My 11 year old keeps stealing from the family and I've tried everything??

adouglasmhor

Thanks very interesting indeed.

stressedoutmum

I did ask on this forum for advice but feel like I'm taking some sort of battering and I'm not sure if I've explained myself very well.

To the poster who said grow a backbone take the xbox off him - it is off him.

If he is hungry we never stop him having food but he will want sugar snacks so we say have toast, sandwich or fruit - he is never deprived of food. He has a small amount of sweets each day so is never deprived of them.

We advised him to try and save some pocket money and spend some but when he didnt save he blew the whole lot on sweets and just stole sweets from the house when all his money had ran out.

I have had him in the doctors in the past over his temper tantrums. The doctor told me the fact that he never has them in front of anyone else (not school, relatives etc) and only at home then he is a very clever manipulative little boy who feels totally comfortable in his home which is why he does it there and wouldn't try it at anyone else as he is not sure how they would react. He has told me he does it for attention to annoy me if I have annoyed him! He doesn't scream for 2 hours he will sit and sulk and we do tell him to think about how he's behaving and try and catch it before it gets that far.

He never wants to steal sandwiches, bread, fruit etc - only sweets and the money he took was to buy sweets.

If I give him pocket money back he will still continue to steal any sweets that are at home as he has told me he does it because he wants them and I have said no.

His detentions were because he had a supply teacher as his teacher was off and he was pushing his luck. His teacher said she was extremely surprised when she found out he had them, that its not like him and he told me he was 'showing off in front of his mates'

He is a very healthy, sociable little boy and is always on his bike, goes boxing and youth club twice a week and eats a healthy diet

I've just sat down and asked him why he took the sweets last night and he said his brother had more sweets than him yesterday (his brother still have left overs frorm the day before) and he wanted some last night and I wouldn't let him have it so he thought he would take them anyway??

Errata

If this is all about sweets, and only about sweets, ban them from the house! If he sulks, ignore him.

Gigglepig

Hi stressedoutmum, you are saying that your son has a healthy diet, but also that he has a small amount of sweets every day. In my books, having sweets every day doesn't sound like a healthy diet. Do you think he may have less of a craving for sweets if he has none (and no refined sugar in his diet?)

I think there are some interesting points on this thread regarding attention seeking etc so would look into that too.

robpw2

stressedoutmum wrote: »

He is a very healthy, sociable little boy and is always on his bike, goes boxing and youth club twice a week and eats a healthy diet

this is a very niave comment,
your son is clearly not eating a healthy diet if he is stealling sweets and all he wants to buy is sweets.
he may be stealing to get attention ,
whenever someone says something negative about your son or that he may be unhappy you come back with something saying he is - im wondering if you may be part of the problem , if he feels he cannot talk to you about wahtever is bothering him then it sounds like he is using sweets as a comforter ,

is there a Psychatrist or a councilling service you could visit , it may be that he is being bullied, it may help for him to detail to a strangeer

Mrs_Arcanum

It will do neither of your children any harm to limit sweets to once a week. So whilst it may seem harsh on one child at least it will be fair and can be seen to be fair by both children.

Cravings for sweet & fatty food (cakes etc) can simply be down to not having a decent breakfast which should include some protein. Perhaps this would be an easy starting point.

It is very hard to ignore tantrums, but even worse is to react to them. If you continue to ignore his sulks, hopefully he will stop.

Good luck.

tesuhoha

A craving for sweets is sometimes a sign of diabetes. I think it would be better not to have sweets in the house at all and give both children a very small amount of pocket money - say a pound at the weekend. Then if he spends one pound on sweets it won't be such a disaster. If his brother is older maybe give him a bit more. If he steals sweets from his brother, give the brother his pound the following week and tell him why.

My son became addicted to coca-cola when he was young so I stopped buying it completely and he only had it as a treat at Christmas or on his birthday.

BARGAINHUNTER!

You say your son has lots of friends - how long before he loses these friends because he starts to steal from them? It won't be long before you son is able to go out and about on his own. How long before he walks into a shop and steals from there? If he is caught the matter will be taken out of your hands anyway!

