We're planning to get him to a therapist, so maybe posting here is just venting. Many of you might remember that when our son was very young, he used to steal from me. He would go out of his way to steal my most precious possessions, accomplishing acrobatic feats I would think impossible for one so small. My brother passed away from ALS in 2004 and left my daughter his wedding band. My son promptly stole it from my dresser drawer, and I found it in his room. I put it in the back of the top shelf of my closet. He somehow managed to find it there and give it to a girl in the neighborhood. That was when he was five or six years old. He also cut many of the quarters out of the mint sets my father had collected for me from my birth. That was one of the few things my father left me after his death. That now seems a long time ago, but I was furious for a long time that I had to keep everything that was important to me locked up in a trunk.
Jump forward about six years. My son has been taking the bus downtown for the better part of the year. I thought it would be good for his independence. Recently, he claimed he had found his "Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty." My wife said that he couldn't have found it because she had found it under his bed when she was cleaning his room and threw it out. I asked him where he got it, and he admitted that he shoplifted it. He said that he knew it was wrong but he took it because he didn't have any. He also admitted to taking five cans of it this summer. (I didn't say it, because it is wrong, but he is stealing it from a small local store that befriended him on his wanderings this summer). I marched him down there and made him pay for it out of his allowance.
He claims that he did not steal anything else, but there are many, many suspicious things that he has always explained away. Our elderly neighbor who loves him like a grandson thinks he stole an opal necklace and two rings from her. (What would an eleven year old do with that?) My wife thinks he has stolen a necklace from her that I bought her for $75 for Mother's Day. (Which is a lot for me). He showed up with a lot of expensive Dr. Who stuff this summer that he claimed was on clearance. (He gets $40 a month allowance, but he had about seven figurines that cost about $15 each).
I usually give him the benefit of the doubt. He's sweet, intelligent, and kind.
I thought marching him down to the store to pay for the items he shoplifted would have been enough.
However, today I got a call from his teacher that she found the teacher's math book with all the answer keys in it in his backpack. So I have to go meet with her on Wednesday.
Admittedly, I feel like s**t. I took twelve years off from my life to be an at-home-dad. What did I accomplish? I raised a super-smart boy that steals things and cheats. How did that happen? I thought being there for my kids would do the trick. Now I'm working part time, and I'm always home when my son gets home to help him with his homework, etc.
My mother faced the same kind of behavior with my brother. He was frequenting bars when he was 13. Whenever my mother found out, she would call the police and have him arrested. I told him today that the next time I found that he had stolen something, I would call the police myself. There is a dark part of me that really does not even want him around if he is going to behave that way at eleven years old.
I myself was terrified of stealing things. Once, when I was a boy, I absent-mindedly walked out of a convenience store with a handful of candy. I tremblingly walked back to the store to pay for it, convinced that the police were going to be all over me at any minute.
I don't know why he stole so much from me when he was little, and I don't know why he is shoplifting, stealing from his teacher, and cheating on his homework now. I'm so angry I could just walk out into the desert and sit for a week.
I guess putting time into our children doesn't really make them turn out the way we want them to.
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Originally Posted by redfox
