I will never get used to the stealing. A few weeks ago I read an article about how to save money and one of the suggestions was to keep a change jar.
I thought hey, what a great idea. If I could find a hiding place, I could cash it in. I have locked drawers on my desk, so I decided to put it there. Unfortunately, I forgot to lock the desk and now it’s gone.
Today John suddenly appeared with $25 worth of change that he says is his. I have careful tabs on his money for the last several months requiring receipts and asking him to give all his change back to me. He declares that he had been saving his change.
Sure enough, I go to my change drawer and it’s gone. Except for a few pennies, it’s all gone. And all of Bart’s laundry quarters are gone.
But when I confronted him, he swore, said it wasn’t here, and threatened to hurt me. Said he was being blamed for something he didn’t do.
Will it do any good to force him to admit that he took the money and lied about it? Or should we just be more careful with our change. I mean he’s done this for years and we’ve tried to get the truth, and there are some times where we can get it out of him, and then he is consequenced, but it hasn’t mattered. He still does it.
In addition, he came home from the mall saying a friend (he has no friends here) “gave him” a watch.
We’ll have an in home therapist soon, by court order. He has a therapist who I will tell about it. But there really isn’t much more we can do.
And we’ll not let him go to the mall without an adult again. And I’ll try to remember to lock my door.
The hardest thing is that I am 98% sure he took it. It could have been a few of the other kids, but they haven’t shown up with money lately. In my gut I know it was him and the fact that he can not only blatantly lie about it but threaten to hurt me because I confronted him drives me insane.
We didn’t know this is what we were signing up for ... but it is so familiar among adoptive families that we all have it in common. Stealing and lying about it is very common. We only have 3 of our 10 children who to our knowledge have not stolen from us.
It’s such a personal thing though, that it is hard to get over every single time it happens.
I thought hey, what a great idea. If I could find a hiding place, I could cash it in. I have locked drawers on my desk, so I decided to put it there. Unfortunately, I forgot to lock the desk and now it’s gone.
Today John suddenly appeared with $25 worth of change that he says is his. I have careful tabs on his money for the last several months requiring receipts and asking him to give all his change back to me. He declares that he had been saving his change.
Sure enough, I go to my change drawer and it’s gone. Except for a few pennies, it’s all gone. And all of Bart’s laundry quarters are gone.
But when I confronted him, he swore, said it wasn’t here, and threatened to hurt me. Said he was being blamed for something he didn’t do.
Will it do any good to force him to admit that he took the money and lied about it? Or should we just be more careful with our change. I mean he’s done this for years and we’ve tried to get the truth, and there are some times where we can get it out of him, and then he is consequenced, but it hasn’t mattered. He still does it.
In addition, he came home from the mall saying a friend (he has no friends here) “gave him” a watch.
We’ll have an in home therapist soon, by court order. He has a therapist who I will tell about it. But there really isn’t much more we can do.
And we’ll not let him go to the mall without an adult again. And I’ll try to remember to lock my door.
The hardest thing is that I am 98% sure he took it. It could have been a few of the other kids, but they haven’t shown up with money lately. In my gut I know it was him and the fact that he can not only blatantly lie about it but threaten to hurt me because I confronted him drives me insane.
We didn’t know this is what we were signing up for ... but it is so familiar among adoptive families that we all have it in common. Stealing and lying about it is very common. We only have 3 of our 10 children who to our knowledge have not stolen from us.
It’s such a personal thing though, that it is hard to get over every single time it happens.
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