to be fucking beyond furious with my ten year old daughter

[ovaryhill]

Had a call from fraud prevention at my bank today
Daughter has been playing Movistar Planet and has taken my bank acard nd spent £266 over the past couple of months!!!
I'm so upset I could cry

Jeez there are some angry people around. I wonder if its to do with their upbringing....

lashing out

Why the biscuit?

MrsGently, in what ways did you consider yourself 'liberal'?

Liberal parents are not a new phenomenon- my Mum was a teacher and my Dad an Economist in the mid to late 70's and 80's and they did not bring us up with an authoritarian attitude. My Mum only remembers 2 families like this in our neighbourhood and one was very religious. Equally, my DH lived in a stricter household- like me he was generally told not to do something and given a reason why but unlike me his Mum did occasionally tell him to remove himself from the room when he had done something serious, like when he had hit his brother very hard but he's turned out ok- kind, decent person who works as an Architect!

I would have sold the toys. Shown her that if you steal you have to repay.
At 10 i knew that was wrong.
I would not have taken the cards from my parents to pay for things.
I wouldn't have cancelled christmas but i wouldn't have bought what i usually would.
One birthday i behaved terribly. I did something awful so on thAt birthday i only got a few presents.
It's ok to say that selling the toys would betray the childs trust, but what about the parents trust?
It doesn't matter if the child didn't tally up the amount, it was only a tenner here and there how is that right? I don't want my child thinking it's acceptable to steal a tenner from me!
I knew at that age what stealing was and that there would be consequences.
I lost some of my toys as a child.
I'm not scarred nor have i gone no contact with my parents!
My dad was actually the person i was closest too.

Selling her dolls isn't a punishment as such, it is her paying the money back. Why shouldn't she pay the money back? She spent it. It is a lot of money and not buying her an ice cream here and there isn't going to touch it.
I don't care if it's a prised possession that she really loves. I'm pretty sure the OP was quite attached to her hard earned money. Sometimes you have to give up something you love to fix something you broke.

It's not cruel or abuse

I asked this before but nobody answered:

If she had stolen £266 of cold hard cash from her mums purse would you all react differently? Even if she had done it bit by bit.

What if she had stolen from someone other than her mother?

As I previously posted some parents are very proud to be considered hard and no nonsence and are generally unpleasant bullies in RL.

I know a few like this. People laugh at them behind their backs. They dont realise how ridiculous they sound.

Also lots of parents and those who have not yet had children are full of the if that was my child their feet wouldn't touch blah blah blah and when actually are parents or faced with problems they react totally differently to their own children.

Yep totally agree. They talk the bullshit talk but when it comes down to it they know its not the right way to deal with kids.

Surly I've seen more personal attacks from the so-called liberal parents on here against the hard-assed parents than I have the other way around. It's the liberals that sound pretty angry, hyperactive, prone to exaggeration and hysterical to me.

anna I gave you a biscuit because I have nothing else I can say about your repeated assertions that selling a child's things to pay back a debt is "lashing out" by the parent.

Liberal parents are not a new phenomenon- my Mum was a teacher and my Dad an Economist in the mid to late 70's and 80's and they did not bring us up with an authoritarian attitude

Sadly, they also seem to have raised you to have zero comprehension or understanding skills, which is a bit of a pity.

A harsh but fair punishment for something serious does not necessarily equal "authoritarian".

Again: How is someone with no income meant to repay a debt incurred through stealing, if not by selling something they own?

Of course she should pay the money back and I do think it would be worse if she had stolen actual cash. Credit cards/debit cards they don't feel real to many adults let alone a child.

A lot would depend on how contrite she was too. When my DS spent a load on on-line games he was mortified when we caught him. He really didn't seem to appreciate just how much it was in total and of course it didn't feel like real money. We had some very serious talks and a lot of tears, touch wood he's not done anything like it again but who knows as they get older.

That's a good point kissingfish i wonder if it would be different if it was actual money?

Ten I thought I'd only used the term lashing out the once but I stand to be corrected if not.

ceyes by paying it back through doing jobs for a start. Washing cars, cleaning, mowing the lawn there are plenty of ways the child could be made to pay back the money without actually having to possess any cash. Not being allowed to play on the tablet obviously or being trusted - they are all punishments in my mind.

anna you're absolutely right, just the once, my humble apologies. I believe previously it was "Dickensian" and something about thrashing children. Which is much more restrained, obviously.

That's a very open question, Golden. I am, personally, usually a live and let live type of person. I have lived through other people's 'over reactions', and don't like too much confrontation as a result. However, as I said about 10 pages ago, I've had this happen to me (being stolen from). The punishment was 'soft', and even though my sibling was 'so sorry' at the time, in a little while it was all forgotten about (as was the stop pinching from family rule on their part). Some people will do something bad once, feel terrible and never do it again. Others will carry on, just become sneakier about it. Really isn't always black and white as to why they do it either. In this case, I think that a tough punishment is needed as what the girl did, more than once, was a severe action. It was a big theft, not a rubber from a shop or a couple of quid for sweets out of a wallet. There's a line, and sometimes the soft approach just doesn't cut it. Remember, this girl is on the verge of becoming a teen, there will be boundary testing from now on anyway. Better one harsh lesson now, than tearing hair out for the next five odd years.

She hasn't stolen from someone else, so that's a completely irrelevant question.

