Rating:
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Comment: I appreciate the advice I hadn’t thought of a boyfriend.
Questioner: Anonymous
Subject: teen stealing
Question: Our daughter is 14, she is a good student , seemed to be responsible loving individual. This past year she was babysitting for a couple and took a cell phone. We were unaware of this until a 2nd cell phone of the couples came up missing also and they approached my husband and I.
We confronted our daughter with the bill, she continued to lie and say she didn’t do it.We made her pay for the 2 phones, pay the bills she had accumulated, and she had to pay back the babysitting hours she was on the phone.She also had to apologize to the couple in person.
We set up a payment plan so she would think about what she had done for a while. We were just starting to get our trust back when at Easter her Grandmothers phone came up missing. We searched her room finding a cell phone(not her grandma’s), which she states she found.
We have tried to talk to her about why. She says it’s because all her friends have one and she doesn’t and that her friends make fun of her because we as parents are too strict. To get that information was like pulling teeth. We are at a loss. This behavior cannot continue but we know something more must be going on but how do we find out????????
Answer: Dear Anonymous:
If there is something more, the only thing I could guess is maybe a boyfriend??? However, I am not so sure there is something more going on. When we were young there was peer pressure, NOTHING like what these children face today.
Children are actually put head first into garbage cans when they don’t have the latest name brand of tennis shoes on their feet.
I suggest you set down with your daughter and ask her about what her day is like. Then LISTEN, LISTEN and listen some more. If she hesitates to talk let the silence build. Do not be afraid of silence. Letting silence build is a communication technique which allows the other person to get the space they need to think and talk.
Seriously, you need to get into her world to hear what she is talking about when she says peer pressure. I am not saying her behavior is okay. I am just saying our generation has no clue when it comes to the type of peer pressure children are experiencing now.
Best Wishes,
M Kay Keller
