My husband and I have run out of solutions to help our 14 year old daughter. I don’t know the age she started stealing or why she even does it. We are not poor people, we are okay. We try our best to provide our kids with anything they want. She doesn’t lack anything so the way she keeps behaving is very disgraceful. When she was about 11 years, my husband started complaining about money vanishing from his wallet. The whole thing was strange because it was just the two of us and the kids at home. He trusts me, so he didn’t suspect me. To be sure he wasn’t imaging the money vanishing, we set a trap. He left money in his wallet on purpose and left it in our bedroom. True to his word, the following day, the money wasn’t in his wallet. We were planning to set up CCTV cameras, but I caught my daughter redhanded.
I work from home. When my children come from school, they go to their rooms to change before coming out again. On that particular day, I went to our bedroom to check something. I wasn’t going to take anything. It was just my instinct telling me to go to the room. My daughter was standing there when I opened the door. She was fidgeting with my husband’s wallet. She jumped when she saw me and I was shocked. We have a key for the bedroom, but it always hangs on the door. We stay with our kids so we didn’t see the need to be locking the bedroom door unless we are doing the do. After that incident, my husband and I started locking the bedroom. We asked our daughter what she uses the money for and all she was doing was crying and telling some stories that wasn’t making sense.
My husband was boiling with anger and he beat her that day. For an 11 year old girl to steal a total amount of ghc500 from her father was too weird. We asked her to bring the money and she was only able to bring ghc52 from her school bag. She promised to never do that again. But it was just the beginning of our problems. She has stolen my jewellery and even more money. She went to play with a friend in the area and she stole her panties. If her friend’s mother and I weren’t good friends, she would have disgraced me. Even with that, the whole situation was very embarrassing because I had to keep apologising to the mother. Later I made sure she never visited her friend again. When I asked her why she stole the panty, she said her friend’s panties were nicer than hers and if she sees a nice thing, she cannot help herself but to take it. Even if she has a lot of nice things herself.
The other time, her school called us. The headmaster wanted to speak to us. My daughter has been stealing people’s pens and notebooks and putting them in her bag. Her classmate’s money was found in her bag coupled with books and pens. She was stealing classwork books that weren’t even new. The school has threatened to expel her if she continues. Now we know she has a very big problem and it’s not normal at all. I turned to prayers, but my husband has been beating her because he believes that disciplining her will make her stop. Are there other parents who have experienced this embarrassing situation? What did you do? How can we solve this issue? Our daughter is just creating problems for us.