Yes, I would have the same reaction if she'd stolen the money from her mother's purse bit by bit. She didn't steal it all in one go, so that is also an irrelevant question.

But the interesting thing is she did take it on a debit card. As I said before, millions of adults don't use their credit/debit cards like they were cold hard cash - so it's hardly surprising a 10 year old got lulled into a false sense of security by getting away with this for so long.

Of course I am biased because I am on the side of taking a firm but FAIR (not bunny boiling) approach with children who make mistakes, but I must say the arguments on that side are so much more persuasive and coherent than the "punish the little shit" side.

Anyway, op has updated (if people care to look) and I hope they both have a happier day today.

I've seen more personal attacks from the so-called liberal parents on here against the hard-assed parents than I have the other way around. It's the liberals that sound pretty angry, hyperactive, prone to exaggeration and hysterical to me.

Your point is?

I think being authoritarian is more to do with attitude, how you communicate than with whether you apply sanctions.

My DS, when he was 9, once spent £700 on a Simpsons game, as the apple default setting was that no password to the shop (ie in-app purchases) were needed within 15 minutes of the last purchase.

In those 15 minutes he managed to spend £700. I am still not sure whether he understood it was real money. DH came down like a ton of bricks, lots of shouting and crying. Quite an awful day.

Meanwhile I contacted Apple and asked for money back (which i got back), my bank (Barclays) also gave me the money back (so and to return it to them!). So I was covered by both Apple and my bank. I hope you get your money back too, if you state clearly that your card was used without your authorisation. Can you really not get it back? I'd try again!

We had a serious chat with DS that in-app purchases were real money. It was a bit of a shock for all of us.

What OP daughter did sounds like more long-term deceit, so it needs to be dealt with. However, i think it is important for kids to also feel the "sentence" is served after a while, and they are forgiven at some point (before Christmas!).

Minty, I don't see a difference between her stealing from her mother or stealing from anyone else. The fact that she didn't isn't irrelevant.

If she had taken a friends card and stolen £266 off it that would be exactly the same as taking her mothers card but somehow I think peoples reactions would be different.

Why is it less of a crime because she stole from her mother? Why should the punishment be any different?

Going by a lot of comments on this thread I think a lot of you need to have a word with your children about what exactly debit and credit cards are and how they work. They need to know it IS real money. Real money that isn't theirs. Then it can stop being used as an excuse.

One thing that does seem to be a common meme is people who think that it's somehow a bad thing for children to have bank accounts with debit cards, or to spend that money online, because using cash teaches "the real value of money" or somesuch. As this incident proves, in the real word, "real money", and certainly "real money in quantity" is cards and accounts and online transactions, and is hardly likely to become less so. So children learning that online/card money is real money is very important, rather than a load of obsolescent ideas about cash being more real.

Because her mum is partly to blame for this happening. Yes, she really should have known what her dd was doing on line all that time (her being 10 and all).

Pneumometer yes, i was 12 or 13 when i got my bank account.

I can remember being 10 quite well. I had a clear idea of right and wrong and knew properly that stealing was wrong. I had a rudimentary concept of what money was (I had weekly pocket money) but there is no way on earth I would have understood the enormity of what the girl has done here. I was bright so I would have known that what I was doing was wrong, but not exactly how wrong. The scale of this would have gone right over my head.

So, I wouldn't punish this based on the amount of the money lost but based on the breach of trust and the disappointment that she has caused.

I would get a PCSO or similar to uniform up to give her a talking-to, I would make her work to pay it back and I would seriously speak to her about her relationship with friends, peer pressure etc. It doesn't sound like they were egging her on, but she's at an age where she wants to impress - it's a pressure like nothing else. I don't know what to make of the suggestion to sell/ confiscate the dolls. OP you know your daughter, you will know what will work. If there is genuinely less to go round at Christmas, you should make her know that, but I wouldn't make her feel she's ruined Christmas or give her nothing if her siblings are getting presents.

As PPs have pointed out the OP has handled the situation so I don't think is now in need of 101 ways to punish her child.

Though it didn't take long for thread to digress into usual hyperbole of 'But what if DD had stolen it as cash?' 'From someone else?' 'Hmm, hmm?'

Also typical of the unrealistic way these punitive threads go is insisting a 10 year old should repay every last penny (realistically how can a 10 year old do this, or do jobs around the house to cover £266?)

There is also the assertion that 10 is nearly a teen. They are 3 years from this. That's quite a long time! And as if becoming a teen makes them adult and sensible

OP's DD has done a very foolish thing (it won't be the first or last) and in those circumstances a child needs to feel the consequences of it. If the parent has already successfully parented the child, this will suffice. And then life moves on.

"How is someone with no income meant to repay a debt incurred through stealing, if not by selling something they own?"

But that's not the entire argument that's being made, is it? There's far too much deeply unpleasant "pick something she REALLY likes, something she LOVES ... make her sell it and pack it up herself ... make it a harsh punishment ... make sure it REALLY HURTS ... that'll teach her ... little shit ..." (to deeply resent her parents and make sure she doesn't get caught the next itme, IMO) I'm half-expecting someone to suggest shaving her head, or tarring and feathering her. I think the OP's approach sounds perfectly reasonable - addresses the severity of the crime without basically turning into the parental equivalent of Judge Dredd.

(though what would I know, as the wishy washy liberal parent child of wishy washy liberal parents...)