12 year old thief. Help us teach her the error of her ways.

July 23, 2006 8:48 PM

How do you get through to a 12 year old girl that stealing is seriously not a good idea?

We just discovered our daughter has been taking money from her mothers purse for some undetermined amount of time. Today, she took a large amount, and my wife missed it. Subsequent questioning and a search of her room revealed a stash of cash much larger than can be accounted for from babysitting jobs/allowance. When confronted, she initially lied, but later admitted taking it. We have already grounded her, removed privleges, and she has written her mother a letter of apology. This is not the first time she taken things without permission, but it certainly is the most serious offense. We want to get through to her in no uncertain terms that theft is a bad idea. Anybody have any suggestions for some creative rehabilitation techniques?

posted by anonymous to human relations (33 comments total)

"a stash of cash"?

She's not spending it, she's hoarding it?

Is she insecure about the future, trying to set money by? Have you (or her peers) said or done anything that she's interpreting as meaning your finances or family stability are at risk, so that she needs a "contingency fund"?

To most effectively rehabilitate her, you may need to know what her motivations were.
posted by orthogonality at 8:56 PM on July 23, 2006

I shoplifted quite a bit when I was a kid. One day, I being about age 10, my mom found some candy I'd nicked, marched me off to the nearest police station, and ordered me to confess. When I stammered away that I had "put" the candy in my pocket, my mom thundered "DON'T USE NICE WORDS, YOU STOLE IT!!!!!" The cop pulled out his log book and lectured me something about having to write my name in there if I did this again, but in retrospect he was probably as terrified as my mum as I was of him. Never shoplifted again in my life.
posted by randomstriker at 9:01 PM on July 23, 2006

he was probably as terrified as [sic] my mum as I was of him

of
posted by randomstriker at 9:03 PM on July 23, 2006

I would start by figuring out why she is doing it. What does a 12-year old want with a 'stash of cash'? Has she got plans for it, or does she just want to have money/is attention seeking? Maybe she hangs around with richer kids, and 'needs' money to fit in. Maybe she's doing drugs. Maybe you and her mother work 70 hours a week and she feels that you 'owe' her money to make up for the time she doesn't get? These are random suggestions, but to me they demonstrate that the strategy you use should depend on the background to the stealing.

More generally, I think that the punishment should fit the crime. Is grounding and loss of privileges related to her babysitting? Do you want her to be able to earn money while being punished, or do you want her to be completely broke (no babysitting, no allowance)? Has she spent stolen money that she should pay back from her own earnings, perhaps? If she's stealing it for the sake of the money, possibly you could get her involved in some kind of charity, as a sort of 'money isn't everything/look how badly off some people are' lesson. (May backfire if ortho's financial insecurity idea is correct).

On preview, what ortho said.
posted by jacalata at 9:04 PM on July 23, 2006

um, i know this will get bad reviews, but my parents thumped my ass. the only time my father ever took the lash to me was because i lied to him. i never lied to them ever again. only the most serious offenses deserve corporal punishment and betraying family is one of those.
posted by Davaal at 9:27 PM on July 23, 2006

This isn't an answer/advice, more of an anecdote... I used to steal from my mum as a child too - never more than [the equivalent of] $3 in one go, but fairly regularly.

I recently asked her if she'd been aware of it back then (we discussed the stealing later so I knew she knew, but wasn't sure if she knew while it happened).
She said "yeah I suspected it, though I never had proof. Every kid steals at some point in their life, we figured you'd grow out of it." (which I did, and I am now one of the most painstakingly honest people around)

I found that quite baffling/interesting as a response.

That said I didn't hoard the money, I spent it on stupid things. The "saving" is certainly interesting.

/end of irrelevant anecdote
posted by ClarissaWAM at 9:29 PM on July 23, 2006

I think that part of the reason children steal is because they're intrigued by the notion of property. I mean, what is it? The connection between a person and an object is ultimately kind of arbitrary. Add to that the whole idea of money, where we've assigned certain objects a sort of innate value simply by virtue of consensus. So stealing money is an abstraction on top of an abstraction.

