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

I think the children who grow up to be criminal, in general, are from families that don't give a shit, that have a history of criminal behaviour and that have SS intervention more often than they don't, or from (and no offense to single parents, I am one) frazzled single mums who don't have enough support to properly parent their children and work.

They learn the criminal behaviour from those around them, not by having parents who don't subscribe to strict parenting or hard line punishments.

It's normally the ones with the hard line parents who go off the rails and rebel as older teens, ime, before finding the straight and narrow again more often than not.

I hate these games and in particular Moviestar Planet These websites are vile and they are purely out there to con money out of kids and their unsuspecting parents. I won't even go there about the dubious chat function that's regularly used by all sorts of creeps to talk to young kids. How they continue get away with allowing these websites aimed at kids I really don't know. I mean they can't even advertise Frosties on TV in case kids get corrupted by sugar cravings but it's ok for them to go online spend money and chat to strangers

Frequency, that is one of the most stereotypical load of bull I've read on here.

I've grown up in a estate, with plenty of single parent families around. In my personal experience, most of the kids I've known that had a few 'mad years', are from 'decent' and 'proper' middle class families. Because the parents didn't take the hard-line with them, or they didn't learn from Uncle Jim's ways that bad choices lead to consequences (usually with the police). It's this new culture of 'no negative words to a child, never say no, let them figure out the bad by themselves' that is currently causing the most harm. Obviously, that's just what I've seen from my life, both with own family and friends.

The big lesson here is internet supervision. I know it's great when they are quiet for a bit especially in the holidays but this just shows that you've really got to be on top of what they are doing online.

I've met loads of single parents who do an ace job, am I a single mum and so are some of my friends, but the fact is, statistically, more criminals come from single parent families than from 2 parent homes.

I'm not saying for a second that single parents are shoddy parents, but they are more likely to have less time for their children than a 2 parent family, they are more likely to have to work longer hours and have no one home to supervise from a younger age than 2 parent families.

Without support, even the most awesome parent in the world would struggle to hold down a full time job, working shifts and do all of the parenting all of the time, without leaving the child unattended for longer than they'd like, during which time the child is more likely to be getting into trouble.

This isn't the parents fault. It's society's. We are too quick to judge these days and less likely to help.

The only ones of my friendship group who went off the rails in their late teens/early twenties were the ones with strict curfews, draconian punishments and parents they were afraid of.

The hysteria here is funny.

I can't believe people think that because the dolls weren't taken away that the girl might turn into an adult thief or worse.

I pity the parents who have to go all hard arse on their child because they aren't confident they can teach their child any other way. The daughter will no doubt learn what she did was wrong and won't do it again. If she does then a harsher punishment is needed. I have brought up all my children with a more softer approach and they are great and I have no fear that they are going to start robbing banks or anything.

My almost 9 year old didn't understand how debit cards worked until recently. She made a comment about how she wants a card because then you don't need money ever and she asked when the bank would give her one so she can buy what she wants. So it is very likely the OP's dd didn't really understand that using it would make actual money come out of her mum's bank account.

Couldn't agree more, Gently.

So many parents these days refuse to say no to their kids or punish their misdemeanours in case they "damage" them. Invariably, they're the ones who show up on MN a few years later wailing "I can't get my kid to school and he hits me".

Actions have consequences. These are the consequences of a lack of discipline.

This thread is starting to tick all the boxes now. Nice bit of single parent bashing to add to the list

ceyes03, I think that's the bottom line here really. It doesn't matter what circumstances you're from, the less discipline there is, the higher the chance of an unruly child/teen. Of course, punishment should be appropriate to the action done. Again, just teaching the value of money, or understanding card=money is not enough. What exactly is a child meant to learn from that lecture exactly? 'This is mummy's spending card, so next time you steal it, just be careful how much you spend'. As my last post suggested, there has to be some sort of physical representation the child can understand, like loosing toys of the same value, at least for a while.

Yeah, and note it's the liberal parent doing that, not the hard-asses.

That should be losing not loosing, obviously.

That was at Targaryn, btw

Not taking away her dolls does not mean she isn't being disciplined.

Or more importantly, being taught right from wrong.

It's a shame that in your eyes not taking the dolls away means the girl can't learn a lesson. It's very short sighted. I have managed to teach mine right from wrong while dealing with things when they mess up in a less authoritative way and it always worked.

Many of us here are managing to raise great children, some have even raised a child to adulthood without resorting to a harsh punishment for a first time offence. If you can't think of a way of teaching a child how not to steal again without selling her toys which other people got her and which she loves then perhaps you need to look into some other ways of parenting?

FFS, no one is SP bashing, considering the poster is a SP herself!!

Without support, even the most awesome parent in the world would struggle to hold down a full time job, working shifts and do all of the parenting all of the time, without leaving the child unattended for longer than they'd like, during which time the child is more likely to be getting into trouble.

This isn't the parents fault. It's society's. We are too quick to judge these days and less likely to help.

