Any experience with children shoplifting?

[Betticus]

*oops*

 

[rinka]

Here might be a couple of things to consider.

Well, if you have a friend with whom your child doesn't know and they are willing to go along, you could have the friend show up and explain that your freind was there from the store. Make her go and stand by her room outside her door. Then after minute, have your friend go into her room with you while she is still standing out side, and have your friend pickout one of her most favorite things in her room and take it. Then walk out making sure that she sees it. Perhaps when she herself feels what its like when someone takes something of hers and feels the personal lost, she will better understand then why its wrong to steal.

Another idea which might even be better would be to talk with the store manager and arrange a little lesson. The following day you take your daughter with you and go back to the store, the manager waits for you by the door and when he sees you coming he meets you both at the door and very loudly and publicly says, I am sorry Maam but you are not allowed to ever come back to our store. Our security cameras caught your daughter stealing and we no longer will allow you or your family to come back here. Perhaps when you daughter sees you having to pay the price in public humilation, it will drive home the point of how wrong it was for her to steal.

The point of spanking when it is administered correctly and controlled is to teach that there are "real" consequences to bad actions, much like having to swat away a childs hand from touching a hot plate. They might not understand why they got their hand slapped, but it does help teach them and more importantly keeps them safe until they grow up enough to understand on their own. Since you don't use spanking, you need to devise another way to teach your child about the real consequences of stealing and why it is bad. Short of something like the two suggestions I made above, I am not sure what else you can do.

When I took/stole a peice of candy as a kid, my mom waited for my dad to get home and then dad put me in the car and drove me down to the store and made me face the store manager and apologize for taking it. My dad didn't say anything to me the whole time until we got back into the car and then he simply said, today he was ashamed of me. He didn't say it in anger, he said it very calmly and it was the first and only time he ever said that he was ashamed of me and I knew he meant it. I would have gladly taken a spanking to pay for what I did rather than hearing my dad say that to me.

How does lying to and manipulating your child with fake scare scenarios create trust?

The real consequenses of the real situation is that you fix what you've done wrong if possible, you apologize and learn. Life itself is usually enough. I like the theatre, but I find these suggested scenarios shocking.

And if a child reaches out to touch a hot plate I'd warn it that it was hot. If it still touches it, it will learn much sooner what hot means than by having it's hand smacked.

Let's just be people, treating our children like people.

 

[unregistered]

Thanks and update

 

[mediocre]

I stole something once....once. It was from a friend of my parents. Mom took me right back to their house and made me return it to them and apologize for stealing it.

It was the only time my father ever spanked me. I learned real quick.


However I did blow up a mailbox in high school. Neighbor called the cops. Cops called my parents. I was the worst kid ever. That is until my sister came home at 3 am that night. Then she was the worst kid ever. Thank God for older sisters.

 

[serijules]

I was a thief. I shoplifted for years. It was part of my double life.

Good on the outside. Bad on the inside.

And I perfected the art of looking like a good girl, so I never got caught. I think I gave everyone - my parents, my teachers - the image they wanted to see, and they were so caught up in their own lives, they didn't look below the surface.

But my acting out (my "bad self") was my attempt to let them know that all was not well at the roots.

I think I wanted my parents to pay more attention to me, and love the bad in me as much as the good. Or at least forgive me for being bad, and teach me how to "work with" the bad stuff.

This is me to a T...and is actually the core of my need for control, punishment and whatnot in my adult/kink life.

The first thing I stole was around 5...a button from a bin in a shop that I now work in and my best friend owns, lol! I remember "pretending" to find it on the ground outside the shop and my mom considered making me take it back but for whatever reason, she didn't.

My worst was when I hung out with some rather bad kids in jr high...we used to steal things from k-mart and return them for cash. That was before the time of "must have receipt".

I never got caught other than that first time when I was young. It's horrifying to me now to remember all the times I stole but I was always the good girl, the handicapped girl, etc...I think I WANTED to get caught so everyone didn't automatically label me good because I wasn't always good. I know if I had gotten caught and made to live up to my mistakes, I would never have done it again because I HATE disappointing people.

 

[RJMasters]

And if a child reaches out to touch a hot plate I'd warn it that it was hot. If it still touches it, it will learn much sooner what hot means than by having it's hand smacked.

And so what happened here officer?

Well the mother warned her child that the pot of boiling water on the stove was hot, but thought she let the child learn for it self by letting it reach out and grab the edge of the pan and pull it down ontop of them.

The child is now in the burn unit with 2nd and 3rd degree burns.

Awesome....simply awesome.

 

[Netzach]

Yes, because there's no way, absolutely no way to convey that info without spanking - or being a total dumbass. Those are your parental options. The "let them touch it" scenario has played out in hundreds of societies for thousands of years, btw.

I never got hit for touching anything hot and I never burned myself. I got hit for all sorts of other asinine reasons, but none of them were ever for my own good, in retrospect.

