Hey, my mom put a stop to that kind of behavior before I started snatching purses, so I resent that remark. 
So, are you saying it’s unreasonable to assume that *some *people who aren’t taught acceptable behavior at an early age *may *continue unacceptable behavior as they get older?
Nobody has a crystal ball and can say with any certainty that the kid won’t learn some other way, but if he doesn’t he is certainly more inclined to repeat past lapses in judgment.
I had an experience with my daughter when she was about 5 or 6 years old. We were sitting at lunch at a shopping center and she was playing with a little toy I didn’t recognize. “Where’d you get that?” I asked her. She told me she had taken it from the store we had visited before lunch. NOT COOL! So I marched her back to the store, told her to give it back to them, and to apologize for what she had done. Which she did.
You know what the dumb bunny teenagers who were working the counter did? The following:
“Ooooh, it’s all right! Awww, go ahead. You keep it!”
It was then that my head exploded.
At which point you start wondering if the manager is aware that his or her employees condone stealing, or might even be stealing themselves.
Your analogy is a poor one; my analogy–“today’s candy bar thief is tomorrow’s parking lot pursesnatcher”–is a better one.
Speeding and murdering are not the same thing. Not even remotely related.
Whereas stealing a candy bar and stealing a purse ARE the same thing; they differ only in scale. It doesn’t take a “crystal ball” to know that a kid who isn’t brought up short toot suite for stealing something small will not learn that stealing is bad, and will go on to steal bigger and bigger things, since evidently there’s no reason not to.
Now, if your analogy had been, “Today’s kitten-torturer is tomorrow’s serial killer”, that would have worked.
Except that it would have made MY point. 
That’s a marvelous flight of hyperbole you got there. But I’m blessed if I understand how you got from my quite logical speculation on what might have happened when he got home, including my also quite logical assumptions that (a) he’ll do it again, and that (b) he won’t get caught, to meth labs and corpse disposal. That’s quite a leap there, yanno. Meth labs and corpse disposal have nothing to do with stealing.
No, sounds like he knows getting *caught *is wrong. And that’s because he got a teeny tiny bit of negative feedback from two strangers about it. He still may not know *stealing *is wrong.
The Artful Dodger, indeed!
I’m perfectly happy to never have another adult butt into a disciplinary concern with my child. If it doesn’t present any sort of emergency situation, they can talk to me and I’ll deal with it. Some of them might think it would be appropriate to whip them with a stick, others might think its a good idea to call the police for a non-theft of a candy bar.
What would I have done as the store manager? Apart from informing the mother as to what my employee had told me, at most I would have made a statement that stealing is wrong.
Duck Duck Goose, it’s too bad that people are stealing from you all the live long day. I hope that you can catch some of them if they actually do steal anything from you. But if the best you can do is nab one six year old, I don’t think threatening that child with a dramatic over-reaction is really going to address the core problems you are faced with.
I had a somewhat similar situation occur to me. I was about 8 or 10, and I was at a 7-11, trying to decide which candy I would buy. I picked out some gum, and decided I wanted something else too. As I was trying to figure out what, I absentmindedly put the gum in my pocket. I had no intent, nor even any thought of stealing it. It so happened that another kid from my school was there at that time (he was kind of a weasely jerk). As soon as I put it in my pocket, he flipped out, making “ummmm, I’m telling” kind of noises, and it hit me what I had done and what it looked like. I pulled it out of my pocket immediately, and of course paid for my candy, but I felt incredibly guilty, even though I hadn’t intended to steal anything whatsoever. I don’t know if the same thing is true for this kid or not, but it would have been a huge waste of time had someone decided to call the police on me.
That doesn’t make any sense. Of course he knows that stealing is wrong, hence his reaction. Getting caught is not wrong. Getting caught is a bummer and a prelude to trouble.
I was thinking more like:
Mother cruelly snatches kit-kat after they get in parking lot
<Long, depressing, angry lecture>
“And now, you can NEVER have one of these EVER again”
Cackle
Lightning and thunder
Sounds of spooked horses
Kitten dies
Mother begins to taunt child by slowly eating kit-kat and making orgasmic noises
–alternate ending–
If you like Kit-Kats so much, now they’re all you can eat EVER AGAIN!
Cackle
Lightning and thunder
Sounds of spooked horses
Kitten dies
Child gleefully smiles not knowing he’s about to participate in the plot for this summer’s “B” drama movie and learn a valuable lesson (and hate Kit-Kats forever)
Don’t be so sure, he may be playing doctor tomorrow and needed a few fresh bodies from the local cemetary! The disposal would be a nescessary procedure when they need to clean up. Duh!
I bet Mom was stealing her own stuff while Junior was pocketing the Kit-Kat. That’s why she was so willing to buy him the candy.
You have no right to complain until it turns into murderous harassment 
FWIW, personally I would have thanked the store manager, but I wouldn’t have given them the satisfaction of punishing my kid in front of them.
That ain’t their job.
My kid will have to deal with my disappointment, my wife’s, and whatever punishment we dole out in the privacy of our home - public humiliation isn’t part of our process as a general rule.
