:confused: You come home unexpectedly and find your door ajar. Inside, you discover your son’s friend looking through a kitchen drawer. The boy says he is looking for a paper and a pencil so he can leave your son a note. On the counter next to him is a lock-pick and some of your jewelry and he smells of marijuana. You tell the boy to leave immediately and he does. What should I do I think cvall police but what if it would be better for the child to be out of the system and I call his parents? What if what if I am so confused please help me make this decision I do not want to make the wrong one.:confused:

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Originally Posted by yathink103

:confused: You come home unexpectedly and find your door ajar. Inside, you discover your son’s friend looking through a kitchen drawer. The boy says he is looking for a paper and a pencil so he can leave your son a note. On the counter next to him is a lock-pick and some of your jewelry and he smells of marijuana. You tell the boy to leave immediately and he does. What should I do I think cvall police but what if it would be better for the child to be out of the system and I call his parents? What if what if I am so confused please help me make this decision I do not want to make the wrong one.:confused:

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What would I do? I would have called the Police then and there. I guess it depends on your relationship with the parents. I would care nothing about the marijuana but a lot about the jewelry and lock picking equipment. I would also "assume" he didn't get the lock picking equipment only for your house.

Some years ago we had new carpeting installed - with apologies to home improvement people everywhere I came home early a couple of weeks later and found "someone" ransacking my house. He ran out the back door and I called the Police. I was positive it was the carpet installation guy but my X had a personal relationship with the installer's brother, he talked to the brother who talked to the installer, it was a one time lapse in judgment (?) - and we decided to let it go. Nothing was taken because I walked in.

About a month after that he was up to the same thing - broke in, had the information from working in the house, knew how to get in and where to look - when that woman came home and he smacked her over the head and knocked her down, injuring her fairly seriously. And I felt somewhat responsible because I did nothing the first time around!

What does your son say about the situation? Presumably he knows what else his friend is up to - ?

The right spot for this child is not a simple slap on the hands, rather a short stint in a detention facility. Today kids are becoming more trouble than adults, because they are more willing to commit a crime for popularity. B&E is very serious because of the ramifications it can have. How guilty will you feel if you do nothing and the next house he attempts to steal from has a shotgun waiting for him? The truth of the matter is no matter how old the kid is he must be punished and established in the NCIC system. It is the only way to learn from mistakes.

Call the police and let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps this will stop him before he gets into more. Perhaps he is already experienced in this.

This kid is not an amateur. Regardless of how old a burglar is, he's still a burglar. And this kid's youth played a huge part in you not calling the police. What difference does it make if he was 13 or 33? He's still a burglar and you needed to call the police immediately. He's just going to keep doing this until someone DOES call the police.