What do you do when they won’t admit to something you know they did?

[Tacocatgoatcheesepizza]

I am absolutely gutted this morning.
I keep a stash of emergency cash in my jewellery box - there was about £70 there. It’s gone.
DS13 admitted straight away to taking £10 a little while ago but won’t admit he took any more. It obviously wasn’t me or dh, and our other ds is only 10 and this just wouldn’t even be on his radar. Even ds13 admits there’s not really another explanation for where it is, but continues to deny it was him.

He is diagnosed dyspraxic, has some sensory issues and is almost certainly somewhere on the autistic spectrum but we have not persued a diagnosis for this. He gets £5 pocket money a week which might sound like not very much but really he only needs to use it to buy himself a drink/snack if he’s out with his friends which is only a couple of times a month. We continue to buy everything else.

A couple of months ago he basically stopped eating breakfast and often won’t have tea, so if I had to hazard a guess, it has been spent on buying snacks to and from school.

i feel like I’m going mad - there is really no other possible answer, but what do you do if they just won’t admit it?

Minimal treats for him over the holidays because the missing £70 cash was allocated for that purpose. And find somewhere else to keep your cash stash!

Love this approach ❤️

Well, no, because all the evidence OP gave to support her opinion of 'goodness' were behaviours too, like doing his school work.

Maybe you think he's inherently good, but OP wasn't even saying that.

Following rules at school for a reward isn't really that impressive when then stealing lots of cash from your parents.

*Meant to quote/reply to @yayoikusama

I absolutely have read all the responses - this is literally my dilemma!! I don’t feel I can punish him for taking all of it when I cannot prove it, but I am concerned about him learning a lesson than if he just sticks to denying something he can get away with it.

Erm…..
I was making the point that he’s not a trouble maker or anything. He’s 13, of course he has some teenage quirks and is sometimes mean to his sibling. He’s certainly not perfect, but on balance he is good. I just meant he doesn’t give us cause for concern usually.

having no consequences whilst also knowing that your mum knows you did it, doesn’t equal getting away with it.

Plenty of options given here on how to talk about it so that it doesn’t happen again.

Punishment doesn’t necessarily stop the behaviour - if it did no one would have more than 1 detention or prison sentence

Honestly OP if he's basically a good kid I would be wary of overreacting about this. Just make sure he can't do it again.

He’s still a good boy, his behaviour was not.

Like some other posters, I was also accused of things I hadn’t done when I was a child. Also ND, had a very ‘guilty’ face when questioned, and this would cement my mum’s certainty that I’d definitely done whatever she suspected. Years later, as adults, my brother (4 years younger) admitted that he had actually been behind many of these things - he hadn’t been suspected for even a second, not even by me, and I’m sure he could have gone on to have a lucrative career as a master criminal if he’d chosen to.

This is a horrible situation as a parent; you don’t want a child to learn that they can steal and lie to you, but you also don’t want to punish them for something if there’s a chance they haven’t done what you suspect!

What action would you take if you found that he had taken the full £70? Would there be a punishment like being grounded or having devices confiscated, or would it be something more like stopping his pocket money until the amount is paid back? Could you offer a similar consequence for the £10 he’s admitted to, or was that admitted under amnesty?

@bagobags he admitted to the £10 straight away, and he agrees it seems unbelievable that he only took £10.

He is generally a good kid. I think that I will make him repay the £10 and emphasise that he knows what I think happened and that he knows for himself whether he did or didn’t and he will have to live with that, also that whether it was £10 or £70, he stole from me and that just means that I will trust him less than I did before.

There is literally no alternative to that money having been taken by either ds13 or his brother. I haven’t used anything from it for months and dh hasn’t touched it. I will also speak to ds10 again but let’s just say his moral compass tends to sit a little higher than his brothers does 😬 he looked completely blank this morning when I asked him about it and he is not a good actor and pretty easy to read.

Actually I guess there should be also be a punishment of sorts for taking the £10 as it was stealing anyway, in addition to having to pay it back.

Good isn't the default, so surely neither good or bad, but whatever. He's clearly nicked the money if OP can't see any other option and he admits to (the first part) of it and doesn't seem to be getting a particularly significant punishment.

He'll continue to do wrong and deny it, safe in the knowledge that he's a 'good boy', even though his mother cannot trust him.

@Postre yes this continues to be my dilemma. What to do to prevent it from happening again.

You have to punish him £70 is alot of money ,I would be furious even more so that he's lieing , however you just need to tell him you absolutely know he's stolen & tell him what his punishment is , I'd suggest a month of no phone & a week of no internet or screen time ,I would also on top of the punishment have him pay back the amount in full as that is the natural conciquence of stealing. Also explain that if he did this to anyone else he would obviously be arrested & have a caution on his record.

We had a further chat today about it.

The gist of it is that I have treated it as if he stole £10 - he needs to pay that back and he has lost YouTube for a couple of weeks, which is basically all he watches. (I feel the need to add that he watches educational YouTube, videos about maths and history, rather than crap before I get judged for that!)

I emphasised that whether it was £10 or £70 he stole from me and I am really disappointed in him. That he knows whether or not he took the rest of it, and also that he knows that I think that he did. He didn’t have a reason he could explain for why he took it. I did ask him if there was any trouble at school or if there was any pressure to buy things for people but he was adamant there is not.

I also said to him that there would be no further punishment if he decided to admit taking the rest of the money at a later date as I would value the honesty more so we will see if anything comes of that. (Although I would make him pay it back) So we will see if anything comes of that!