7 Yr Old Stealing

Hi M.,
I'm wondering if maybe this 7 year old may need some mommy time. Try taking her out once a week with just you and her.
Tell her what night it will be so she has something to look forward too. I'm the mother of 6 and the grandmother of 22,
also 1 great/grangchild. So I have been around the block a couple of times with little girls and know that there can be
resentment among daughters. Try this and see the change in
this little 7 year old. Good Luck, cj

M.,
Try some tough love. Sit down and discuss this problem with her. Discuss what she is feeling when she takes things and what she is thinking. This may be a cry for attention. Then explain to her that the next time you will show her where people who steal end up. Take her into the police station and if you ask some will even let her sit in the cell to see what it is like. I only had to threaten this and my daughter stopped.

i had similar instances, myself as a child. both of my parents left me. i started stealing stuff, same age. in retrospect, it was more like a passive-aggressive behavior. i didn't really even want the stuff i was stealing. i wanted to hurt the people i was stealing from. cough drops, pencils, things like that. i was jealous of the people who had parents who "wanted" them.
M., you are doing such a beautiful thing , being so good to this little girl. one of the things that seems so important, from my perspective, is to make all the children that feel unwanted, left behind, abandoned... feel special. i never felt special until i met my husband. when i was 30. that included several different boyfriends, several children, drugs, violence.. well you get the picture. now, i'm not trying to give you a pity story, just to let you AND YOUR HUSBAND know you have the power to make sure this girl as well as her sisters are coddled at all the right times. i think it might be nice too if you talk to the girls about calling you mom, if everyone is good with that, and lose the step-crud!( if mom were here, i would have a different opinion) pls make sure dad touches all his girls in every appropriate way, this is how we learn to have good attention. finally, if you'd like to talk more, pls feel free to email me.god bless and good luck! M.

p.s. you know i was thinking about all this i wrote, and i wanted to add, part of loving the child is disciplining her! stealing or lying is absolutly not tolerated in my house. when i found my son had stolen something, i took his little buns right back to the person, and made him tell them what he had done.
i don't want you to think i meant coddle her for stealing!! who wants to live among liars or thieves? that turns a home into a house, to me.

Hi M. ~ I am by far an expert, but what JUMPED out at me is that this girl is the oldest of four children and a "step" child. (I have a step-daughter and my daughter is a step-daughter, so I know most of the issues that can go with this and we have two younger children)

I would encourage you to look at your whole family. It concerns me that this may be a little girl who is getting attention any way she can. This will happen, even if it's negative attention, she is still be paid attention to. Make sense? I would highly encourage you and her Dad to make time for just her. Maybe a day or at least a few hours away from the other children. Also talk to her OR better yet listen to her. Children will tell us what's going on if we will only slow down and listen. I don't know your daughter like you do, but I have been in similar situations and wish I could go back a do it different now :) You may want to spend some time in the school just observing without her knowing and see how she is relating to her teachers and classmates. I did this with my son and found that issues he was telling us about his teacher were true (the teacher did not know I was there either, the principal did :)

Anyway just my thoughts, good luck and best of all Pray for your daughter and for your whole family!!

H. S
A lttle about me:
44 y/o Mom of 4 and married to a wonderful man!!

Hi, M.. This is such a normal thing for your step-daughter to try. I have found the best consequences are the natural consequences. Telling the person whose things she stole that she is sorry and next time she will ask to use the item instead of taking it. The teacher should address stealing with the entire class at school. She could write a note to the person involved in the lie or stealing episode, just apologizing to them. I would not recommend making homework a punishment- otherwise she will think of homework in a negative light. She has many years left of homework, and it can be struggle enough. Your daughter may just be curious about the things she is taking, and want to get a better look. When she is confronted, maybe she is scared, and lies about whether she took it out of fear of what will happen. I don't know the exact situation, but look for things that might be under the surface, and if you can't find anything, she is probably just testing the waters, and it is very normal for kids this age to do this. If it continues, maybe she can talk to the counselor at school, and see if that helps. Good Luck. K.

A little about me:

37 year old mom of two- 2 year old girl and 8 year old boy.
I have worked with all ages of children for over 20 years- right now I am working with preschool age.

