TYT: Mom Turns in Six Year Old Daughter for Shoplifting - Was She Right?

[ihavenobias]

Run time: 02:32 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpeRFXbiOpc   Posted on YouTube: December 25, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: December 28, 2009 By DU Member: ihavenobias Views on DU: 3719

 
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[virgogal]

1. No !!!!!

[MercutioATC]

2. Parenting by proxy. Can't parent? Have the State do it for you!

Lousy parent is soooo many ways.

[Skittles]

3. no

way over the top and wasting police resources

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[valerief]

4. Noooooo! nt

[OhioBlue]

5. NO - take responsibility

She could have taken her daughter back to the store to return the $3.00 worth of tatoos and made her apologize and explained to her why it is wrong to take something from the store without paying for it... we are talking about a six year old. It is beyond ridiculous to waste the time of the police officer for this. I cannot believe they cooperated with this charade.

[azurnoir]

8. Thank you I did just that to my own kid some 20 years ago

took her back to the store and made her give the item back, albeit I wound up talking to 2 managers the first one a young assistant manager said "aw she's so cute let her keep it, no harm done"!!!!! my reply was that in a few more years it wouldn't be so "cute" and took her and the item in question to another manager who was a bit more co-operative and told her it was wrong and what could happen which was just fine she never did it again

[Hekate]

18. Same here. My son & a little pal stole a bunch of lighters, so I took my son to the store...

... after the elementary school principal gave me a call when their backpacks were searched. The store manager was serious but kind once he figured out what I wanted. When we got home I made my son sit on the back patio with me and flick that Bic over and over till it was dead. I guess he was about nine, maybe ten.

My son had a few more "adventures" before he turned 20, the kind that give a mother gray hair, but he ultimately became a man to be proud of.

I really do not want to know what became of Jesse, that other boy. His mother was a sicko who would buy him a new knife when the principal confiscated his knife -- that kind of thing. Oh, and if her kid got mad at another kid she would pile all her children in the van and follow the child her boy was mad at.

The last time I ever saw Jesse he was in 5th or 6th grade and came to my front door in an unfriendly mood looking for my son. I told him to go away but he just stood there giving me the evil eye, so I went out onto the porch and started walking him down the driveway, very slowly because he walked backwards until we got to the sidewalk, when he finally walked away, looking over his shoulder.

Hekate

[proud2BlibKansan]

24. My son stole some gum from the checkout counter when he was 2 or 3

I found it before we left the store (clutched in his little hand) and made him give it back to the store manager. Manager said "Oh kids do that ALL the time!" I said "Not MY kid!"

[TheEuclideanOne]

6. I hope they try her as an adult!

That'll learn her! I was actually caught shoplifting as a little kid and got caught by the manager. I was terrified just by speaking with the manager and I never thought about it again. My parents also made it sink in pretty well and I was punished. I think that the police is clearly overkill.

[Suji to Seoul]

7. Good punishment: Let's just give her lethal injection now! That will teach her a lesson

Shoplift stickers. . .DEATH!!!

What police officer would allow this to happen and what store manager would allow this to occur.

The officer could have just refused and driven away.

[Turborama]

9. Columbus, Ohio

I wonder if she's one of http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x405572">these loons?

[JI7]

10. stupid ass parent, maybe that's why her daughter stole in the first place

[urgk]

11. I'd prefer calling the cops to doing nothing, if those were the only choices.

There is nothing I'd like better than a nationwide movement toward accountability in children. But, I think there has to be a better solution between the two extremes. One version might be to make her pay for it out of her allowance, so the store gets its money, then let her drop her own tattoos in a glass of solvent. She pays her own money, but gets nothing in return.

She'd lose the thing she wanted as well as the opportunity to spend her money on some other thing she'd want.

[NewJeffCT]

12. You can teach a lesson without having to call the cops

on a 6 year old. I mean, wasn't the mom watching her daughter? It's not like she was 16 - she was 6.

[OhioChick]

14. K&R n/t

[SnakeEyes]

15. I think she was right... sorta

Her choice to call the police, in my opinion, shows that she isn't a good parent. Therefore, it was actually a good decision because at least she is having someone who can teach her daughter something do so. There are a lot of crappy parents out there and so it becomes the job of us, society as a whole, and the state's job to make sure they don't fall through the cracks. It takes a village...

[pundaint]

16. Spanking, an appropriate response, has been criminalized. Since every aspect of parenting is now

subject to second guessing, it's only prudent to let the State handle it.

