5-year-old shoplifting-what to do?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Ah, but that brings up a couple of the golden rules of parenting – which all of us break at some point or other.

  1. Never threaten to do something that you aren’t willing to follow through on. (Although the time I threatened to stop the car and put the kids out on the side of the road did get them to stop screaming. But I only did that once. Child number 2 confessed in adulthood that she knew I would never do it, but she figured she’d behave anyway.)
  2. Never, but NEVER do something you said you wouldn’t do because a kid cries or has a temper tantrum. Never. This simply teaches that having tantrums and screaming will get results if you do it long enough. This one I never broke. I would tell them, you know, if you had been good, I might have changed my mind. But now that you’ve started screaming and whining you are definitely not getting it, and you’re not getting it tomorrow, either.
22

MLS, agreed there totally. You have to make good on your threats, and not cave in to whining.

My young bloke got the notion that I’d not make good on any threat if he waited to time his next episode on naughtiness until we were in public because it’d be too embarrassing for me to punish him there, counting on my taking his mum’s method of whispering “not NOW. Just you wait until we get home.” and then forgetting about it at home. Naaah, I punished him in front of people. Yeah, it was a bit embarrassing, but it was worth it. He only tried that on once or twice.