That said, the girl is 12, so she knows what she's doing. Too bad you posted anonymously, rendering this thread and the answers within even more arbitrary and meaningless than money, theft, or the combination thereof.
posted by bingo at 9:40 PM on July 23, 2006

Without knowing why, I can only offer some advice on how to stop it.

A couple of thoughts, have her see what the "dark side" is really like and arrange a ridealong for yourself and your daughter with the local police. Having her see a little bit of where her behaviour could lead her might shock her straight.

If that fails, see about touring a nearby prison. Nothing like seeing people paying the price for their bad behaviour up close and personal. You might even be able to have her speak with people in prison for theft.

I was a shoplifter as a kid too but I got caught, got arrested (the eventually let me off with a warning) and got pretty badly scared. I never shoplifted again.
posted by fenriq at 9:42 PM on July 23, 2006

Agreed with finding out her motives and responding accordingly.

The only two bad-news scenarios I can see are these:
1. Has she fallen in with sketchy friends? 12 is a time when many kids move to middle school from elementary school, and meet new kids. Sometimes weird alliances get formed, and "good" kids end up admiring and trying to impress or emulate "bad" kids. The older she gets the harder it will be to steer her away from sketchy friends, but in my experience the friends make all the difference, so it's worth doing what you can on this front to remove her from bad friendships if it's clear they're having a bad effect.

2. You say she's taken things before... is it possible that she steals compulsively? I knew a few girls who did at this age. If there's a glimmer of this in the back of your mind, it would be worth talking to a child psychiatrist about. (Not that I think this is a likely scenario; only you know that.)

The more likely scenario is that it's just normal tweenish boundary pushing, trying to see what it would be like to be bad, or trying to see what she can get away with. Sounds like you're doing the right things already on that front. I would say the remedy is to demonstrate a temporary decrease in your trust of her, and show her how this affects her. If you trust her to exercise good judgment and act morally, she gets more autonomy. If you have reason not to trust her, she gets less autonomy. (May be this would work better with an older kid, though?)

If you've never physically punished her before, I would say now is not the time to start.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:51 PM on July 23, 2006

I don't think you need to take her to prison, unless you want to give the idea that she's a Very Bad Girl indeed. I think that has a high chance of back firing.

Instead talk to the kid. Tell her how upset and angry with her you are (honestly) and that although she is getting older and you should be able to treat her as such, this makes you less inclined to trust her or to believe what she says. Ask her if this is how she wants it to be in your house, that you have to check up on her like she's a little baby yadda yadda.

My Dad mastered the disappointed look and the stern but sad lecture technique and it was pretty effective, where punishments and groundings did nothing.
posted by fshgrl at 9:52 PM on July 23, 2006

Oh and definetely find out why she is stealing from you, it almost sounds like she was trying to get caught and she may need to tell you something. Again, talk to her about this and a lot, not just the one time.
posted by fshgrl at 9:54 PM on July 23, 2006

I ditto orthogonality, as the others do - I think it's a sign of insecurity or a reach for power. 'About what' is the question.

I say this because a younger sibling of mine did the same exact thing, at around the same age. At the time, there was family stress about money and, well, I was the kid with straight-As in upper-level classes at private school, and he was struggling in the public schools.

I think the end result was that my parents realized he was feeling like crap because he thought (and he might have been right) that they weren't really paying any attention to him. Secondly, money was a big topic at the time in the house.

Of course, moral of the story: he's more successful than I am now; he's a good kid, no legal troubles, good ethics, etc. He just really liked having large bills in a box for a while. Unfortunately, I cannot remember what the hell my parents did. There was probably a stern talking to, which works wonders on us (we were amazingly lax Catholics, but the extra guilt still flows,) but there was probably also one of those reassuring family talks. You just need to find out what's stressing her.

Of course, IANAPsych. of any sort, and also, I think that this is invalid if she's also been shoplifting, instead of just taking stuff from you guys. But that's my anecdote.
posted by cobaltnine at 9:54 PM on July 23, 2006

Teah her about value. Make her invest herself in something, whether it's a job/chores that brings her some cash, or a plant that she must water each day, or a share of stock she can track over time. It sounds like you've done all the "punishing" stuff already.

