How does that motive make it any better?
Kids will do this sort of thing to be sure; an incident of shoplifting does not mean a kid is a bad kid. But it has to be punished with severity. It’s a big deal.
Ahhh, so it’s the store’s fault. They should be punished.
When I was a shoplifter, all the stuff I took was well under $10. No one would have been putting security tags on the stuff I was taking (besides, I normally tore it out of the package). It didn’t make it right though.
This attitude seems to promote the idea of sticking it to the man. They have enough money, what do they care if I take this item? If they were that worried about it they would have done a better job of making sure I couldn’t take it.
It doesn’t make it “better”. It just means it’s different when it is a one-off peer-pressure inspired thing, than if it is a deliberate attempt to go out depriving stores of profits, using his innocent mother as cover.
I must have been hanging with a different crowd. None of my friends would have even imagined shoplifting. I can quite accurately imagine what any of the parents of my friends, especially my parents, would have done if their child had been caught thieving from a shop. Think in terms of “Dickensian workhouse punishment”, “LAPD-style beatdown”, “summary execution”, etc.
I never used to read threads like this. Okay, maybe I’d open and skim quickly (a pathological aspect of being a Doper–reading every thread just in case), but never pay close attention.
Now I have a Dudeling of my own. :eek:
He’s less than a year, so a lot of this is far in the future, but it’s been fascinating going from detached reader to holyshitwhatamIinfor?! It’s also neat becoming aware of the very, very subtle difference between the “here’s what I would dos,” the “here’s what should be dones,” the “here’s what we dids,” the “here’s what happened to mes,” etc.
If I may ask—how do those who have less-than-legal downloads handle things? Hide them from them? Explain the rationalization/justification? Distinguish? Ever end up in the classic “I learned it from you!” scenario?
You just said that, not me!
You weren’t a professional shoplifter then, you were more of a kleptomaniac.
There you go again, over-interpreting.
When something is stolen from a store and they don’t receive restitution (in the form of money or their product back), they are being punished. You are advocating not telling the store or returning the product…not me.
That’s what were talking about. The OP seems to think this is a one time think the kid doesn’t do this on a regular basis. It’s the whole point of the thread.
I don’t think I over interpreted anything…and I certainly didn’t do it more then once.
P, you’re way over-interpreting Ivan. I can’t believe you’d get from his post that he thinks he’s “sticking it to the man.”
You could return the product without informing the store. Just a thought.
Which is exactly why I said ask the son why he did it. If it transpired that he had been dared by his mate, as opposed to deliberately targeting the item and knowing how to remove store tags, differing approaches would be needed.
Well, don’t do it again, if you did.
When I got arrested for stealing, it was probably the 300th item I’d taken over the years. Do you think I told anyone that? Of course not. My parents/the manager/the cops, were all told “It was the first time I ever tried it, I just wanted to see if I could do it.” After being marched back down to the store and having to apoligize to the manager…never did it again, not once.
:rolleyes:
This did happen to me when my son was about ten. He was with a group of kids his age and, while he didn’t take anything, some of them did.
It was a grocery store close to home where it was once still safe to allow a child that age to go without adult supervision.
The store called and I went down to meet with management and the other parents. I was the only parent who showed up.
They handled it well. Sternly but with no shaming. And following their helpful lead, I did the same.
We talked about it on the walk home.
It wasn’t his only scrape with the law but it was a good learning experience for both of us. And what I learned was to stand firmly by my son’s side, love and support him and hold him totally accountable to responsible and honest behavior regardless of how others may act. A lesson in personal integrity!
The best thing a parent can do in this situation is to help his child deal with the consequences of his behavior. Allow him to have them. Preventing consequences for poor choices will rob him of a chance to learn through difficulty.
Any focus other than on cause and effect on his part will be less than useful. In this case the lesson was “If you hang with dishonest kids you may be judged as dishonest.”
Hooray! That worked for you. If I was caught stealing items costing less than $10, I’d be ashamed of facing the owner, too! Come on, tell us what you were pinching that you had to remove from a wrapper, and cost less than $10?
Lighters, cigarettes and cigars (back when you took them from a rack and brought them up to the register) fireworks, mechanical pencil lead (yeah, I know), mostly little stuff you’d find at a corner 5 and dime type store, candy bars, gum. They had a rack of magic tricks (gum that turned your mouth black, itching powder, joy buzzers, disappearing ink etc) that I frequented. I took this stuff out of the package mostly because I was worried it would set off an alarm (even though I was fairly sure the store didn’t have system for that) and to make it small enough to fit in my pocket or up my sleeve.
How old were you, Joey? That’s the sort of thing I used to do, but I was about 8 or 9 when I started out. I used to take my 3 yr old brother out in his buggy, and stick Airfix models and paints down his back and in the hood.
Well, I’d sort of think I deserved it, at least short term. If my kid is stealing, it’s because I’ve fucked up somehow, and I need to pay the penalty for that, at least while we work out what’s really going on here. Either I missed some important parenting moment, or I need to supervise my kid better - either way, yeah, I deserve to pay the fine in the moment. If it’s a chronic thing from a “broken” kid, then even more do I need law enforcement’s help to fix him (but that’s veering away from the OP, where this seems to be the first or only time).
But yes, he’d be working that off, too. At the rate of about $2 an hour for heavy yardwork at Grandma’s house (we rent, so I’d have to indenture him out.)
Rhythmdvl, you’re right that there’s often a world of difference between “I would” and “I did”. In my case, it is something I had to give some thought to a few years ago, when my goddaughter (who is good friends with my son) began shoplifting for sport. In her case, it was a thrill thing. She’d go “shopping” with money in her pocket, and just steal stuff 'cause she could. I carefully considered what would happen if my kid followed her lead, but as far as I know, he hasn’t, so I haven’t had to put my plan into effect, thank goodness.
It probably went on from 12 to 15 or so, somewhere in that area.
Also, in regards to the parents paying the fine, the judge in my town was always VERY clear that he wants the kids to pay all the fines they receive, be it for speeding, stealing, vandalism. He always looked at the parents and said “I want little Johnny to pay this fine, not you. Even if he can only pay a few dollars a week, that’s fine, just so long as YOU don’t pay it for him.”
You don’t have to be a “fucked up parent” for your child to get involved with wrong-doing. I’m not saying it doesn’t increase the chances, but it’s not a prerequisite.
Always give them a shopping list. Otherwise, they will bring home junk every time.
Coming from Al Bundy, that has to be up among the top 100 Dope responses?
As I went on to say, if it’s a chronic thing, it may indeed be a case of a kid “broken” by something other than parenting, and that’s when law enforcement is *most *needed.
If it’s a one time thing, then at the very least, my providing better supervision might have prevented it. Not correctly judging when my not-broken kid can be left alone in a store without stealing is my mistake as a parent.