the weekend, scour the school - lost property, other classrooms, lunch hall, anywhere where coats are hung up anywhere in the school. Without a name, if your child took off their coat and left it on the playground, nobody evenb knows which class the child might be in - so the coat is taken in by a harassed dinner time supervisor at the end of her working day, and left somewhere 'sensible'.... which as there was no name on the coat, won't be your child's classroom. Our lunchtime supervisors finish work 5 minutes after the bell goes for the end of lunch, and teachers then teach for the afternoon. A misplaced coat at lunchtime falls between responsibilities and can end up ANYWHERE!!

He probably took it off at lunchtime and left it somewhere. As it's not labelled it couldn't be returned. Look in lost property. I would buy another (cheaper) coat for school.

Any update?

I have written in knickers/vests and on hairslides

i also purposefully bought an £8 coat from tescos/asda for the children to wear to school. given the state it comes home in sometimes, occasionally needing a wash over night it was a good move. I put them in an extra vest/tights/thermals on cold days. ds's coat is labelled in 2 inch high letters in purple markerpen as i forgot until the first day of nursery.

Under what circumstances would someone send a child to school in an 80 quid coat?

It is in this case. What kind of idiot teacher 'loans' coats out?!? She needs to develop a routine to stop this rubbish. This is something I would speak to the head about actually.

Do people actually read the posts properly!?

Best advice I had from school was label everything, right down to knickers! I've just bought DD a new coat, which will be for school, spending £18 (ASDA :o)) and I'm sewing at least 3 labels into it in different places, and using a permanent marker inside the pockets just in case it goes missing. Call me paranoid, but stuff goes missing at school all the time - I remember losing loads of stuff when I was school, and £18 is a lot of money to spend on replacement coats every week or so.

It is amazing how many parents don't label any school clothing then blame the teacher for not knowing which of the identical school sweatshirts/fleeces/coats is their child's.

The teacher didn't say she'd loaned it out. She said 'another child might have borrowed it'. Not at all the same!

Thank you all for your responses. For the record, yes, I clearly should have labelled the coat, I didn't and have learnt my lesson for the rest of ds school career.

Yesterday his teaching assistant and I have looked absolutely everywhere, inside and outside and all the different classrooms, corridors etc. We found all kind of stuff (especially a lot of single socks and even a number of underpants) but no sign of the coat.

Apparently what happened is that lots of kids hadn't brought in a coat and because it is was chilly and the teaching assistant had to take half of the class outside (it is school practice that groups of kids are taught outside) and they didn't have enough spare school coats she told the others just to grab a coat from one of the pegs. She was very apologetic and thinks that the kid who borrowed ds coat then later took that coat home probably thinking it was his. Anyway, she did say it was not normal practice and that normally they expect to have sufficient spare coats but because it was such miserable weather and so many kids without a coat, they had a real problem.

School has offered me a choice of the spare coats but I have decided to buy another coat. Unfortunately this is clearly not a very good time, because my local Asda and Tesco did not have school coats any more (not in store anyway). I have just returned from M&S with coat and tomorrow DS is going to customise the coat with reflective stick ons and I have already written his name in the lining.

I have a stash of coats in class to lend to children, they were outgrown by my son.
Children sometimes borrow coats without asking, they just take the one on a peg. In the same way that they come home with shoes and bookbags that aren't theirs.

I think the coat will turn up eventually unless you are very unlucky.

just wanted to say sorry for the pasting you got about not labelling the coat. I buy the embroidered labels and machine sew them in, have found that that way most 'lost' stuff finds its way back to me.

It is usually abandoned by DS about the premises and can take a day or two to be discovered so do persevere. I do hope you get your original coat back one way or the other - do let us know!

If you do have an expensive coat, can I suggest that you go with the two label approach... one on the collar and another sewn into the sleeve or inside the pocket. We have known parents to cut our the collar label but not realise there was another in the sleeve so the coat could be returned to its real owner.

Hi potaufeu,
My little one has had this happen to two coats in the last two days! Both of which are clearly labelled with his name. School were quite blasé about it, but I'm really not happy. I searched all the pegs and lost property and neither coat turned up, which leaves me to assume someone has taken them.

I can understand you must be gutted at not naming the coat, but as you can see from my experience, it STILL happened, even though both my sons coats were labelled!
I've read all the posts here and felt the need to stick up for you. I'm sure all the other mums on here who are so quick to criticise are just perfect and never make a mistake, but in the real world, real mums do. I'm sure you came on here and posted assuming you would get some support and abit of empathy, but I'm quite shocked at the number of fellow mums who seem to delight in pointing out the flippin OBVIOUS of 'oh, how could you be so ridiculous not labelling the coat' and 'why would you buy an £80 coat for a reception age child?'
What utter self opinionated, patronising nonsense. Let's face it, we've ALL done something we've later thought we could've done better, but you don't need your nose rubbing in it or a schoolmaster lecture!
I don't think it's ridiculous to spend whatever pounds on your childs coat. It's your child!
Sorry for the ramble, but it just winds me up when mums in particular enjoy belittling other mums to make themselves feel superior.
That behaviour should've been left behind when they were at school losing their own coat......grow up! Isn't the whole purpose of this site to empower mums and build confidence?
Anyway! I hope the coat turns up soon and in the meantime, don't worry about being perfect, cos I'm unaware of anyone who is!
And just one more thing....I'm sure whilst all the perfect mums who have criticised you were busy labelling their children's underwear, you were busy playing with your children and having fun. I know which mum I would want!

Take care,

Sarah
=o)

Potaufeu If you are not big on sewing (like me) then you could try these they are great, quick and easy to put on so now I can label things twice for all 4 of my DCs clothes. Agree with last poster though coats/jumpers etc go missing at school even when named they do eventually turn back up (DSs school jumper showed up 6 weeks later washed and ironed on the top of the lost property box) people do just neglect to check labels sometimes although not sure this would be true in your case but their DC could have said it was a spare school coat little reception children do get muddled sometimes

Why doesn't the teacher put a note in the cloakroom stating that X's coat has gone missing and a description of it. This is what happens at DC's school and hopefully someone with any decency would realise that it is not a school spare and return it.

Anyhow despite things being labelled they still get mixed up. DS returned home with 2 right shoes on the other day despite being covered in sharpie marker, luckily mum with 2 left shoes realised and they were swapped back the next day. I was astounded that both the boys didn't realise that they were wearing a wrong shoe on one side and it would of been rather uncomfortable as they were different sizes. Only saving grace is they were the same shoe.

There are about 8 children in yr1 all wearing a particular blue coat from Next, my two boys have ski style jackets from Costco so they are very different than other coats.

I have lots of different styles of name tags, sew in, iron on, transfer (white onto black socks) shoe labels and a black sharpie and label stuff in really obvious places and with coats, some less obvious places

I make sure that they are very school like coats so none of the Bench/Helly Henson coats that children would wear at home making it less desirable to nick.

I volunteer in the school and when children in nursery have an accident we have sent them home in knickers and pants marked with a black sharpie saying "NURSERY" across the bottom which is on the outside of the pants and they still don't get returned.

All shirts and jumpers are labelled at the neck making it easy to look inside a top.

All you can do is chalk it up to experience and even if you spotted another child wearing your son's coat, you can't prove it is yours.