The only other thing I can imagine is for her to go through the outrage of being stolen from herself. But that's not something you want to engineer.
posted by scarabic at 10:19 PM on July 23, 2006

By thirteen, I had a stash of money - skimming off my lawn jobs, money found, fencing porn - of a couple hundred dollars. THis was in the mid-eighties. Mostly, I had it specifically in case I needed it - parts for my tape deck, some LEGO set taht had a special piece I NEEDED, etc. So, explaining the stash, might be something like that.

WRT to stealing, I used to steal money from my sisters' piggybanks to finance buying porno mags from some old guy who had garage sales once a month (the mags were then flipped for profit). I always paid back the piggybanks, with a little extra. Methinks it's just something 12-year-olds do.
posted by notsnot at 10:20 PM on July 23, 2006 [1 favorite]

I think the best lesson to combat stealing permanently is to be stolen from. You have to see how it feels. I don't suggest stealing from your daughter, but maybe there's some way to make her feel the pain so that she'll make the decision herself. She'll be stolen from eventually, and maybe that will do it. But until then, maybe you could show her the effects of stealing. She has to see how unfair and hurtful it is somehow. Could you introduce her to people who have been robbed and let them tell their story? Maybe skim the newspaper for burglaries and focus on the human element? It'll be difficult to get an eye-rolling preteen to care or to connect, but I think that's really the only thing that has a chance of connecting.

It's probably too late for a spanking, but the only other alternative is severe severe punishment. It's got to be so bad that she'd never risk it again even if she can't empathize as in the above example. Like, triple her grounding/restriction. No TV for three months. No cell phone. No friend visits. Whatever you've got to do. One way or another, this has to go on her never-again list.
posted by kookoobirdz at 10:23 PM on July 23, 2006

In the interest of full disclosure, I should have said that I was a teenage shoplifter. Actually it started younger than the teen years and lasted until maybe 16. I never got busted, but that streak of behavior is the key reason I now have such an aversion to stealing and dishonesty. I was steeped in it and finally came to see how despicable and hurtful it was. So in that regard, it was valuable. It would have been better for everyone if I could have learned that at age 10, but perhaps this will end up being a useful life lesson for your daughter whether she stops right away or not. It's not the end of the world is all I'm saying.
posted by kookoobirdz at 10:27 PM on July 23, 2006

The only time I ever stole from the parents(and later the guardians) was to support my nicotine habit. The multi-month groundings resulting taught me the finer points of being sneaky.

There is probably something about her you aren't aware of yet. Keep listening until she's ready to talk to you.
posted by nenequesadilla at 10:28 PM on July 23, 2006

I was a 12 year old girl, and all of my 12 year old friends nicked cash from their mum's purses. I don't think it has anything to do with theft, when I look back on it, and the fact that she hasn't spent it makes me think that it might not be so much about stealing and maybe more about being in that stage where you are trying to figure out the dividing line between you and your mother, and part of that is usually done by appropriating her stuff.

I doubt she needs rehabilitation, as much as she needs to figure out how to transition from childhood to young adulthood, which isn't easy for anyone.
posted by sperare at 10:42 PM on July 23, 2006

Anon, I just want to let you know that just because your daughter is stealing money from your purse does NOT mean there is something incredibly serious going on. At the risk of downplaying the importance of this and contradicting all the crisis junkies in this thread, kids simply like money. Money = stuff. Lots of money = cooler stuff. I took money from my mother's purse and my father's wallet a lot as a kid. Not because I was doing drugs/financial troubles at home/in a gang/owed my pimp but spent my cut on coke, but because I thought it was cool to have money and that $20 bill from my father's wallet was a lot cooler (I'm using the word cool a lot, I realize) than the onesies I got for my allowance. The home and the store are two different places, and it's entirely possible that your daughter knows not to steal from the store. The home is different...it's not really "stealing" to a kid if it's already in your house, and when it's your mother reprimanding you rather than a big, scary security guard.

