AIBU to take my son's phone after he stole £20?

[Summerishere123]

DS13 has stolen £20. I know this because I counted out the cash for a holiday yesterday. I checked it twice and DH checked it. He then put it in the cupboard. We have gone to get it out today and £20 is missing.
I know he has had a few £1 here and there that he has found around the house and have often turned a blind eye. He gets £4 a week spending money and I have told him several times I will up it if he does chores but he wont.
DH says we should ground him for a week and take his phone. I think taking his phone when he is travelling to and from school will cause us more hassle than him but think he should have it taken when he gets in from school and returned in the mornings. Is this fair? To be honest I feel bad because he has always taken bits here and there which we knew, but did nothing about.

Dc didn't get pocket they just had money when they wanted it within reason.

I'd come down like an absolute ton of bricks about this. Make him know how it feels to not be trusted.

That if this ever happens again his credibility will be ruined and he'll be getting nothing but basic food from you.

Stealing from your mum is scum behaviour.

I give my 13 year old £50 a month but if she was doing something extra I’d give her more. This is for hanging out with friends / random makeup / maybe a new jumper sort of thing. She does loads around the house, keeps up at school and isn’t high maintenance at all so she almost never has more than this. Obviously I buy her clothes and anything she needs myself.

In this situation I’d stop the pocket money until he pays you back and have a proper chat about what sort of money he thinks he should be getting and what sort of responsibilities he should have now he’s getting older. My kids used to get a set amount of money but could earn more for doing extra - they still have to do their standard chores regardless though. Sometimes my son really wants a game of Lego set or whatever and he dusts the whole house etc.

Personally I don’t think he needs to be punished but he does need to taught that stealing is wrong. Seriously! If he steals from you he might steal from others.

My DGD gets a £50 allowance per month and it is for her to manage it.

She has been getting it since she was 13, she is now 15. At first she would spend it as you would imagine a 13 year old would, but now she saves it. She does spend, but saving has given her more spending range and means she is less dependent on her parents and me for things she needs.

Up his allowance a bit and teach him that he must not steal. Encourage him to save also.

I think it's worth a non-judgemental chat on why he took it, but not a punishment. You might find he needed it for something unexpected. Money is family money here, even though we're on a low budget I'd expect my DD to ask but she'd always be given it, but if she took some I'd assume she needed it and I wasn't around to ask, she's often needed something last minute for school like baking ingredients or stationery and gone to the shop on the way to school. If you usually let him take small change he may not realise you've got this as a boundary. I'd don't think it would be fair to punish him this time. My DD is 14 and has had £30 a month since she was 11 but it's just for fun, I get her anything she asks for. I do pocket money monthly after realizing she bought rubbish if I gave it weekly because she couldn't afford a better thing. With £4 a week he doesn't have much choice, there's not much else you can buy than sweets and fizzy drinks. I also don't link chores to pocket money, and it seems to work for us.

I’d ground him / remove the phone until he repaid or worked off the £20

Id also be talking to him about what he took if for and why he’s stealing because you’ve turned a blind eye too long

I think you seem rather chilled out about him helping himself to random bits he finds around the house tbh.

My boys are now 18 and 15, I've never actually given them pocket money. They've never stolen from anyone and they know to just ask if they want anything.
My eldest has been going the cinema every few months for years, and buying maybe one ps5 game a year.
The youngest asks for around £15 spread over a month for shite on a ps5 in game purchase, and occasionally he will buy a chippy dinner if hes out with friends and didn't eat before going.

They both have money saved in their wallets from birthdays/xmas and will bring me the cash and ask to use my card for the online purchases, but I never accept it as they don't get pocket money and never take the piss with asking to buy anything. They have my card saved on their phones and games consoles and have never used it without permission.

I know my way wouldn't work for everyone, but it's worked well for us all these years and they've never once come to me to ask if they can start having pocket money.
They are really good at saving their gift money and will use this for big purchases like games consoles or motocross bits if they don't want to wait til xmas. I also throw in gift cards at xmas for things like ps5 wallets top ups, waterstones, Cinema. This seems to reduce the need for pocket money or the asking for money as its where they spend when they do ask for something anyway.

Wow, so many justifying him stealing. OP said he has opportunity to earn more via chores, but instead is stealing. No wonder so many kids with issues when parents think it’s justifiable that this kid is stealing from his parents. Yes, i’d take his phone for a few days and give him no pocket money until its repaid. No kids needs pocket money anyway, you feed and clothe him.

Of course he should be punished. Stealing is a huge thing. I agree with the proposed punishment, and he pays back at least half the money. And you up his pocket money because he’s not getting very much.

My boys are grown up now. Once they became teenagers I gave them the family allowance and that was for non essential items. I paid for all school and club expenses. I was a single parent but found it helped them to budget. But nowadays I understand for a lot of parents this is not viable due to a high cost of living.