[Devil_Fish]

40. are you serious? You think that domestic violence is the answer to a shop lifting 6 year old?

If you have children or pets I pitty them. Teaching a child that violence is an acceptable way to get what you want is why our prison system is full. If you seriously can't diciplin you children with out hitting them or calling the cops then I feel really sorry for your whole family, including your future grandchildren, and even you.

:cry:

[truthrocks]

17. This is the kind of crappy parenting that creates republicans (or serial killers, whatever).

:banghead:

[Ino]

19. Did the girl know what she was doing?

I was about 4 years old, at the grocery store with my father. I picked up a roll of Life Savers. I knew they were 5 cents, and saw a nickel among the money my father put down on the counter, so I thought he paid for them. When we got home, I gave the candy to my mother as a present for her. She threatened to haul me back to the store and have me confess I'd stolen them. That's when I realized my father hadn't seen me holding the candy, and the nickel wasn't for that. I was terrified. I remember this entire incident clearly, and I had done it very innocently. No one bothered to ask me to explain my actions -- I was considered a criminal.

The Catholic Church considers 7 years old as the age of reason, the age when children begin going to confession: "It is not until the age of 7, give or take a year or so, that your child's conscience begins to mature enough to guide her actions. In fact, there is typically a marked surge in moral and mental maturity at that special moment in development (child psychiatrists Theodore Shapiro and Richard Perry first described this in 1976 in an article titled "Latency Revisited: The Age of Seven, Plus or Minus One"). It's been called the "Age of Reason," since these children have a newly internalized sense of right and wrong. They are no longer focused simply on not getting caught or displeasing adults. They have made up their minds about what is right or wrong, identifying with their primary caregivers' expressed values and applying them quite rigidly."
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=7241

6-year-olds believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and other magical thinking. But they're expected to have fully-developed consciences and the capacity for sin, for thieving? I don't think so.

At any rate, I'd like to hear the girl's side of the story. I doubt she'll ever do it again -- nor did I. And she won't forget her mother's over-reaction either -- and neither did I. Congratulations, mom.

[madmom]

20. Way back in the early 80s my aunt found out my nephew stole a candy bar, she

went back to the store paid for it ( he had already eaten it) then she took him to the police station. The desk cop talked to him, took him back to a cell, told him to "set there a few minutes while I talk to your mom" and left him there door open and left the room for 15 minutes. The kid didn't move a muscle and later said it scared the sh*t out of him. He never stole again. There were no inmates there at the time.

[Toasterlad]

21. Involving the Police Seems Unnecessarily Harsh

Years ago, when I was the assistant manager at a bookstore, a woman came up to me and told me that she was about to bring in her son, who had shoplifted something from the store. She wanted to scare the kid, and she asked me to "memorize his face" and tell him I would call the cops the next time I saw him. I did just what she asked. The kid was plenty scared, and I doubt he ever stole again.

If this woman had gone to cops with her son, I'm sure it would have been much more terrifying for him, and yet, the same message was learned in both cases. Also, involving the cops in something like this is basically cutting into time they could be working on real problems.

[badgerpup]

22. More and more, I'm grateful I didn't have offspring...

This is kinda on the fence, IMHO...
Sometimes a 'stern talking-to' and grounding just doesn't get a kid's attention the way you'd like. :banghead:

This method let the kid know that shoplifting is larceny, aka theft, i.e., seriously illegal and just plain WRONG.
Stealing things is going to cause all kinds of trouble to rain down upon you and can unnecessarily complicate (if not downright ruin) one's life (e.g., friends and family lose trust and respect for a known thief really quickly...not to mention legal issues).
Best learn this lesson NOW.

OTOH, making her FACE the person she'd stolen from, admit what she'd done and apologize (as well as paying for the merchandise she'd swiped) would probably have been a better way to handle it.


I don't know...:shrug:

[AllTooEasy]

23. Yes, Yes, Yes!!! Teach them the consequenses of their's actions!!! Republican kids ...

don't get such lessons.

And please, let's stop with the "Don't trametize the kid" argument. They are several levels of trama, and some of the lower levels are beneficial. We have to get out of this mindset that every tramatic experience is equivalent to being sexually abused, watching Daddy beat Mommy, or war. We are so sensitive to "tramatizing/upseting" our children that they grow up learning nothing, i.e. becoming Republicans and doing whatever they want without considering the consequences to others or themselves.

"Just talk to them", well obviously talking didn't work. Spanking would have done W, and later the world, some good.