What makes you think she hasn't learned her lesson from the grounding...have you done this before but to no avail? If this has all been in the home (which is what I assume as I think you would have mentioned shoplifting), I think you've done enough. But if you're really, really worried, there are some good ideas upthread, with the exception of corporal punishment.
posted by apple scruff at 10:44 PM on July 23, 2006

My response is anecdotal, too, and amounts to: it may not be so bad.

My family was poor. There was a lot of stuff I wanted that I couldn't have. Also, my parents didn't know how to manage their money, and they didn't teach me proper moneyh skills, either.

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, I started stealing change from my mom's purse or from my dad's shelf. I'd steal a dime here or there and eventually have enough for a comic book. Awesome. Eventually I moved up to quarters. And, in time, I moved up to dollar bills. What I didn't realize at that time is that grown-ups don't pay much attention to coins, and while they have a rough idea of how many dollar bills they should have, most don't know exactly at every moment.

Somehow my parents eventually figured out I was stealing. They planted bait: a $20. I must have been in junior high at the time, and must have started going for bigger bills. (I can't remember the details exactly.) In any event, I took this bill. I hid it in my room. That night, my dad woke me up and asked me if I had taken his money. I denied it, but when he told me to open my drawers, there it was. I said it was mine, but he had marked it somehow, and I was found out.

I felt terrible shame and never stole from him again.

I did shoplift during my freshman year of high school, but that was cut short after nearly being caught once.

Basically, I was going through a phase. I wanted stuff, stuff I couldn't afford, and so I was doing what I could to get it. Funny -- that's exactly what happened in college when I racked up huge credit card debt.

My advice: don't sweat it too much, but if you haven't already, then start working with your daughter on sound money skills. Try to find out why she wants this money so badly. See if you can help her.
posted by jdroth at 11:43 PM on July 23, 2006

This is not a giant disaster. Lots of kids steal cash from parents because they think it's no big deal, mainly because they don't know enough about work or bills or responsibilities, about how hard their parents work, etc. The longer it went on without you noticing, the more she was convinced that the money really meant nothing to you. And the stash just means she had her eyes on buying something expensive and was willing to save for it, which is actually a positive sign in a kid.

So you've got to start sharing the financial information with her. Let her see how much you work, perhaps how much you dislike work or don't enjoy it a hell of a lot or whatever, all so she can have her weekly tuba lessons and so on. Show her how long you have to work to pay for X, for Y, for Z. How much it costs and how long you work for water and electricity and other things that she thing thinks are just magically there all the time in endless quantities. Calculate the cost to you (in money, in time, in aggravation) of a shower, of dinner, of an hour of television, etc. Show her how long she would have to babysit to pay for the things she gets for free from you. Show her that nothing is free.

Provide an allowance only as matching funds: you will give her X dollars for every Y dollars she earns, with a certain cap on your contribution in case she figures out a way to scam you (kids are smart) and because it will be funny to think about her earning lots and lots of money. You support her but you encourage her to work for it. Be strict about this. No babysitting = no money from you.

Also, keep your money out of the way from now on. Do not tempt her.
posted by pracowity at 12:16 AM on July 24, 2006

I'll chime in-- I remember nicking dollars from my mother's purse around that age, but I can't remember what I did with them. I think she was aware, but I can't remember being confronted about it. I'm scrupulously honest now. Make of it what you will.
posted by alexei at 2:18 AM on July 24, 2006

a stash of cash much larger than can be accounted for from babysitting jobs/allowance.

When I was a kid, approximately your daughter's age, I started hoarding as much cash as I could because I was planning to run away from home. And I did.

There's a lot of good advice in this thread, I just want to add that you should consider the possibility that that's what she was hoarding the increasingly-large amounts of money for, and talk to her about that. Resist the temptation to say, "Why would she do that? We don't abuse her. It couldn't be that," and blow it off.

