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12 year old SS is stealing from us (long Rant)

daisygal77's picture

Submitted by daisygal77 on Mon, 09/16/2013 - 9:23am

About 3 weeks ago I went into my 12 year old SS room to grab towels for the laundry. He tends to stuff them under his bed. When I pulled out the towel I found a bunch of granola bar wrappers and empty pop cans hidden underneath. I then searched his room to find a dozen cans, a grocery bag full of wrappers, a couple of pizza crusts hidden in his dresser. We have a firm rule that they have to ask for goodies and absolutely no food in the bedrooms! When he came home the following weekend his dad and I had a discussion with him regarding the stealing of food and the no food in the bedroom. Not even 2 days later we discovered he did it again by stealing a full bag of chips. When confronted (we knew it was him) he denied it and lied to us for an hour. Finally he came clean and pulled the almost empty bag from his bag he brings with him every weekend. My DH took him home and talked with the BM regarding this and she apparently is having the same issues as we are. Her punishment to him was that he lost all electronic privileges and had to earn them back. During the past week and a half she caught him stealing his electronic devices and has now locked them up in the family safe until he follows the rules and earns them back. This weekend he came home to our house. We allowed him to play games with his step brother (my son) and thought we were having a great weekend. Then yesterday my son came to me and told me his $75.00 was missing from his room. He told me that he noticed it missing the other night and him and my SS looked everywhere. I went up to his room hoping that maybe a fan blew it under the dresser or something but my DH decided to search my SS's room and immediately found it hidden in his overnight bag. We went for a meeting with SS's BM and decided on a punishment together as a group! However I am not sure this is going to solve the problem!!!! As you can see it started of small but now its escalating to a big problem and I just don't know what to do with this anymore... I can't handle the lies or the stealing! Any advice would be a huge help!

Comments

Bojangles's picture

Submitted by Bojangles on Mon, 09/16/2013 - 3:43pm

Well it's a great start that some co- parenting is going on over this issue. SSthen12 was nothing like as prolific, but I did notice chocolate bars going missing from the kitchen, and on one occasion DH and I confronted him and his older sister to find out who had taken the last bar without asking. Both denied it vehemently. A few days later DH was playing with SS and they were talking about a game SD was saving up for, SS opened up his toy safe to check his money and out fell the chocolate wrapper. I was so surprised when DH told me. I think a lot of children experiment with sneaking treats and grow out of it with the right discipline. The £75 is more worrying. But if you all take action together it will hopefully put a stop to it.

luchay's picture

Submitted by luchay on Mon, 09/16/2013 - 9:46pm

Bojangles, I thought the same - great that the parents are working together!!!

We have this issue with sd13. Not so much with food (stupid fatso BM sends her with a case full of junk food she hordes in her room despite the no food in bedrooms rule) But she steals small personal possessions from dd's 7, 10 and 21 and myself.

Ranging from hats, accessories, a bottle of dd21's perfume to dd7's school pencil case - all brand new and waiting to be labelled (had her name on the front but I needed to label all the individual items) went missing before I got to it, we did get it back by accident.

I have no idea what to do, at least your OH and the BM are in agreement, acknowledge the problem and are taking steps to deal with it.

OH here prefers the ostrich approach....