What punishment? The kid GOT the candy bar. He may well think the spanking/lecture/expression of disappointment used to instill guilt/ well worth the immediate gratification of the candy bar. I know plenty of kids who think this way. I also know most kids under 7 don’t really get that “trying to steal that candy bar was wrong and I shouldn’t have bought it for you, but I need to punish you so no Nintendo for a week.” or whatever. Let me really clear here: the teaching moment is over and done with, the minute she purchased that candy bar. The next time this scenario happens and Mom has an attack of conscience and refuses to “rescue” kid, kid will say (and rightly so)–“but you bought it for me last time!”. And he has every right to be indignant–he’s been taught that trying to steal gets a reward.
I swear some of you were never children. Mr Moto–the cashier is going to get satisfaction out of witnessing you speak to your child about a minor* disciplinary matter? Do you ever talk to your kids on public, in a restaurant or amusement park? Does the wait staff never hear you say, “use your fork this way” to your kid? I think the cashier will feel relieved, not smugly satisifed, that he won’t have to watch yet another raised by wolves kid pilfer from his store.
Since when is parenting private? This thread shows the insanity that is parenting today–you all know it is your job to raise independent, productive members of society, right? Teaching them not to steal is a part of that.
*the act itself is minor in that it involves almost no effort. The implication of the act --both the stealing and the rewarding of same–are huge.
Maybe the mother bought the candy bar for the child because she was pissed that a couple of over-zealous workers at a Walgreens threatened him with calling the cops because he slid a candy bar in his pocket and took it out again.
but that just proves our point: she is not acting in the child’s best interest at that point. IF the above was truly the case, the assertive, parently thing to do would be to state that the cops would not be necessary because Junior would apologize now. Being pissed at the cashier and buying the bar for him doesn’t help the kid–that’s all about the parent and her issues. No matter how you slice it, this is not effective parenting.
I can see saving the talk/lecture for the car, sure. But no way should that kid have gotten that candy bar–even if he did apologize. Saying “sorry” and then getting it just tells the kid he can do bad things as long as he says sorry.
I’ve never agreed with the cops being called–and in my town, it’d take awhile for them to show up. If there had been a cop nearby, I doubt I’d have approached him/her with this pint sized thief. But my kids were anxious and eager to please kids–there are some kids that only the sight of a jail or a cop would help the lesson sink in.
Well, I wouldn’t have let my kid have the candy bar either.
Parenting isn’t private, but often punishment is. And I don’t mean “wait till we get home” private - I mean “pull off to the side and have a quick correcting conversation” private. Time-outs and revocations of privileges come in private as well.
I’m not aguing that it was a good idea, from a parenting standpoint. I do take note of the “puddling” aspect of the OP’s description of the child. I don’t know anything about this child or his mother, but it may be that the child was more affected than the OP was able to intuit, and the mother made a bad decision in response to the bad decisions made by other adults.
Well, the thing is, the core problem is that we’re surrounded by a community, a village if you will, of which this kid is almost certainly a member. The majority of our customers walk to get to us, because Wal-Mart and Kroger are “too far to drive”. We are very much the local mom and pop grocery store, albeit we answer to corporate overlords Upstate. So he and his mom and mom’s friend almost certainly live within a few blocks, and they probably shop here all the time. This is “their” store. And this is their neighbors’ store, too. We’re the Village Store.
And so if we had called the cops on this kid, the ripple effect of that fact–“Walgreens will call the cops on a kid stealing a candy bar!”–would have slowly but surely spread throughout the village, theoretically at least having a deterrent value of some sort. One would hope.
So that’s why we’re hardnosed about calling the cops on shoplifters. Even little kids.
Oh, yeah, he quite definitely expected punishment. He got ready to cry, and looked over at Mom–and nothing happened. So he mentally shrugged and put the tears back in the box.
I dated this guy in college who I found out towards the end of our relationship was a thief. Not like a stealing diamonds from Kay Jewelers in the middle of the night thief but a pocketing items at the store and walking out on restaurant bills kind of thief. I was horrified once I found this out and I asked him why he thought it was okay to take things that didn’t belong to him and his response was, “When I was about 7 I was at the store with my mom and I wanted an Archie comic book but she wouldn’t buy it for me because we couldn’t afford it. I wanted it really badly though so I stuck it under my shirt and took it home. When she found it later she didn’t say anything to me about it and I just kind of figured that if you couldn’t afford something but you still wanted or needed it and there wasn’t much chance of getting caught you could just take it.”
Needless to say we broke up shortly after that. He wasn’t murdering people or burning down buildings or anything, but he moved from comic books and candy to stealing cash from the register where he worked (eventually getting fired for theft) and walking out before paying the bill at restaurants. If his mother had actually done something about it the first time it happened he might not have ended up on that path.
When I was four, I put a roll of Life Savers in my pocket at the grocery store. I honestly thought you were allowed to get Life Savers at the Grocery Store. When we were in the parking lot, and my mother saw me about to eat some, she marched me back into the store, had me give them to the store manager, and made me apologize.
It made a pretty good impression on me, even thirty-four years later.