This is my daughter’s senior year in high school. She’s a straight A student and has already received acceptance into the college of her choice. She’s not the kind of kid I generally need to worry about so we give her a lot of freedom. This weekend she must have left her common sense at home because she was out with a group of kids going to the movies and they were caught shoplifting! I was in complete shock when we got the call from the police department. I mean, that just isn’t our child. We immediately went to go pick her up at the local police department and she was hysterically crying. All she could think about was if this incident was going to affect her getting into college.
Her side of the story was that they were waiting for their movie time so they went over to look in a store to pass time. Two of the girls that were with them, she doesn’t usually hang out with. Those girls were standing with my daughter when they pocketed some jewelry that was displayed on a rack. Immediately, the manager and another employee closed in on them and took them all to the back office where they found the jewelry in the girl’s pockets. Now even though my daughter didn’t have anything on her, the manager was furious and called the police on all of them. The police told her that they were citing her for shoplifting because she was a part of this group.
We’ll see what the judge has to say about all this. I understand why the store manager came down on all of them because he doesn’t know who was really behind it all. We’ll explain to the judge that she has a perfect track record to date, is a great student and didn’t actually take anything. In the meantime, I’ve decided to make her take a 4-hour theft and shoplifting class. Hopefully this will show the judge that we are on the situation, and teach her some skills to improve her decision-making. I understand that she was just an innocent bystander, but it can’t hurt to really drive home why this behavior is completely unacceptable.
This will be great learning experience for her and taking an online class will enable us to stay at home instead of having to drive her to a traditional classroom. Why put more pressure on us because of her mistake? She can login and out of the class each night when she’s done with her homework, or on the weekend. There’s nothing to print out, so she can even use our Ipad and sit in a comfortable chair to scroll through the course. I’m not looking to torture her, but to educate her on the impact of theft on our society. We understand that peer pressure is difficult, but she needs to learn ways to get out of an uncomfortable situation like this one without worrying about what others will say. She also needs to learn the consequences and risks of shoplifting if she’s ever caught again. This might be the information she needs to give her the confidence to walk away from a group of losers who are participating in this behavior.
All I can say is that I’m glad this happened before she left for college so we could be there for her. It’s up to us as parents to give our kids the tools they need to succeed. I think giving her the opportunity to take this theft class will be life changing.