Well I don't have any advice, but reading your post blessed me. What a blessing you are to those girls and visa-versa.

If mom is out of the country and you are pretty much mom. I would ask her if she would rather me introduce her as my daughter instead of my step daughter. It's always a state of seperation. I'm not saying that's whats wrong. I would just feel left out.

Try to convey that the stealing is the bad thing and not her. Love her.

Sounds like she is acting out for attention from either you, her dad, most likely her biological mom. I don't know this for sure, but is seems kids are starved for one-on-one time with parents anymore. I notice my kids act up more when I've had a busy week and did not spend time with them.

Just a thought. I hope you are able to get a handle on this before it is too late.

Best Wishes,

J. H.

Maybe she is acting out because she feels she needs more attention. Maybe she needs your husband to take her out on daddy/daughter dates regularly. This is recommended for all dads. Or maybe she wants it from both of you. Kids feel that negative attention is better than no attention. I can see how you can get wrapped up with the younger ones that might need more attention, but try to make time for one-on-one time. Especially since it sounds like her mom is not in the picture right now. Good luck.

I'll bet you anything, if you start pouring on the love and attention (good attention) more than ever she'll stop. She does sound like she is not feeling special for some reason and maybe she needs a bit more lovin' than the other kids at the moment. Like the other mom said, my son would start acting up when I was going through an especially busy or stressful time, and as soon as I spent even just a little bit of QUALITY time with him and made him feel special, he stopped acting up. I don't think that ever changes! He's 14 and it still works! Especially when I hug him and tell him how proud I am of him...things like that. He becomes so cooperative and loving. Try the positive approach and see what happens. Lay on the love, girl! :) Good luck, and let us know what happens. You are doing an amazing thing for her, and one day she'll thank you for making a difference in her life.

I had this problem with my son who was 7 at the time. he was constantly bringing stuff home from school (stolen of course) he would say he was borrowing it. i always made him return everything. I had him do sentences, took stuff away that he liked, nothing worked. finally, i gave him a warning, i told him the next time he took ANYTHING that didnt belong to him I would take him to the police station. and I did. actually what he took was something of mine and it was small, but i followed up on my warning and he knew I was very serious. the officer scared him and me, lol. but it worked. he hasnt taken anything else and its been over a year.

Hi M.,

Seems there may be several different things that can cause your daughter's actions. So I guess there won't be just one thing that helps. But in finding the ways to help what's going on with her, try to get her to feel "empathy" for others. if you turn things in a way that she is seeing or feeling what its like to be the recipient of her actions, she will begin to understand what she is doing to others. I used this all the time with my 3 boys. It really did work for us. It ended up that their "punishment" was feeling the heartache of what their actions caused. I also tried to make sure that the punishment fit the crime. So if they lied about something to get to watch a tv show, then tv was gone for 2,3,4 days. If they take something that isn't theirs, first they correct that situation, then I'd punish according to what they took.

I remember being in the grocery store once and my 7 year old told that my 8 year old stole candy. Well, we just went through the bulk candy section, and he had a mouthful of sprees. So I marched him up to the Manager, and made him tell the manager what he had done. We asked her how much he needed to pay her to correct it, and we came up with $1.00. I payed it, he worked it off for me at home. He's almost 17 now and both boys remember the day mom made him go to the manager. But they never resented me for it, and they never did THAT again.

Finally, I'd make sure you are getting the whole story from school and that there aren't any extenuating circumstances that she wants to explain. She's pretty young and what we see as stealing and lying could be something else at that age such as protecting or doing it back because someone is doing it to her. I'm finding out that my 7 year old is getting in trouble for another boy's lies and the teacher just assumes that the boy tattling is being honest. She's a very young teacher and I'll be having a meeting with her before the end of school just so she can watch and understand these types of things.

Good luck. L.

I think she needs to see a counselor. Maybe start with her school counselor but definitely get her some help. She is screaming inside that she needs help. The whole Mom out of the picture thing is a big thing for little ones to deal with and you keep having new babies with her Daddy. I'd bet that is hard for her too. New siblings can make an insecure child act out. If you go to church you could also start with your pastor, but definitely get her someone to talk to other than family!Good luck and try to understand she is having a difficult time in her little life right now and this is her way of asking for help.