When a parent discovers that his child steals he usually makes the mistake of looking at the stealing act superficially without looking at the drives behind it.

Stealing is like any other action that people take with the exception that its morally unacceptable. Each and every action that a person makes in his life is usually done to fulfill a certain psychological need or a goal.

I am not talking about children who steal because they are starving and badly in need of money but i am talking about children who steal things that they don't need from their friends and children who steal from their parents.

Why would someone buy a Ferrari while any other great car like a BMW will satisfy his transportation and luxury needs? Its because the Ferrari satisfies one of his important psychological needs which is SHOWING OFF.

The same exactly goes for children who steal, while they might not be in need of the object they stole they do have a psychological need that stealing satisfies. Some children steal when they believe that they are getting unfair treatment and so they try to balance things or restore fairness by stealing from the favored friend or sibling. Some children steal because they want to get attention as a result of feeling neglected. The child thinks that getting some negative attention is better than getting no attention.

Jealousy is one of the powerful factors that make children steal. Its not uncommon for a jealous child to steal from his friends.
Another reason that makes children steel is feeling that they lack something. For example a child who feels he is not loved by his parents might steal things to compensate for that feeling.

There are numerous reasons that could make a child steal but in the end most of them fall under the category of wanting to meet a certain psychological need. The child who is in need of attention might stop stealing as a result of being told that stealing is really bad however sooner or later a new behavior that might be unacceptable too will surface because of the intense need of attention he has.

When attempting to end the stealing problem its very important to understand the reason that makes the child steal so that you could fix the problem from its root in addition to teaching the child how bad stealing is.


Source: https://www.facebook.com/forum9ja/posts/953752694686531?notif_t=like

Lack of love and absence of parental supervision.

Insect-eye

I was meant to believe that some of these kids inherited those traits from their parents or family lineage which however describes the case of a kleptomaniac or a very comfortable child still stealing from their rich parents.

This is one of the reasons some parents are against adoption of children with unknown family background, just my opinion tho