In the early 90s when my daughter was around 15 years old I received a letter from the attorney for a major department store where I was being billed for about $200 (I can’t remember the exact amount) to cover the cost of items from the store. I hadn’t been in this store in a while and was curious why this law firm was demanding $200 from me. When I contacted the store I learned that my daughter and a friend of hers were caught shop lifting and the items came to about $200. I didn’t know about the incident because a neighbor’s older daughter, who was over 21 went to the police station and got my daughter pretending to be her older sister. All of this was done to keep me from finding out. I was furious. First of all, we may not be rich, but I worked and made a decent salary. We had a nice home and my daughter had nice clothes etc. Plus my daughter had income from social security from her father which provided her any money she needed. There was no reason for her to steal anything. If she had asked me I would have given her the money to purchase whatever she needed. However, the economic circumstances of girl she was with were different which I believed contributed to the decision to steal.
I paid the store and apologized for my daughter’s behavior. To teach her a lesson, I took her entire social security check for the month. Usually I’d give her spending money and money for school. But this time, I only gave her money for school (bus fare and lunch money). No spending money for two months which meant no money for the theater, shopping, going out with her friends, etc. I was ashamed of what she had done because she didn’t have to. I had to let her know that stealing is wrong. I also told her not to ever let anyone talk her into doing something illegal again. That one act could have cost us a lot more than $200.
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