Also, talk to her teachers (and friends' parents, if they're available) and ask if they've noticed anything lately. They may have noticed subtle changes in your daughter's behavior but nothing serious enough to warrant calling you about, but if you ask, they might say, "Now that you mention it..."
posted by Gator at 4:28 AM on July 24, 2006

I hoarded cash as a 12 year old. (But not through stealing, just through saving the change of my lunch money -- a few bucks a day.)

At the time I was just realizing what it felt like to have money (it felt good, obvs.)
posted by k8t at 4:30 AM on July 24, 2006

Honestly, she may not even view it as stealing per se. The dividing line between "my stuff" and "family stuff" is still somewhat vague at that age, particularly when it comes to paying for things.

In my house growing up, even up until I moved out to go to school, my father's wallet was sacrosant -- I never even considered taking anything out of there without permission -- but it was open-season on his change. (He had separate tubs for quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, so it was easy to take just the useful change, which there was a lot of.)

He knew, and would scold me if i took too much at one time, but a certain amount of skimming was allowed (or at least ignored).

Eight years later, of course, his change is now clearly defined as 'his,' and I'd never touch it.
posted by BackwardsCity at 5:00 AM on July 24, 2006

Make her give all of her saved babysitting money to a charity. A homeless one would be good.
posted by blag at 5:25 AM on July 24, 2006

IANApsych, but it would seem to me that, at this point, any further punishment should relate to the infraction. Spanking works when it's given immediately after the infraction so that there's a strong connection between the two. Now to establish that connection, you need a punishment that relates to the crime. If you just smack her a day later, it'll seem kind of random.

I'd say, do things that show a removal of trust. Perhaps make a point of locking up your wallet and her mother's purse while at home, or leave her home alone less. Outline consequences that'll happen the next time she steals so she'll know what she's in for.

Another idea may be to have her keep a ledger so you can see how much money is coming in and going out, and where it's coming from and going. Not only will this make it easier to see if she has more money than she should, it might also help her chart her progress if she really was saving up for something.
posted by christinetheslp at 5:51 AM on July 24, 2006

Tell her if she ever does it again you will turn her into the police. If she does it again, turn her in. I mean it. That way she will know that there are real consquences that she is going to face.

Or have a cop come and talk it over with her now in a friendly way.
posted by Ironmouth at 5:59 AM on July 24, 2006

Consider the stolen cash a loan and set up a payment schedule complete with a usurious interest rate. Failure to meet the monthly payment results in an extension on grounding and the repossession of some of 'her' worldy goods.

Offer her chores and other labor to help pay her debt, of course. No need to get her to steal from other sources. Set up a ledger or simple accounting system for her to follow so she has to state where each dime is coming from.

Once the loan is paid off, you can show her how quickly she was able to generate cash without stealing.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:31 AM on July 24, 2006

Honestly, she may not even view it as stealing per se. The dividing line between "my stuff" and "family stuff" is still somewhat vague at that age, particularly when it comes to paying for things.

Between the hoarding in a secret location, the initial refusal to acknowledge, and the eventual confession, I'm not sure the explanation is that easy.
posted by pardonyou? at 7:00 AM on July 24, 2006

There's a huge difference between stealing from mom and dad and shoplifting.

I had a similar stash of cash from my mom's purse and my dad's work pants pockets when I was a young girl. I've never stolen anything else since then, I've never shoplifted, I've always been more uptight about theft than most of my peers.

Re-read what speare said.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 8:34 AM on July 24, 2006

I was a twelve year old girl and I never took money from my mom. She had a huge stash of coins in her bedroom and she never would have noticed if I skimmed, but I never did. The reason why is that I had a lot of freedom and my mother made it abundantly clear that I had so much freedom specifically because she trusted me and trusted me to make good decisions. I knew that anything I did to compromise that trust would compromise my freedom, so I didn't do anything to make her mistrust me. I think that lobstermitten and fshgirl had it: talk to her and demonstrate to her what life is like when you have less trust in her.
posted by arcticwoman at 9:50 AM on July 24, 2006 [1 favorite]

Maybe you guys can take her to the police station and have a cop explain what they do to people who steal.
posted by onepapertiger at 10:37 AM on July 24, 2006