Before I take it off my blog, i thought I would share some of my observations from my poll. Obviously it was not super sophisticated statistical research, but I was actually kind of surprised at the results. I expected them to be higher in some cases and lower in others.
I didn't expect 21% of the families who responded to say taht they had had a birth child steal from them. I never even thought of stealing from my parents, neither did Bart. So that surprises me.
I am also surprised that only 52% of people had an adopted child steal from them. I assumed it would be closer to 75% or even higher. And that only 11% % had it go higher than $1,000
I guess all in all I"m glad that everyone isn't experiencing the same thing we have over the past 12 years since we got our first older kids. Not only have we had outright thievery, but the accidental "pilfering" of things that got into people's pockets and were never to returned. Things like the emerald and opal necklace that Bart bought for my first mother's day that matched my wedding band. Or Bart's class ring from high school. Things that aren't worth thousands of dollars but are worth so much more.
Sure, we learned to lock things up, and my office and the bedroom are both locked. I have locking drawers on my desk. We are a lot more careful now. But sometimes they can still get our stuff when we lease expect it.
I'm encouraged by the poll... even though it is far from statistically accurate. It gives me some hope that other people's lives can be different than ours and that every time I recruit a family for a child I don't have to immediately assume their lives will be like mine....
We went through a period of time with our three oldest where medicine was locked in a box, the box was locked in our bathroom, which in turn was in our locked bedroom. All cash was in our pockets during the day and in our pillow cases at night. Two of the three that stole eventually learned not to. The third is now 25 and in jail. He is still stealing. Since he is in jail, I don't have to lock up money any more, though out of habit, I never leave it laying around. I hope your situation gets better.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to do some further investigating and see what sorts of issues the kids who are stealing have and then determine if the RAD, FASD. etc. makes a difference in the long term out come. I have a couple of college students who will be looking for some research project such as this and I will drop them the idea.
ReplyDeleteI missed your poll but felt the need to add this in anyway (lol). Recently we found that my 17 had helped herself to many of my husbands "collectible" dvd and cd's. Things that could have been resold for a nice profit (still in the shrinkwrapped packages and purchased for that exact purpose) were wrapped in Christmas paper and destined to be given to her boyfriend for Christmas. She went thru my 25+ year collection of perfectly arranged photo albums and randomly took out pictures she wanted, made a "scrapbook" and created a new family (some of the pics were of people she'd never met and so she just gave them new names). She also cleaned out her little brothers bank of silver change and took some things of mine and wrapped them for a neighbor (because they're so nice - and after all, she doesn't believe they "really" called cps on us because my son was raging in the front yard - again). We found all of these transgressions in a single evening - and it was devastating. Ultimately, the worst part was that she had been telling people we didn't trust her or that I had "trust issues" with her and I had to point out to her that I must have trusted her to be so blindsided by her thefts. I do not trust her at all now - everything is locked up. I even lock up the phone when I leave the house because she had been calling a boy (the ex-boyfriend) and complaining to him about how we didn't trust her - huh? yeah, she's home alone calling him on our phone to complaining about us after having pilfered from the entire family. If there is an emergency, she can go visit the beloved neighbor to borrow their phone. I was just so amazed by the audacity of her actions. I have a son also (her full bio brother) who steals from EVERYONE and will be in jail shortly. He wants it, he takes it. I agree with a previous post where you wrote that there is no room for facts in the brain of an FASD/RAD person. He can completely convince himself of something in spite of proof positive that he's wrong - then he sticks to that.
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