My child is regularly seen as one of the most responsible and capable kids in her year. You want to threaten and punish go right ahead. That was my mum and I just got extremely good at lying. My child doesn't need to lie and steal.

OP has set poor boundaries and didn't plan for proper financial literacy. Doesn't mean her child should steal. Does mean she needs more than punishment.

'No wonder so many kids...' is invariably followed by nonsense.

I think £4 a week is far too little pocket money for a 13-year-old, and I’d genuinely reconsider both the amount and the punishment. At that age, children become very aware of social differences and want to be able to do normal things with their peers, even something as small as buying a drink or snack after school.

Sometimes a child’s reaction to a parent’s decision shouldn’t immediately be treated as bad behaviour that needs punishing. Sometimes it’s feedback that the situation itself isn’t working.

Speaking from experience, not having enough money as a teenager can push kids towards the wrong crowds simply because they feel excluded from normal socialising. You do not want to know the kind of people I ended up around as a teenager because I couldn’t afford to do ordinary things with ordinary friends.

Massive no from me. Taking money from family is awful and there's no excuse for it. My kids are worse off than most of their friends, but they're better off than most kids on the planet and there's no way I'd consider upping pocket money as a consequence of them stealing from the house.

What if they steal from other people? Or shops? I don't think over £16 a month is crap for a teen either. DD13 gets £20 a month and she manages to be generous with it. She gets her friends lovely birthday presents, but she knows she can come to me if she needs something important. She has learned not to waste it.

Chores are an expectation not employment too.

@MrsTerryPratchett, agree, threatening and punishing is counterproductive.

A relative of mine, came down so hard on
her DC, for a misdemeanour, similar but not the same. DC understood they had done wrong, but the punishment became the all consuming factor. Thankfully the DC contacted me. I contacted the relative and just brought the tone down.

Our young people learn by example obviously, by good parenting and when things do go wrong, a long, open and honest conversation will achieve more than punishment. Our young people are not born with the knowledge. It is learnt and nurtured.

Punishment, I believe is not an innate human characteristic.

DS2 who is now 16 has had £100 a month from us as pocket money since he was 13.

He rarely spends all of it and has a few £100 in the bank.He knows this is the start of his uni savings, or actually to do whatever he pleases with.

DS1 had the same and now at aged 20 has around £6,000 available to him. Generated most from his own earnings as a free lance music producer and video editor.

Trusting them with money has paid dividends in that the are now very responsible as far as their finances are concerned

I think £4 a week is far too little pocket money for a 13-year-old

He could earn more if he wanted it, but doesn't. His choice.

My boys are in their 20’s now, but at that age they got £60 a month.

You really are stingy with your sons allowence.
20 is more reasonable allowence.
I would take his phone for two weeks and maybe he needs to go mow some lawns or get a job on weekends and pay the 20 back.

Don’t take his phone. Just stop giving him pocket money for a couple of months. Make the consequence fit what he’s done.

Not sure what you think £4 will get him. Although , it is good practice to expect chores to be done, not you cleaning his room!

I did this once with DD many years ago. She wouldn't get out of the car, so a sergeant came out and spoke to her. Couldn't do it now as their isn't a local police station that has a front office. I would have to travel miles away! It didn't stop her anyway as about four years later she stole some money from my purse which actually belonged to her DGM. Then in her teens she stole some fancy make-up from NDN when she was babysitting. Then she got caught shoplifting with a friend. I had already warned her not to copy her friend's behaviour. They both got let off with a caution.

The annoying thing is that theft is something I really despise, so I can't understand why she did it at all, let alone repeatedly. She had plenty of pocket money and knew she could always ask me if there was something in particular she wanted. She is in her thirties now and has a very responsible job in Finance. Didn't have any of this with DS. He just had a smart mouth!

Thieving from your Mum is about as low as it gets. Smash his phone with a sledgehammer.

Upping someone's allowance because they've stolen doesn't teach them not to steal. It teaches them its beneficial to them?!

Great idea. "How do we solve our problems, DS? We smash things"

How cynical! £4 is way to little for a 13 year old. Consider that if he had a bigger allowance he may have not felt the need to steal. I do though accept that for some families the money just is not there.

I stand by my PP, I do not believe that punishment is an innate human characteristic.

He needs to be taught that stealing is wrong, that it is a reflection of his character, and he needs
to be taught that, unlike what @Summerishere123 did initially, where she overlooked it, stealing even small amounts is very serious and will not be tolerated under any circumstances.

In my opinion and experience having hard, frank, and honest conversations with young people has had transformational effects.

As others have said, being punished just made them more devious. Upping his allowance and addressing his stealing can be dealt with according to each element of the situation.