Have you thought about keeping the sweets in a locked box and giving equal amounts to each child after tea? Remove the temptation.

If your son really likes his x box then this should be used to reward him for good behaviour. He keeps the x box if he is good, if he steals the power plug is removed for 24 hours.

Has he ever stolen anything at school - im thinking pack lunch boxes left out must be huge temptation. might be worth speaking to teacher and making her aware of situation and see if anyone has reported anything missing from their lunch boxes.

At 11 he is well past the cutie stage and will be going to secondary school soon. Having a reputation as a theif is something that is very hard to get over so this really must be nipped in the bud now before it escalates into stealing different things, and the things being stolen are out of the home.

How would you feel if he went to tea at one of his friends houses and something went missing?

You need to work through every possibility - check with gp there isn't an underlying cause, refer to educational psychologist if there isnt medical issue and keep firm and tuff on the rewards and punishments.

I agree with the other posters regarding the pocket money - just give him a small amount each week and if he chooses to blow it on sweets then so be it. Thats his choice. But he needs to know that money can only be spent once which is a hard lesson to learn. If he sees his siblings saving and able to buy something nice like x box game for example it might make him reavaluate things. You can't really dictate what he spends his pocket money on and if you only give him small amount each week and its gone in couple of hours on sweets then thats his choice and no real harm done if you are not giving him a huge amount of money.

peachyprice

stressedoutmum wrote: »

He has a small amount of sweets each day so is never deprived of them.

just stole sweets from the house when all his money had ran out.


He never wants to steal sandwiches, bread, fruit etc - only sweets and the money he took was to buy sweets.

Stop buying the bloody sweets. If they're not there he can't steal them. By constantly replacing the sweets he is stealing you are enabling him to carry on the cycle.

DVardysShadow

stressedoutmum wrote: »

... I have had him in the doctors in the past over his temper tantrums. The doctor told me the fact that he never has them in front of anyone else (not school, relatives etc) and only at home then he is a very clever manipulative little boy who feels totally comfortable in his home which is why he does it there and wouldn't try it at anyone else as he is not sure how they would react. ....

His detentions were because he had a supply teacher as his teacher was off and he was pushing his luck. His teacher said she was extremely surprised when she found out he had them, that its not like him and he told me he was 'showing off in front of his mates'

Doctor is onto something

BARGAINHUNTER! wrote: »

You say your son has lots of friends - how long before he loses these friends because he starts to steal from them? It won't be long before you son is able to go out and about on his own. How long before he walks into a shop and steals from there? If he is caught the matter will be taken out of your hands anyway!

Good questions. Perhaps some of this is about pushing boundaries - but only those boundaries which he is either confident about or which he realises that the lasting risk is small - eg the supply teacher. I would say that the contact with the police is likely to be quite counterproductive because stressedmum does not understand what is going on in his head.

People generally tend to organise their lives to get maximum reward for minimum effort and every one of us is a portfolio of effort and reward graphs for all kinds of topics - and the rewards are valued according to the criteria of the individual rather than to any absolute set of values.

I have an inkling that the lad has a quite distorted set of effort reward graphs - and it may be that small changes in his behaviour [efforts] can modify the rewards to extremes, so he has great difficulty in calibrating his graphs. If he feels that behaving in a certain positive way gets him no reward within the family and behaving negatively gets him no reward either, then he may end up pitching his behaviour to get maximum reward in terms of mayhem inflicted on the family or amusement from misery inflicted.

This has the flavour of an intelligent, socially capable and generally rational boy behaving rationally to extract maximum reward according to his own criteria from a family environment which is nothing like as rational. The short of it may be that this is at least as much an issue of family dynamics as it is one of a problem child. The long of it is that he may have been too subject to controlling input and now he is actually managing to take control himself - not necessarily to get exactly what he wants but possibly to get a stable and consistent home environment, where he is happy to pull down all kinds of trouble on himself as the price for knowing exactly where he stands.

That is just a possible analysis. Quite how to fix it, I don't know. If he is reacting to being controlled, by doing the controlling himself, the difficulty is for the parents to take charge without being controlling.

Or I could be barking up the wrong tree.