For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for December 07, 2011

Yup, too much chocolate, strawberries and watermellon.

Shoplifting is normal?!?

How? Unless Michael was caught taking the scarfOUT of the store?

Bad bad Michael. Shame shame!

Guess Michael will be grounded…and all because he wanted to get a present for Elly.

This is all backwards. You’re supposed to get caught while you’re taking it out of the store, not putting it back! Only Michael…Interesting that the other woman sounds like Michael’s friend who talked him into it!

Normally I can sympathize with Elly, but this time I can’t. Sometimes, no matter what you do, your kids will do something that you never imagined they would do. It’s nothing you did or didn’t do as a parent; kids just do dumb stuff sometimes. Get through the problem, punish the kid or whatever needs to be done, but stop blaming yourself. (Someone please tell me this when my kids do something dumb! :-))

When your children do something wrong, you wrack your brain trying to think of what you did wrong. I have a feeling Elly and John will step up to the plate on this one and do the right thing and actually help Michael.

Sorry, but this whole scenario just seems a little unlikely. If he was “caught” putting something onto the shelf, how can they accuse him of shoplifting?

doesn’t he know… you never return to the scene of the crime!

Shoplifting is NOT normal behavior. What a dumb thing for Annie (Lynn) to say.

Some mothers think like that.

Two of my sisters were caught shoplifting (one was 16 and the other was 4) and you’d better believe they both got the spankings of a lifetime for it…

Why didn’t he just mail it back? As for not being caught leaving the store, I believe in some cases concealment of an item can be classified as shoplifting.

Saw on TV some time back, there is a store in California that hires professional shoplifters to supply their merchandise. Wonder what would happen if someone tried to shoplift something at their store?

It’s not “normal” for a kid to shoplift. But it IS normal for a kid to make stupid mistakes, and the best parents in the world can’t always prevent that. The question is whether the kid makes the same stupid mistake again. Michael knew stealing was bad. Now he KNOWS stealing is bad. It’s not just an abstract notion.@howtheduck – Are you a helicopter mom? When I was a kid in the ‘80s, it was normal for kids to wander the neighborhood with their friends while mom sat at home and did mom things (I never figured out what those were…). There were boundaries we couldn’t cross, we had to be home for dinner, and if we went out after dinner we had to get home before the streetlights came on. We did okay.Wandering the neighborhood might also include wandering into the neighborhood store. This is also normal. I’d imagine it’s also normal for two friends to have a whispered conversation about swiping that cool thing they want but can’t pay for. Most kids don’t do it. A few do. Some of them get away with it, some get caught. Some do it again, some don’t. Some of them turn into sociopaths and career criminals, most don’t.Keeping a kid under constant supervision might keep him from stealing, but eventually he has to learn how to supervise himself. Parents used to know that.

Technically, he was caught shop-putting-stuff-back. He made a clean getaway when he was shop-lifting. :-p Still….could have been the peanut covered cucumbers, Elle.

Elly should have gave Michael a subscription to Highlight’s magazine. It features all kinds of morals and good behavior traits versus bad behavior. I learned a lot from Hightlight’s.

Stuff he should have learned in Sunday School.

too bad he got caught returning it. Somedays it doesn’t pay to get out of bed!

Devil’s food cake?