What part of her post do you disagree with?

Or you can read this and other studies which sadly backs up what she says

www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/abstract.aspx?ID=167327

archive.news-leader.com/article/20121125/NEWS01/311250054/single-parents-Ozarks-poverty

Does that mean all children from SP will grow up to be criminals? No, but there is a link.

Does anyone think this child woke up one morning and thought 'right I am going to steal ??266 from my parents today'. No, she was presented with enormous temptation and she succumbed , not because she is evil but because she is human.
If it were my 10 year old I would be explaining that these free games do not write themselves!They absolutely need in-app purchases to recoup the costs of developing these.To this end they are written to present the player with irresistable temptation and even frustration in order to manipulate them into buying more..I bet no adult logs into the app intending to spend serious money

'Discipline' is not the same as 'cruelty'

I discipline my kids, I may be namby pamby but it's not anarchy here (much)

However I am not cruel. Seems to me like some posters on this thread do need to think about the difference between discipline and cruelty. Happily though that's not the case for the OP who I think has managed this well.

So many parents these days refuse to say no to their kids or punish their misdemeanours in case they "damage" them. Invariably, they're the ones who show up on MN a few years later wailing "I can't get my kid to school and he hits me"

You are making huge generalisations ceyes and you are implying that the OP is not going to discipline her dd. This is NOT the case! But there are other forms of punishment than sell her dolls. Why do you think selling the dolls is the only answer??

A couple of years ago our cable TV bill was higher than we expected (around ??60, so a lot lower than yours, OP) and when I looked into it I discovered that my son had been merrily watching pay-for films! Fortunately suitable for children.

We put a PIN on very quickly. However, I think the PIN should be there by default, and you take it off if you are child-free.

I did not make the same mistake with his tablet which is firmly locked down (and in fact so is mine)

A few years ago he added ??500 of Lego to my Amazon basket as well but fortunately didn't press the one-click-buy button!

This will out me to anyone who knows me well, but when I was 9, I wrote one of my mum's cheques out to order a necklace. It cost ??1 but I only had a tin of 1ps and 2ps. I couldn't send off all the coppers so I forged a cheque. The bank phoned my mum about it, she said they could honour it. I did not grow up to become a fraudster! Kids do silly things.

I don't buy the idea that her DD had no idea she was doing wrong by using her mums cards otherwise she would not have done it so secretively. Whether she understood the workings of credit/ debit cards or not she must have realised what she was doing was wrong as she tried to hide it. For me the deceit is the issue here not just the amount of money.

North, I'm confused, did you think selling the dolls was a 'cruel' to the child?

I wonder if all the spiteful cunts on here were given brutal punishments for their own childhood sins and reckon it 'didn't do them any harm'.
Punishment (rather than consequences and requesting reparation) does more harm than good. There are reasons why civilised countries and parents now don't consider it appropriate to hit a child with a cane or belt or shoe when the child does something wrong - and those countries which still use actual floggings or canings as punishment for adult criminals are rightly seen as barbaric : it just teaches them that people 'in authority' can do what they like to those who are smaller or weaker or of lower social status.

Ten, hadn't realised it mattered. You're a little too into being this a versus situation.

U2, I don't really buy into the whole citing studies and stuff. Statistics can be presented to say whatever you hope to say depending on how you word it for a snappy headline. I could suggest that it's the poverty, low income of the household and having less time to spend with children that makes the children more likely to be criminals rather than the parent actually being a single parent. It just so happens that more single parents fit into the having to work all the time category than a two parent family. A child in a family with two parents working all the time, in poverty similar to a single parent in poverty, will be at the same disadvantage.

Totally agree northern and 'discipline' means 'teaching'. It also means finding the right balance of punishment and consequence, too soft and the lesson isn't learnt, too hard results in anger and resentment. Parenting means being a bit creative sometimes in finding the appropriate consequence and not having a knee jerk reaction to punish - 'right she's stolen from me, what's the worst thing I can do to teach her a lesson.....I know, I'll sell her beloved collection of dolls, they won't fetch much on Ebay but hey it'll really upset her so that's an effective punishment'.

Mrs GB - yes I think selling a child's dearly loved possession to spite the child for doing something wrong is cruel. Obviously in certain circumstances families are forced by hardship to sell or leave possessions and that's not cruel but intentionally depriving them as a punishment is cruelty imo.
Don't you remember as a kid how important your things were to you? I would have broken my heart over my dolls (I was a doll person). My youngest dd (aged 8) adores her playmobil. If she runs rampant with my cards on amazon etc and I sold her playmobil it would be cruel to her.

SolidGoldBrass, I was given harsh punishment as a child. I once answered my mother back, she hit me in the face with her shoe and split my lip open. That's why I'm getting quite cross and upset at what some people consider cruel on this thread. The level if ignorance and the throwing around of the word 'cruel' is really belittling to those who actually suffered child cruelty.