 

[Netzach]

I stole something once....once. It was from a friend of my parents. Mom took me right back to their house and made me return it to them and apologize for stealing it.

It was the only time my father ever spanked me. I learned real quick.


However I did blow up a mailbox in high school. Neighbor called the cops. Cops called my parents. I was the worst kid ever. That is until my sister came home at 3 am that night. Then she was the worst kid ever. Thank God for older sisters.

The blowing shit up thing rides on the Y chromosome. If I were gonna have kids I'd want to make sure I knew how to blow things up in relative safety and pass that along.

 

[mediocre]

The blowing shit up thing rides on the Y chromosome. If I were gonna have kids I'd want to make sure I knew how to blow things up in relative safety and pass that along.

M80's, teenagers, and Halloween do not mix.

 

[serijules]

And so what happened here officer?

Well the mother warned her child that the pot of boiling water on the stove was hot, but thought she let the child learn for it self by letting it reach out and grab the edge of the pan and pull it down ontop of them.

The child is now in the burn unit with 2nd and 3rd degree burns.

Awesome....simply awesome.

Make mountains out of molehills much?

 

[YourCaptor]

Ha ha, thats kinda cute, stealing stuffed animals.

Its not the end of the world nor the beginning of a criminal record.

I would not frighten the poor girl, seems like a shame to do that over an item that if you sent it back to the webkinz corporation they would laugh their ass off.

Tell her why it is bad to steal, not that it is bad to steal, and toss the toy. That’s my advice.

And take pictures, cute moment to remember.

 

[BertrandRussell]

Ha ha, thats kinda cute, stealing stuffed animals.

Its not the end of the world nor the beginning of a criminal record.

I would not frighten the poor girl, seems like a shame to do that over an item that if you sent it back to the webkinz corporation they would laugh their ass off.

Tell her why it is bad to steal, not that it is bad to steal, and toss the toy. That’s my advice.

And take pictures, cute moment to remember.

Sorry, Cap, but I disagree. The fact that Webkinz corp doesn't care is beside the point. The issue is not the value of the item, nor the concerns - or lack thereof - of the legitimate owner, it is that the child learn what private property is. Or in kid language, sometimes stuff belongs to other people. Adults who don't understand this often do end up with criminal records.

To JtohisPB: I think you made the right choice, making the young lady confront the legitimate owner face to face. We all have to learn that other stuff belongs to other people, and that some stuff belongs to us. The abstraction of private property may be too much for a 7-year old, but even a child half that age can understand the concrete idea that this thing belongs to that person.

I stole candy once at about age five. Once. Fortunately my mother caught me before we left the store. She explained very clearly that it belonged to the people who owned the store, and did not belong to me. She also explained that there was a proper way to transfer stuff from one person to another. It was called money. She further explained that if I thought that I needed something, I should tell her, and if there was money to spare for it, she would buy it. So I did and she did.
Thus I learned that some stuff was mine, and that some stuff was not, and that there were voluntary, cooperative procedures for transfer of stuff from other people to me and vice-versa.

In a larger sense, this is not just about stuff, but about boundaries. Children who learn that 'this is my toy' and 'that is not my toy', are forming the concepts necessary for a healthy self-image. It leads easily to the idea that 'this is my body', and just like there are proper procedures for acquiring candy, there are proper procedures for possessing it. And those procedures are voluntary, cooperative, and subject to negotiation.

 

[ms_sub_liminal]

i'm glad things went well when you went back to the store. the one time i stole something i had to apologize to the manager like that and can assure you it never happened again. i hated that embarrassed/parents not mad but disappointed feeling too much. and i just made it to the parking lot!

the important thing however, is that i stole because all the girls at school did it and i was instantly not 'fitting in'. if you notice it happening again, you might want to consider calling the school so that they can incorporate a stealing lecture into their lesson plan. depends on the school though. i know that was the end result where i was at the time, but it was a small church run private school.

also, i wouldn't worry that she didn't fess up about the second webkin. as someone already pointed out, it's completely age appropriate to have hid it rather than receive another or harsher punishment. actually, that's a human reaction at any age. if she didn't feel guilty about it, she wouldn't have hidden it in the closet. meanwhile her sister sounds like my tattle-tale little brother. those siblings can really keep you in line let me tell you...

 

[OzArrian]

I was a teenage shoplifter (no, this ain't some kind of 1950s morality film) and to be blunt I only stopped when I got caught and was driven in the back of a cop car back to the place where I stole the items in question. That scared the living shit out of me and from then on it's been straight and level (except for the occasional download that may or may not have contravened copyright).

thing is it takes a certain type of kid who'll respond to being shocked with punishment when it comes to shoplifting. Those that realise they are on a hiding to nothing and have some inkling of respect may snap out of it and never do it again. Those who thrive on the thrill of the theft and getting away with it or for that matter like to piss off elders and the law will have a way harder time being brought into line.