Friday, August 31, 2007

Advice on punishment

So let's say you have a teen who shoplifted. You find out about it months later. Taking him back to the store and facing the security there is out of the question. Any belongings he had of any value he destroyed..... So taking things away from him the value of the item is impossible.
So what would you do?
I am really looking for creative punishments that would leave an impact but not a scar lol

2 comments:

AnnMarie said...

He has to chores around the house at a certain wage scale (not minimum wage, that's for sure! Unless it was a realllly expensive item) until he has earned enough to repay what he stole. I'm not sure if you should actually then have him anonymously send the money to the store, or keep it for yourself. (For instance, I'm not sure I could find $300 in my pocket to do this for a kid.)

Or give him community service--whether that's volunteering somewhere or doing chores for friends or neighbors or family.

Or some sort of restrictions of something he really enjoys. Everytime he doesn't have X, it's worth a certain amount of repayment money. Could be foods (like dessart, snacks, junk food), watching TV, getting a ride to a friends house, etc.

Good luck!

Angel The Alien said...

I had a similar idea as AnnMarie... having him "give back" to the community somehow by doing some sort of community service. You could determine the amount of hours he has to work by figuring the amount of what he stole, then dividing by whatever minimum wage is in your area.
You could even try to relate the community service to what he stole... like if he stole CD's he could hold a used CD collection, get his friends and family members to donate their used CD's that they don't want, and then either sell them on Half.com and donate the money, or donate the CD's themselves to someplace, like for kids in a group home to earn as behaviot rewards, or something like that.