Kid accidentally steals

A friend of mine just told me that her 6 year old daughter accidentally left the store with a headband that they didn’t pay for. My friend only noticed in the car once she saw it was still on her head and doesn’t think her daughter noticed that she left with it. So I asked her how she was going to react and she said she didn’t want to bring it up because her daughter would feel too guilty and scared of getting in trouble. So she was just going to pretend it didn’t happen.

And I’m just kind of astounded.. like, what? She’s 6- she knows what stealing is and will eventually realize what she did and will now think that she can get away with that. I told her she could easily just tell her she’s not in trouble and we all make mistakes and then take it back to the store and my friend then complained that she’d have to drive all the way back to the store. She’s on vacation so I’m not sure how far the store is but if I were in a situation where I really couldn’t reasonably bring it back, I’d at least take it and tell my daughter that I’d be bringing it back when we got home and my daughter would never see that headband again.

How would you all handle this kind of thing?