Stealing

Stealing is a reasonably common behaviour seen in fostered and adopted children. It can be alarming for parents and carers but it is frequently an expression of attachment behaviour and can be dealt with effectively from that perspective. The nature of the stealing varies a great deal and can be a pointer towards the different strategies with which it can be tackled.

Examples of stealing behaviours:

stealing money;
taking things that are precious to parental figures;
taking objects which are integral to the home environment;
stealing and hiding things;
stealing food.

Why can some fostered and adopted children feel the need to steal?

Fostered and adopted children have often learned to operate in an independent and suspicious way. In an environment with minimal levels of trust, it is very difficult to have trust in a relationship in which your fundamental needs are not met. Children who steal are often those who have not learned the difference between what is a “need” and what is a “want”. They have learned that they must obtain everything that they want and need by force, manipulation and deception, that nothing will be freely and willingly given. Therefore, if our children can get what they want or need without any adult permission or, even better, without any adult knowledge then this is the most sensible route for them to get it. Against this background, taking what you need and want is far more sensible than asking and facing the inevitable refusal and other negative consequences that may come.

This adaptive strategy of taking what you need and want can apply to abstract, relational things, such as affection, attention, specialness etc. as well as tangible objects such as money.

There are two other processes that make sense of stealing in adopted and fostered children. Firstly, stealing can be an expression of a desperate need for contact, attention if you like, it’s a provocative gesture to engineer some interaction with an adult. This could be an unconscious desire to replicate familiar confrontational, aggressive interactions and/or a clumsy attempt to elicit affection but coming from someone with little experience of how to do this effectively.

Another common cause for stealing in fostered and adopted children is an unconscious desire to keep an attachment figure close to them in some way. Think about this explanation particularly if your child is stealing things that are some way precious to you or integral to the home environment. Children do this when they find separation from their parental figure very stressful. It is a very tangible way of reminding them of home and the people that matter to them. It also acts as a reassurance that they will certainly return to that precious home because the home or carer would not be complete without the object they have taken.

Have a think about what feelings your child’s stealing behaviour triggers for you. Try to understand those as an inevitably provoked feeling stemming from your child’s abusive history rather than their fault or due to any failure on your part.

Responding to stealing, that is caused by those relational needs noted above, with reward-punishment thinking (sanctions, star-charts etc.) will not solve the problem, will almost certainly increase your child’s levels of shame and defensiveness (and thus decrease their self-esteem) and therefore their need to deceive you. In all likelihood, this will increase their stealing behaviour. Instead, try responding to the need that underlies the stealing behaviour (think about which of the explanations above fits best) i.e. meet the need that the stealing behaviour serves but in a different way.

Work specifically on building trust. Make sure you are extremely honest, sincere and transparent with your child albeit in an emotionally contained way. Even when it’s hard to do.

Provide your child with something precious that they can take away with them to make them feel sure they are coming home to you. This object will remind them of the security of their relationship with you. Sometimes something that enables the child to evoke a sensory/emotional memory (see also trauma memory page) of you can be very effective e.g. yesterday’s t-shirt, a photograph of a happy time you had together or a photocopy of a future holiday reservation together. This should be something meaningful and that you are keen to see again but not something that will be genuinely upsetting if it were to be lost.

If the stealing is an attempt to provoke confrontation or solicit attention then give your child your attention willingly and enthusiastically! You may also find the attention-seeking vs. attachment-seeking behaviour page useful. Often parents and carers fall into the trap of thinking that “attention-seeking” is a bad thing that should be ignored or otherwise treated using reward-punishment thinking. However, when a developmentally traumatised child is reaching out for interaction (even when it is in socially unacceptable ways) it is a huge opportunity to feed that need and to help them to develop beyond it.