My Daughter...

the shoplifter! Yes, my 5 year old daughter is starting her life in crime a bit early. In her defense though, I don't think she fully realized the extent of what she was doing. Yes, she knew she shouldn't take it...but I think she thought she would get in trouble for not asking first, not that she stole it. But let me tell you the whole story.

It has been so darn hot over here and for so long that I think we were all going a bit stir crazy being cooped up in the house. So since we can't go swimming until later in the afternoons I decided to brave an outing to the store with all 5 kids. I knew we needed to get out of the house and going somewhere outside wasn't really much of an option with the heat and all and I needed to buy the kids school supplies before everything was picked over. So we headed to the store...and let me just say, I'm never taking 5 kids back to school supply shopping by myself ever again! It wasn't that they were being bad, they did a pretty good job staying with the cart and keeping up with me. It's just really wearing trying to keep an eye on everyone and find the things you need to find! Not to mention the "can I have this?" and "can we pick out a toy?" comments.

Anyways, though after we found most of the school supplies in the school section I let them pick out new backpacks. They found the ones they wanted and then they wanted to just wear them around the store while we finished finding the last few things we needed. I had Jaxon and CJ in the cart and the other three were following along behind me, I would glance back occasionally to make sure that they were all still folowing along. Now in some time after we got the backpacks and were walking towards the back of the store and in between the times that I glanced back at them Ryann grabbed a birthday card and a pink, sparkly, lego frame and stuck them in her backpack.

We finally finished up the shopping and headed to the check out stand. I put all the items up to be checked (and I didn't even notice that there was something in one of the backpacks...and neither did the checker!) So I paid for our purchases and we headed out to the car got the bags loaded and then we headed to DQ to grab some lunch to take home.

Now while I was sorting through all of our purchases was labeling, cutting off tags, taking things out of their packaging and putting them in the correct piles so I knew who's was who's. It was then that I was picking up the backpacks and making sure all the tags were off and getting the filler paper out of them that I noticed something in the bottom of Ryann's backpack. I opened her bag up and reached in and you can imagine my surprise when I pulled out those two items. I called Ryann from upstairs and asked her about them. I asked her if she knew why it was wrong that she took these and she replied "because I didn't ask you first." I replied "that is true as well, but the more important reason is that we took them and didn't pay for them and that is stealing. Stealing is very bad and you can get in alot of trouble for that." I then called Doug and informed him that our 5 year old daughter is now a shoplifter. So when he got home from work he took Ryann (and the two things that she took) back to the store. When they got there they went to the return station and he told Ryann that she needed to tell them what she had done. In a quiet voice she said "I stole these." The lady behind the counter was really nice and told her that she shouldn't do that, that she was way to pretty to take things. So Doug then explained to Ryann that now we are returning the things that she stole. He asked the lady behind the counter "are we good?" and she replied that they were.

So we are hoping that this will be a good lesson for Ryann and that she will realize that she just can't take things. We also hope the other kids will learn from Ryann's lesson as well.