[Devil_Fish]

41. W was probably "spanked" as a kid. Sr probably belted him regularly. thats why he is an abusive fuck

[bread_and_roses]

25. I notice some beat-the=children cranks made an appearance here. predictable

As usual they show not the least glimmer of understanding of child-development or anything much else to do with raising children. I didn't watch the vid - just the title alone tells enough of the story. Sure, call the cops on a six year old - what an idiotic, cruel act.

[ihavenobias]

26. "I didn't watch the vid - just the title alone tells enough of the story."

This is the perfect example of why it's a terrible idea to comment on a video before watching it. Cenk was strongly against the mom's choice to call the cops.

Next time just watch the video. In this case it was less than 3 minutes and I'm sure you can spare those minutes to avoid making a grossly incorrect assumption part of the public record.

;)

[bread_and_roses]

35. who's talking about Cenk? I was referring to posters in this thread

the story itself did not interest me - the tales of idiotcy and cruelty toward childen perpetuated in the nuclear family are endless. I read the thread because i was interested in the responses. I have an idle bet with myself on threads about children or cops how many posts it takes for the closet authoritiarians to come out of the woodwork.

[ihavenobias]

36. Well, you said you didn't watch the video so it sounded like you assumed he supported the mom.

I mean, that would be logical based on your comment about the video title and not having watched it. But oh well, if that's not the case, I'm happy to hear it.

Have a happy new year!

[bread_and_roses]

37. a happy new year to you too (n/t)

[Clintonista2]

27. I had a friend in elementary school who stole some money from her brother when she was like 8...

Her dad knew she took it, but she denied it was her, so her dad brought her down to the police station and got them to give her a lie detector test LOL.

[Cleita]

28. When I was a kid, it was standard for parents, who caught their kids

shoplifting, to take them to the store and make them either give the item back or pay for it, like if it was a candy bar, and apologize to the store manager. It happened to a couple of classmates of mine. When I was in high school, a couple of kids got caught by the store detective shoplifting in a department store and he called the cops. Those kids not only had to spend some time in juvey hall but were expelled from our school (Catholic) as well. Making a kid do restitution and an apology seemed to work by humiliation, but sending the kids to jail didn't help as those kids became runaways and disappeared into some kind of underground hell afterwards. Their parents didn't seem to care. When I worked retail for awhile at Sears and saw kids stealing, I never reported them to the store security because I remembered what happened to those kids I knew in high school. Maybe it wasn't right on my part but somehow I felt Sears could well afford it and I didn't want to ruin young lives just to protect the property of a corporate giant.

[katkat]

33. high school

High school is a lot different from actual kids stealing.

Younger children really don't have a grasp of the idea of theft, I think, and need to have it impressed upon them in a decent manner that it's wrong. By the time someone is a teenager, they know theft is a crime. If they shoplift, calling the cops is totally appropriate. Those kids were probably headed for a life of crime.

Nice idea about okaying theft, Not: the victim "can afford the loss." Excuse me, its the owner's property, even if the owner is rolling in dough.

[Cleita]

34. Whose wrong is in the eye of the beholder and the kids I didn't report were

under twelve for the reason you stated, they don't have a grasp of the idea. It seemed to be a game to them and our head security guy was a real mean asshole.

[angstlessk]

42. that's what I did with my son...caught him pocketing something at a local

convenience store and marched him up to the counter and made him fess up...and I asked him if he had the money to pay for it..and he did not (I knew) and made him turn it over to the clerk..he was humiliated...I think humiliation is a better deterrent than time in jail.

[alphafemale]

29. More disturbing is those bands of people who actually have "taught" their children to shoplift

By this age and younger they are quite skilled. They're even used as "tools" as babies in stroolers. The loot is dropped in the strooler with the toddler, and if by some chance they are caught? "Oh I'm so sorry. I didn't see him grab that!"

Yeah. Right.

[StarfarerBill]

30. Not only no, but hell no.

[Loudmxr]

31. Every child is different. She could be an evil child.

Sure sounds like her mother is an evil greedy person. Maybe this will work out for the best. The child will NEVER trust her evil mother again.:smoke:

[ooglymoogly]

32. Its called nipping the mother daughter bonding thing

right in the bud...This will never leave the child's mind. You stupid witch...she is 6 years old. Take her back to the store make her pay for the items apologize and let your kid know this is not the right thing to do. Are you our of your freakin mind. but, but, but its the pug thing to do.

[Stevenmarc]

38. This is why we need a Baby Einstein Tazer

[bermudat]

39. Hell to the no!