MONEY MORAL DILEMMA: Would you shop your teenager?

armoured-smiler

No, point in reporting to police as you cannot prove it was your offspring. Goes like this police "where was this offence committed", "on our PC", "can you prove it was not you?", "no", so the bank ain't going to pay out (negliegency etc;), now if it was in a internet cafe...........

DrFluffy

The_Eskimo's_Donger wrote: »

after killing him to death

Is there any other outcome of killing :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: ?

debbsie

I wouldn't shop him.

But, he would wish that he was in jail by the time I'd finished with him . .

raineshoe

This very thing happened to us when our teenager was 14 and yes we did shop him to a degree. He bought £400.00 worth of goods on the internet. Most items we were able to return as were unused and fortunately the shops accepted them back.

laurasbump

I'd sell enough of their stuff to cover the debt - decks, games consoles, bike, etc.
I'm not sure how I'd deal with punishing them for the theft though. Remove certain liberties maybe - early nights, not going out with friends, extra homework(!!)
They certainly need to understand that what they did was criminal.

Have got all this to come - mine's only 5 months old!

annamc75

Does it matter to any of you what the money went on as to what action you would take?

Eg if the money had been stolen for drugs or alcohol as opposed to just to buy stuff?

I would be tempted to contact to the police to see if it is possible for chld to have a "talking to" about theft and the consequences of his/her actions. And then work out a suitable punishment and removing property bought - no illicit gains in this house.

MoonChild74

My kids would be lucky to find £750 in my bank account at the moment!!!:rolleyes:

I'm a Youth Worker and I see and hear of far worse things than this going on.
I also see an awful lot of peer pressure, bullying and attention seeking.
And unfortunately, many young people have no guidance at home.

Perhaps I'm a little too objective, but I'd always want to know why it's happened.
In my experience, behaviour like this is usually a symptom of something much bigger.:huh:

If it was my own child however, I certainly wouldn't 'shop them' (it's really not worth the hassle and the police wouldn't take it seriously). I'd make them pay back every penny....and then I'd resign as I'm obviously in the wrong job!!!:rotfl:

RuthC10p

No! This did happen to me and the bank still would not refund my money - it said that I must have kept my card insecurely and shared my details with my son for him to have used the card! So, he got a criminal record and a fine (which left our family £70 worse off overall on top of the stolen money), and I never got any money returned. Overall it was the last of my son's shenanigans and shopping him was a shock he seemed to need to learn a lesson; but with hindsight I would rather he had paid it off in other ways and kept a clean slate for his future.
As for why he did it - he just didn't believe there would be any consequences, and he didn't realise how delicate our family finances are. Growing up is hard but maybe we shouldn't make it too easy either! I'm a youth worker too by the way, but at the time I was way too skint to be 'understanding' about it and I had an obligation to my other kids to try to get the money back somehow. Parenting is a lot harder than youth work.

Welshwoofs

For a one-off I would make him sell the equipment via ebay and pay back any difference - even if it meant stripping him of all xmas/birthday money from other people.

I'd also take him to the local police station and rather than making a formal complaint, ask an officer to 'have a word' about stealing and show him the cells.

Welshwoofs

annamc75 wrote: »

I would be tempted to contact to the police to see if it is possible for chld to have a "talking to" about theft and the consequences of his/her actions. And then work out a suitable punishment and removing property bought - no illicit gains in this house.

Many of them are more than willing to give a child a 'talking to'. I've got a couple of friends whose kids were marched down to the local police station for a talking to and a 'sightseeing tour of the cells' after pinching money from parents' purses and wallets.