Parent suspectschild may have taken something without permission...

Hello:

My colleague at the office is really upset these days. She thinks that
her 9-year-old boy may have taken something from her neighbor's
without permission.

She has found the item on their side of the yard. In other words she
has not found the item in his possession, so she is not sure if her
son actually took it.

She has not confronted the child yet. Since there is a chance that the
kid may deny that he ever took the item, she is not sure how to talk
to the kid about it.

Any suggestions?

Deguza
(Post your replies here please.)

In article , Kompu Kid says...

Hello:

My colleague at the office is really upset these days. She thinks that
her 9-year-old boy may have taken something from her neighbor's
without permission.

She has found the item on their side of the yard. In other words she
has not found the item in his possession, so she is not sure if her
son actually took it.

She has not confronted the child yet. Since there is a chance that the
kid may deny that he ever took the item, she is not sure how to talk
to the kid about it.

Any suggestions?

Does the neighbor have kids? In outdoor play, things can get scattered around.
The thing to do would be for her to tell her son to return the item in order to
clean up the yard, and so that the neighbor can use/enjoy it.

Even if there aren't kids and this didn't get left around in play, it doesn't
sound like stealing behavior. Things deliberately stolen don't generally get
left around on lawns - wouldn't you agree?

I can't comment more than that because you don't really give much information.
For example, is this item light enough to possibly have been blown over into the
yard?

Banty

In article , Banty wrote:
In article , Kompu Kid says...
My colleague at the office is really upset these days. She thinks that
her 9-year-old boy may have taken something from her neighbor's
without permission.

She has found the item on their side of the yard. In other words she
has not found the item in his possession, so she is not sure if her
son actually took it.

She has not confronted the child yet. Since there is a chance that the
kid may deny that he ever took the item, she is not sure how to talk
to the kid about it.

Does the neighbor have kids? In outdoor play, things can get scattered around.
The thing to do would be for her to tell her son to return the item in order to
clean up the yard, and so that the neighbor can use/enjoy it.

Even if there aren't kids and this didn't get left around in play, it doesn't
sound like stealing behavior. Things deliberately stolen don't generally get
left around on lawns - wouldn't you agree?

Banty's advice seems sound here. Even if the child *did* steal the
item in question, requesting that the child return the item is a good
way to handle it without confrontation. A confrontation is unlikely
to be productive, and having the child return the object to the
rightful owner (with an apology) would be the appropriate "natural
consequences" punishment if theft was involved.


--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
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Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
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