autism and stealing

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Whether or not they act like a ten year old, and whether or not it would be appropriate to treat them as an neurotypical person of the chronilogical age, they are still twelve and it is not helpful to compare them to an eight year old. My brother can't talk, and we've been told he is developmentally a three year old. As a result the school will not work on him with reading, history, math, science, or anything other than sports, even though he is clearly able to read signs and ingredient labels [he has celiac and he checks the labels to make sure there's no gluten before he steals my candy. How considerate].

He is not a three year old, treating him like a three year old is inappropriate. He has strengths and weaknesses that are not like a neurotypical person, and it is unhelpful to hold him to analogous standards. His goals need to be set according to his needs, not according to the needs of neurotypical three-year-olds or neurotypical sixteen-year-olds.

I think my dad acts like a teenager but it would be inappropriate if I told him to keep those hormones in check and go to his room. :I

Either hide your wallet where she can't find it, or put a note on the money that says "HerName, if this is gone, I know you got it and you will be in HUGE TROUBLE!"

Just be firm with her. Tell her that if your money is missing from now on, she's in trouble, so she better hope nobody else in that house takes any out and doesn't tell you and follow through on that. My daughter was doing something similar to me recently and she's older and NT. That's how I fixed that situation. It worked. She's stealing out of your purse, so don't worry too much about upsetting her when you catch her.

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I don't see how age has to do with stealing. My brother only stole once and my other one never did. I certainly wasn't stealing money from my parents at age 8 to buy candy. I didn't even understand money then but I knew it's what you used to buy stuff but I didn't understand how much each was worth. I remember I did keep stealing little things when I was little and Mom told me "do you want to go to jail?" and I said no and she told me to stop doing it and I did. I was seven. Every time I would take toys home from school that belonged to my teacher when I was seven, mom would just make me take them back to school the next day. But one day my teacher was handing out free stuff and she let us take stuff home and told us our parents had to be okay with it and if they are not, they can just hand the stuff back. Well I came home with some clothes and a backpack and my mom said no and told me it wasn't mine but she let me keep the backpack because my teacher put my name on it but I had to bring back the rest. She probably thought I stole it and she could have called my teacher about it the next day to confirm but she didn't and made me bring it back and I envied other kid's parents saying yes to the stuff and I was left out. But I was one of the few kids who had parents that said no to it and brought their stuff back as well. But I bet if I hadn't been taking toys from school once in a while, my mom probably would have believed me about the teacher giving it to me and would have let me kept it. It was like crying wolf I did but back then I didn't learn my lesson because I didn't make the connection. My mind didn't work that way then. There were a couple occasions when I did take my parents money But I was 12 and 15 when I did it and it was only once. One was with cash and the other was with a card and it wasn't any major purchases I did.

My parents did have a baby sitter and they found out right when we were moving she had been stealing from us. Mom never told her parents and I do think she should have just so they were aware and she could have been doing it to other people as well. She was in her early teens. I don't think they ever knew their daughter was stealing because if she is baby sitting and always has new stuff, they would just think she got it from her baby sitting money and my mom had given her stuff so she would just say my mom gave it to her. They were even under the belief she gave their daughter a box of my old baby clothes and that was how my mom found out years later that's where that box went and she didn't say anything about it because she didn't see the point in it. It happened few years back when she took it right when we were moving. I do think she had a problem with stealing though. But we never had any other baby sitters steal from us.


So I don't understand why we are connecting age with stealing as if it's normal for 8 year olds to be stealing cash for candy and can't help themselves. I think if a kid is unable to stop, they really do have a problem.

I was raised through fear of consequences and assumed it was the same for most kids. Right and wrong were very vague notions as a child, it was more not getting into trouble. Kids known to steal are always blamed whenever something goes missing, whether they did it or not. They don't get invited round to other people's houses as they're known to be "light fingered" and they often get set up by other kids. It's not a reputation they can shake off once it's established and it will be pretty miserable going. If your child is logical enough to be reasoned with, explain the consequences of people thinking she is a thief. If she is only stealing from you at the moment, it is probably not a compulsion and you might be able to scare her straight. If she is stealing opportunistically and from other people, you should get her some therapy.